There was another mass shooting yesterday. Or, depending on which methodology you use to define “mass shooting,” there were two mass shootings yesterday. I am, of course, talking about the shooting in San Bernardino. You know, the one where 14 people died.
It happened while I was working, and I saw the news as it was breaking online, down to the minute. I saw it before anyone else in my office, and I just sat there. I said nothing, and I let others find out in their own time. We’re not a news website. We don’t have investigative journalists and reporters at our disposal. We’ll touch on trending stuff that is news-ish, but covering a mass shooting with over a dozen dead people isn’t our thing; we just don’t do that. There was no rush for me, the person overseeing content for all of our websites, to get someone writing about it.
And I’m not covering it now. If you want the gory details of the massacre, head over to CNN, Fox or whichever cable news network you favor. They’ll show you a bodycount, argue over the definition of “mass shooting,” and then they’ll debate the merits of our existing gun laws, gun reform, the Second Amendment, etc. They’ll capitalize and take the ratings.
That’s not what I’m here for. I’m just here minding my own business, offering up a little perspective.
So, there I was yesterday, sitting at my desk, typing on my computer, fully aware that dozens of people had been shot somewhere in San Bernardino. I never once wondered if the shooter(s) was/were Muslim. I never stopped to wonder if the attack was part of a larger political statement. It was just another mass shooting, and we don’t cover mass shootings, so I kept my head down, did some editing and scrolled through a stock image gallery, looking for the perfect picture to finish an article someone else had written.
After about 15 minutes somebody else finally learned about the shooting. The guy works with our marketing team, and he only found out because one of our clients wanted us to suspend some online advertisements we are managing for them—due to the shooting. He went to the individual managing those ads and asked her to pause them. She did, just like she had done before.
When the words “mass shooting” were uttered, the funniest/happiest guy in our office asked, “Another one?” “Yeah, another one,” I explain, “in California”.
The marketing team talked about the value of pausing our client’s ads, whether or not we’ll do it for every shooting and then wondered when we’d actually be able to let those ads run for a little while, uninterrupted. The discussion then wasn’t about the particulars of the shooting. No, it was about how it was affecting our jobs and how we’d work around it; it was a very short conversation.
I went back to my writing and image sourcing, and the conversation quickly transitioned to another topic. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. No one crowded around a TV to watch as details emerged. None of us were watching Twitter, waiting for more information. We weren’t horrified, no one was crying, and it didn’t disrupt our day too much. This is the new normal.
Now, I ask you, what does that say about our society when 14 people die and we don’t even stop to be fazed? We’ve reached a point where we hear the words “mass shooting” and ask only, “another one?”
There is a subreddit called GunsAreCool, and there users track the number of mass shootings in any given year via www.shootingtracker.com. In 2013, we averaged one mass shooting per day in the United States, and we’re on pace to break that in 2015. We’re currently sitting at 355 mass shootings this year alone, or an average of 1.05 mass shootings per day. We are on pace to reach 384 by New Year’s Day…
“Yeah, another one.”
Don’t judge me or my co-workers. We don’t lack empathy and we aren’t heartless; we’re just used to this, and that’s the most damning thing about this situation.
Our hearts and thoughts are with the victims and their families as they grieve and search for a way to return things to normal.
