Mass shootings happen all the time. We do absolutely nothing about it and I’m terrified as I’m sure many other Americans are, too. I think about shootings sometimes when we’re out in public – especially at the grocery store. Last night I had a dream that there was a shooting while we were shopping there. The shooting happened three times and I did something different each time. The first time I ran and hid in the back warehouse. The second time I waited until I heard the gunshots move to the back of the store and ran out the front door. In the final shooting, I hid in a clothing rack. Does any else do this?
Maybe it was weighing a little heavier on my mind since the shooting at Michigan State a few days ago. A good friend of mine got his doctorate at MSU and we worked on a really amazing project there together. He’s a musician and he asked me to create artwork that was projected onto a large screen during his recital. It was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done as an artist.
Also, I have a friend that was a teacher at a school that had a shooting. No one was killed but I’m sure it was terrifying nonetheless.
Our high school had a shooting during a football game last year. No one was killed and it turned out to be gang-related.
The thing is, places I’ve been and people I know have been affected by gun violence and it really bothers me.
I was watching the MSU shooting unfold on the news and in came my six-year-old for comic relief. She entered the room and asked, “Did someone die?” I answered “yes” and assumed a serious conversation would follow, but instead she blurted out, “I have to pray for Elon Musk!” WTF? First of all, since when does my daughter pray? And second, how the hell does a six-year-old know who Elon Musk is? Turns out she learned all of this from YouTube videos. Man, maybe I should pay attention to what she is watching. She grabs my phone and watches video after video after video.
So, that’s what’s on my mind this early Saturday morning. Is it on your mind, too?
I can see why you’re so focused on shootings because you have such a strong focus and persistence. Where I live, most shootings can be avoided by not wandering the streets at 2 am and not going into sketchy neighborhoods to buy drugs. A few years back there was a shooting at a local mall, but it was targeted (some incel was furious that the teenaged girl he fixated on didn’t want to date him).
As for the phone, there are so, so many studies coming out about how very bad they are for children’s development.
Where i live, shootings can be avoided by, er, continuing to live where I live and not visiting barbarian countries where normal people ask questions like “do you mentally rehearse for shootings?”
No six year old should be browsing YouTube unsupervised. I barely trust myself…
Much of my life was lived in an urban setting, where sometimes I would experience bullets flying in the predawn hours of the downtown streets I walked returning from work. The last incident the exterior of a nightclub was being sprayed by a drive-by; the patrons scattering for cover.
The LGBTQ+ community here in Texas, the land of handguns and family arsenals, has been doing first aid training focused on bleeding control because we’re very aware that any event or venue we frequent could be targeted.
Online course: https://www.stopthebleed.org/training/online-course/
Mass shooting in Australia:
Blimey, mass shooting in Oz. That’s the first one since June 2019. And there was one the year before that. And another four years before that.
So that’s four since Port Arthur in 1996, in a country the size of the contiguous states of the USA, but with a population bigger than Florida but smaller than Texas.
How many mass shootings in Texas since April 1996? More than in Australia.
How many mass shootings in Texas since April last year? Probably more than in Australia since 1996.
Funny, @ 6…you make a statement, it’s immediately disproven, and you fly off into “whataboutism”. So on brand for you.
And you’re wrong (what a surprise! /s) about mass shootings since 1996. With a population of 25 million vs 332 million, Wikipedia lists Australia as having a mass murder in 2000, several in 2009, one in 2011, several in 2014, one in 2017, several more in 2018, 2020, 2022. For a country where firearms were banned in 1996, anyone really wanting to commit mass murders.
No doubt there are shootings in the USA, and red states and rural areas have more per capita. But we’re not the only ones. Even your England has shooting murders despite needing to jump through hoops and be evaluated before getting one.
“For a country where firearms were banned in 1996”
You are mistaken.
Only modern military-type weapons are banned in Oz.
What they are is *regulated*.
Every gun owner needs a gun license, which is only ever issued for a genuine reason — and that explicitly does *not* include self-defense.
All guns have to be registered and their serial numbers recorded.
—
On-topic, I’ve lived here since 1972 and never, ever gave any consideration to being shot, never mind being in a mass shooting.
While I’ve never been in a mass shooting, I have been shot at, and I’ve had guns pointed at me before. The last time someone pointed a gun at me with a will to use it, I cooperated with their demands, thinking that was the best option under the circumstances. I learned that there are worse things than death that night, and have no intention of risking a repeat of those experiences.
