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Living in America can often feel like déjà vu, Groundhog’s Day but with Bill Murray less playing the piano. Its citizens wake up as a nation is recovering from another mass shooting and feel as if they are still in a nightmare. No headline expresses that feeling of hopelessness better than this one from Onion: “‘There is no way to prevent this,’ Indicate the country where this frequently occurs.” To pull it up, again, after another mass shooting — like this week in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults — feels like part of the menstrual cycle. royal like anything.
Onion I know it. It has been publishing versions of the story since 2014, following an incident in Isla Vista, California, that left six people dead and many others injured. Every time there is another mass murder in America, the website posts it — 21 times since Isla Vista. They are almost exactly the same, only the details of the shooting are changed to reflect the new location and the number of people killed, but the rest – like the cycle of despair that follows each incident – remain the same. On Wednesday, when details of the Uvalde deaths emerged, Onion covers its homepage with individual stories and posts them all in one long Twitter thread.
OnionThis move shows not only the terrifying frequency of gun violence in the US, but also the cycle of disease response that follows them. Americans now know that each incident will be followed by more calls for gun control, political containment, and ultimately, little or no action. Then, sharing stories becomes what distraught people do to remind themselves that there are some agreements that shouldn’t be this way. Jason Roeder, who first wrote the title eight years ago, say so much Rolling Stone this week. “I worry it’s just another part of the mass shooting ceremony — think ‘n’ prayers, don’t politicize, #GunControlNow, etc,” he said. headlines as a concise indictment of a culture that is hypnotized by guns and signed by people who die for the crime either as 4th graders or standing in the frozen food aisle.”
Over the years, I’ve pretty much committed to the original Onion articles into memory. In each iteration, it begins with a sentence providing the location of the attack and the number of people killed or injured, and it ends with “citizens living in the only country where this type of mass murder This frequent occurrence was reported on Tuesday concluding that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place.” Reading it again this time, it’s all the more relevant — not because it shows the frequency of mass shootings and that there are actions, such as stricter gun laws, that can affect them — but also repeats a Alarming details emerged on Wednesday as headlines were circulating. According to reports, onlookers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde beg the police officers went into the school to stop the massacre, but they didn’t. Javier Cazares, who lost his fourth-grade daughter in the attack, told the Associated Press he suggested those gathered attack the school. “Just go in because the police don’t do anything like they’re supposed to,” he said. “Much could have been done.”
During Thursday’s press conference, law enforcement officials backbite on the question of whether parents are trying to get into school to save their children. The adequacy of the police response to the Uvalde shootings will be determined over time, but regardless, Cazares’ statement holds true on a large scale: More could be done. Most Americans want stricter gun laws, but perhaps not enough to get politicians to enact them. Can get more done before Tuesday’s shoot, can get more done in that time, can get more done now. OnionThe title of is still relevant because of all the blocking things America never did. And, as Roeder said Rolling Stone“If it helps people release sadness, anger, and hopelessness, then those 12 words aren’t so bad.”
