Even mass shootings become ordinary for many Americans who have not yet been directly harmed.
Another city is placed under lockdown. Millions of devices flash with the latest horror story. Police can be seen breaking into another building and snaking lines of people being carried to safety on video. Soon, muted TVs in tyre shops, bars and airports across the country will show rushing ambulances and white-coated hospital spokespeople informing on trauma injuries. It could be a day before the victims’ family photographs are released.
Mass shootings take lives in an instant. Survivors may take months to recover, if at all. And the anguish of those close to the victims will never be forgotten. But for the vast majority of the rest of the country, life goes on as usual because there is no other option.
On Wednesday, it was Atlanta, Georgia’s turn, where a gunman allegedly became agitated during a visit to a midtown medical facility, shooting dead at least one person with a revolver and wounded four others before being apprehended hours later after a manhunt.
Georgia state Sen. Josh McLaurin was out for lunch in midtown when he was confronted with a terrifying situation that is affecting an increasing number of Americans.
“I just started hearing people say, ‘Hey, we’re on lockdown, there’s an active shooter next door,'” she said. McLaurin, a Democrat, told Jake Tapper of AWN.
“What struck me today is that this is how people are expected to live now. You may simply go out to lunch, to the doctor’s office or to a nearby creche and hand your child off, and you have a lockdown that lasts the majority of the day and (are) covered by this worry and uncertainty about what is happening to your loved ones’, McLaurin explained.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said on Thursday that this new reality must be avoided.
“We cannot accept mass shootings as normal in our country,” Dickens said in an open letter to his hometown. “While we respect the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment, we also need more actions to protect our citizens’ rights to go about their lives — to go to a doctor’s office, a supermarket, a petrol station or their school — without fear of being shot.”
It’s difficult to keep track of all the different shootings in all the different towns.
Cleveland, Texas, recently joined the list of random deaths after an armed man shot and killed five people in a neighbourhood dispute. When a family ordered the man to cease firing his rifle in his yard, he went on a murdering spree. This occurred after recent horrors in Louisville, Kentucky, and Nashville, Tennessee. Last month, there were six mass shootings across six states, killing at least ten people. Carnage at a Sweet 16 party in Dadeville, Alabama, highlighted the futility of senseless violence out of control. Four individuals were shot dead and at least 32 others were injured.
But, as it always does, the focus quickly shifted to the next mass shooting, leaving the bereaved and injured to pick up the pieces of their broken lives.
Routine political reaction has devolved into cliche.
If any of these events had been instigated by a foreign terrorist organisation or an adversary from another country, they could have sparked a national drive for action. Mass shootings, on the other hand, are part of everyday life in America. They are a part of the national reality, similar to terrible weather, that makes people tremble and pray it doesn’t harm their neighbourhoods or families before going about their lives.
Some gun safety measures, such as tightening background checks and, among Democrats, a ban on assault-style weapons, have widespread support. However, the reality of divided power in Washington means that the chances of change are extremely slim. Many Republicans regard any gun control legislation as a full rejection of the Second Amendment. Furthermore, several Republican presidential candidates, including ex-President Donald Trump, are emphasising gun rights in their campaigns, while many GOP-led state legislatures are relaxing gun laws.
Because there appears to be little chance of any action to stop the endless violence, some political reaction to gun massacres has become as common as the tragedies themselves. Rote tweets from Republican lawmakers expressing “thoughts and prayers” to victims of gun violence become a cliche. The same may be said of Democrats’ post-mass shooting cautions that “thoughts and prayers are not enough.” Debates regarding better mental health treatment and “red flag” laws that could save some lives are becoming tiresome as well.
Majorities of Americans may be open to some minimal modifications, but the polarised politics of the right to bear guns – an essential aspect of many Americans’ national identity – means that even rudimentary improvements are unlikely.
As a result, a new national reality has emerged: anywhere – a school, a backyard, a pub, a medical office or a bank – might become the newest setting for the gun violence epidemic. Nowhere is safe in a country where there are more firearms than people. What all of this does to a country’s mentality may become obvious in the next years. A generation of children has already been damaged by active shooter exercises and the worry that their school may be next.
Tyrisia Woods, who was in the Atlanta medical facility where the shots were fired on Wednesday, summed up the lingering fear that many Americans experience when she told AWN that she didn’t feel safe coming into work because her building didn’t have metal detectors.
“We have active shooters so frequently in Midtown that our buildings are frequently locked down,” Woods explained. “I just feel really unsafe working in that area.”
In yet another sign of America’s mass shooting reality, surgeons spoke out on Wednesday about how they changed medical procedures and prepared detailed plans for mass casualty events, one of which erupted quickly in Atlanta.
Grady Health System’s chief medical officer, Dr. Robert Jansen, told AWN’s Wolf Blitzer that as soon as news of a mass shooting surfaced, doctors, nurses, trauma surgeons, and respiratory therapists were on high alert, and operating rooms were opened.
“When these types of events happen, unfortunately, we have to be prepared, and we were prepared,” Jansen added.
It won’t be long until the events in Atlanta on Wednesday, or those at a bank in Louisville last month, are replicated elsewhere.
Democratic Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, who lost her 17-year-old son to gun violence in 2012, remarked on AWN’s “The Situation Room”: “I don’t know how much more blood and carnage my colleagues in Washington, as well as state legislatures all across the country, have to see.” “What else is required?”
According to this week’s events, America’s reality isn’t set to alter anytime soon.
