Ashamed

Its been less than 24 hours since the school shooting in Nashville. There aren’t enough facts to make definitive and informed statements. We don’t know what was in the mind of the shooter yet. We don’t know very much about the victims. We see snippets of information, some family photographs. More will be known by the end of this day, still more by the end of the week. I have no profound insights to add. My thoughts on the subject at present are driven by emotion. I would rather wait until more is known before commenting, when the blood isn’t running so hot.

But there’s this…

Pay particular attention to the fine print at the bottom of this ghastly map. This is the United States of America in the first 86 days of this year. I would think that this map would be an abomination if it was for the last five years. But this is us…in less than three months.

Maybe the only other place on the planet that can compete with us at the moment would be Ukraine. This is what American Exceptionalism has come to mean for many people around the world. We’re the place where mentally disturbed people armed to the teeth with powerful weapons walk into schools and start killing kids. This is our unique story. There isn’t another civilized nation on Earth with numbers like this…

This chart includes only shootings where at least 6 are killed and covers the twenty years between 1999 and 2019.

Whenever something like this happens I hear people say, “There are no words…” Although, I understand what they are trying to say, I disagree with the sentiment. Actually, there are lots of words. Words like, ashamed, furious, sad, horrified, failure.

But right now? Mostly…ashamed.