At this point, I really don’t have much to say or add about the mass shooting in Uvalde, and all I can do is look at everyone’s posts in social media and nod, or sit there considering whether I like, hug react, cry react, or anger react. I’ll read passionate articles in the newspaper apps on my phone that seem so similar to the ones that I have read hundreds of times since Sandy Hook – or was that Columbine? I can’t remember. I will groan with frustration as I try to comprehend the enormity once again. But there really isn’t anything to say.
Twenty-one people dead, including 19 children: what is there to say that isn’t just some useless truism or empty gesture?
The fact is that we have been here before, and we know how this is going to end, before it happens all over again. Mass shootings in America are like episodes of a tired, demented sitcom that jumped the shark two seasons ago, but somehow, we still watch. Potsy and Ralph will get into a pickle, Fonzie will save the day and say “aaayyyy,” and Richie will acknowledge the value of friends and family. The writing is dull and tapped-out, but we’ll be there next Thursday, with our TV Dinners on our TV tables, and we’ll tune-in for the reunions and “making-of” specials as well.
We know that nothing will change. Celebrities and political leaders will offer “thoughts and prayers” because, really, what else can they say without committing to any useful policy or solution; the president will introduce legislation that will ban the sale of copper-colored bullet casings stamped with anything containing the letters q, u, and w, and large-capacity magazines in mauve and taupe; a member of the House of Representatives will introduce more meaningful gun control legislation, knowing full well that, even if it miraculously passes the House, it will die in the Senate, and even if it passes the Senate, the Supreme Court will strike it down on the first challenge.
I know that this is all sounds cynical and hopeless, and it is. I am a cynic enough to recognize that there is no hope. Not only mouthbreathing redhats, but even Americans who regard themselves as progressively-minded liberals, blanche at the very prospect of gun control. “We need to address the social and cultural factors that contribute to mass violence,” they say, as if we can do that or restrict access to the weapons that the mass murderers use, but not both. “This is a manifestation of a mental health epidemic,” they say, ignoring the fact that most mentally-ill people do not commit acts of mass violence and, although mental illness is a global fact, mass murder on this scale and at this frequency is uniquely American.
What is different about America?
Well, that’s the other thing: America is special, so very, very special. Despite the fact that virtually every other wealthy, technologically sophisticated, liberal democracy in the world has enacted gun control legislation that prohibits certain kinds of firearms, requires permits and licenses for all firearms, and maintains gun registries and background checks – and typically experiences very few mass shootings – America is different! “We would never be able be able to enact gun control like that here! America is exceptional!”
Yes. America is exceptional. It has a manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the mass execution of children, women, people of color, and members of minoritized communities. It is just a law of nature, like how water boils at 212°F, how a body at rest remains at rest, and how an object in free fall will accelerate at 32 feet-per-second-squared. This country is so special, and Americans are so unique, that no solution that has ever worked anywhere else in the world could possibly ever work here; for, if it did, that would be evidence that America is not special at all.
So that’s it; I have nothing else to say. Yesterday’s dead will be buried, mourned by their friends and families for decades, and soon forgotten by the leaders and celebrities who offered their ephemeral thoughts and impotent prayers – and by the rest of us who, numbed by the endless carnage, will repress our horror until it is reactivated by another massacre next week or next month. The proposed legislation will expire on the order paper like a highschooler lying in a pool of her own blood on the gymnasium floor; there is no point in pushing too hard for a bill that can never pass and which, after all, will only alienate voters. Life will go on. And so will death.
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Image: CCTV footage of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland FL, 2018.