It happens nearly every day.
The horrifying events in Las Vegas on Sunday night mark the 273rd mass shooting in the U.S. in the 275 days that have passed so far in 2017, according to Gun Violence Archive. [...]Including [this] massacre, the four deadliest U.S. mass shootings have occurred over the past 10 years. [...]
There have been more than 11,600 deaths linked to gun violence so far in 2017, which is roughly equivalent to nearly four 9/11 attacks in terms of the total number killed on September 11, 2001.
We do not hear about many of the others because they are not spectacular enough. That is also a simple fact of life now: Mass shootings in which a murderer succeeds in killing or murdering only a half-dozen work colleagues, strangers, enemies or family members, a now near-daily event, seldom even show up on our national radar. This mass shooting will become infamous, and it will be because the gunman was able to kill so many. Future gun conversations will include the phrase the Mandalay Bay shooting, and everyone will immediately know what they mean. It will usurp some more-distant murder spree; we will remember the new one and forget the old one.
I was a teen when a mentally ill gunman opened fire in a San Ysidro McDonald's for no other reason than his desire to do so. A friend was working her part-time job that day. She hid in the back as the he systemically killed 21 people and injured nearly the same number. The news played the video of her fleeing the building after a police sniper killed the gunman.
The building was never reopened. It was cleaned, and refurbished, and then razed; a small memorial was eventually built. Its prime impact on the national debate was, as often happens after a new escalation of gun violence results in dramatic videotape and another memorial on another nondescript street, a conversation on whether our police departments were truly equipped to handle an event that had previously been considered unthinkable. Whether they were outgunned. Whether they should be better trained in the military tactics of street battles. But the memorial was built, eventually.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2xWZ4oE
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