I was packing up to change location for a couple of days so I didn’t know immediately why my sister-in-law messaged to ask if we were okay. I texted back asking about why, then googled and saw that another tragedy had struck at a location we had driven by just days before.
We went to dinner after I received the message. It was late at the sports bar. TVs showed tennis, softball, baseball, and the shooting aftermath. Looking at the patrons, you’d never have guessed that a shooting had occurred just miles away. A shooting that took away 12 lives, injured others.
The one thought that came to me was that we’ve become inured to mass shootings. It can be close, but unless someone we know is involved, we don’t care, we don’t pay attention. We laugh, we drink, we flirt, continue living.
I do notice. I do care, but I’m old school and refuse, perhaps stupidly, to believe that these shootings should be commonplace. Mass shootings will never be common for me. At least I hope that is the case.
Strangely, perhaps lovingly, this song is playing right now on a station that wouldn’t normally be playing this song:
Perhaps not all love is over the rainbow. Perhaps we’ll find our way before it’s too late. Perhaps we’ll find ourselves. Perhaps it all starts with each of us and recognizing pain, seeing that shootings should not be common, not being inured to all of this pain.
Perhaps we’ll convince the short-sighted that guns should not be commonplace either. And, perhaps that is my own unicorn.
Optimism and hope can be hard to find, Sascha. I just read the news of the shooting too actually. There are good people in the world, and yet what I see around me makes it hard to hold onto that dream.
I fear that world has become a place where we must be selfish to survive, where we cannot look out for our neighbor, but instead must look out for our neighbor (that’s not mine BTW).
You’re right. I was talking with some folks today who said they’ve become (paraphrased) paranoid in situations where they never thought they would be. One of them has been to that municipal center often. It’s disheartening. People just need to care rather than treat it as every day.
I think it will take the next generation to conquer this problem. The old guard (NRA) must die out and the generation that has suffered the losses will make the changes. That’s how it’s always been.
I just don’t see it happening until people begin to care. Right now, it’s become too common as is the apathy.
It’s terrible that these shootings continue to happen. I pray for the victims and their families and hope that Jehovah God supports them during this difficult time. Psalms 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted; He binds up their wounds.”
It’s tragic to thing that you send a loved one off to a normal day on the job and then lose them. Incomprehensible. The poor families.