Whenever I’m in public, there’s always a part of my mind watching and listening for potential threats. I note places to hide, potential cover, and improvised weapons. I don’t pay much attention to exits- I’m no sprinter, and I’m not exactly a small target. Hide or fight are most likely my best options.
A few years back, I was in a restaurant when there was a single gunshot, very close by. I grabbed a knife off the table and held it out of sight on instinct, and sat very still, trying to figure out where the shot had come from. People were up and moving around, one person asking “what was that, what was that?” over and over, in an increasingly demanding tone. I was thinking “bloody hell lady, this is America- you can’t tell me you’ve never heard a gunshot before, and I’m pretty sure I know what the shooter’s answer will be if you ask to speak to his manager.”
I felt my only hope, if someone had come to shoot the place up, was to be very still and hope the shooter intended to torment us before murdering us. My plan was to jump him when and if his attention was somewhere other than on me. It wasn’t a big restaurant, and I was sure the shot had come from very close, so I felt the odds of my pulling it off were… well, better than if I tried to run across the open floor to the exit, or tried to hide under the table, anyway.
Turned out some putz had had a pistol in his jacket pocket, which had fallen out and fired when he’d sat down. I was right about him being close; he was right on the other side of a partition between the ground floor where I was sitting, and the raised area he was sitting in. The floor of the raised area was about chest level with me, and that little partition wouldn’t have stopped a bullet. The wall opposite him certainly didn’t. Fortunately, no one in the kitchen was standing at the prep table at that precise moment.
I very much wanted to do the careless fool grievous bodily harm. Part of that was adrenaline, but I also had a sense that there should be some sort of consequences for his incredibly reckless behavior. The police didn’t agree. They didn’t give him a ticket, or arrest him. If he’d accidentally hit the wrong pedal in his car and driven it through the wall, he’d have gotten a ticket for that, but shooting a hole in the wall of a crowded restaurant? Nah, just a very mild talking to. They didn’t even confiscate his gun. The very least they could have done is make him holster it. I had a suggestion for where, but no one asked me.
So, in answer to your title question, yes, I live my life in fear of fools and terrorists with guns. Ain’t the USA great?
you make a statement, it’s immediately disproven, and you fly off into “whataboutism”. So on brand for you.
What did you disprove?
And you’re wrong (what a surprise! /s) about mass shootings since 1996[…] Wikipedia lists Australia as having a mass murder in 2000, several in 2009, one in 2011, several in 2014, one in 2017, several more in 2018, 2020, 2022.
In order:
2000: arson attack. NOT A MASS SHOOTING.
2009: arson attack. NOT A MASS SHOOTING. And a “blunt instrument attack”. Also my dictionary says “several” means “more than two”.
2011: arson attack. NOT A MASS SHOOTING.
2014: mass shooting… that I listed, so, yeah. And a stabbing. NOT A MASS SHOOTING, and also two again, not “several”.
2017: vehicular attack. NOT A MASS SHOOTING.
2018: mass shooting… that I listed, so, yeah. And a stabbing. NOT A MASS SHOOTING, and also two again, not “several”.
2019: mass shooting… that I listed, but you didn’t mention for some reason. No love for the four victims of the Darwin shooting?
2020: bloke set fire to a car. NOT A MASS SHOOTING.
2022: mass shooting… that I listed, so, yeah.
I’m unclear what you think you’re proving.
For a country where firearms were banned in 1996, anyone really wanting to commit mass murders.
This is not an English sentence. Please reformulate.
Even your England has shooting murders
I had assumed, since your “gotcha” to my statement that I avoid shootings by staying home was to point to one incident in Australia, that you thought I lived in Australia. Since you’re apparently perfectly well aware that live over nine thousand miles from there, I’m now struggling even more to understand what it is you think you’re “disproving”.
I did put the appropriate lines in
blockquotes like this
but it seems not to have worked. I’m sure you can work it out. Or am I?
One more:
>>>Even your England has shooting murders
Pop quiz: how many mass shootings in England in the 2020s? In the 2010s?
Oddly enough, the answer to both is the same: three, in each.
Pop quiz: how many mass shootings in England in the 2000s? In the 1990s?
Again, oddly enough the answer to both is the same: zero. Not a single one.
So: six mass shootings in this country since Michael Keaton first played Batman and New Kids on the Block were Hangin’ Tough.
Meanwhile, in the US, there were (according to Wikipedia) six mass shootings YESTERDAY, February 19th 2023.