There was Another School Shooting and We Barely Even Noticed
Gun violence is not an inevitable quirk in American society. We are choosing to live like this. Or, more accurately, choosing to die like this.
On the morning of October 6th Texas high school student, Tervil Oigo, frantically texted his mother Stella, “Mom there’s a shooting. Mom. Help.” It’s a heart-stopping message that no parent should ever receive from their child in school but happens all too frequently in the United States. During a fight with another student, eighteen-year-old, Timothy George Simpkins, opened fire at Timberview High School in Arlington, Texas. Four people were injured in the shooting: a pregnant woman, a twenty-five-year-old man, a teenage girl, and a fifteen-year-old boy who is listed as being in “critical condition.”
In any other part of the world, this would be the top news story. Here, it’s just another Wednesday. In fact, as I was researching this story I had to clarify which Texas school shooting I was referring to that week. School shootings are a horrifyingly common American experience. We are barely two months into the new school year and there have already been numerous school shootings. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, “Between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, there have been at least 30 instances of gunfire on school grounds, killing five and wounding twenty-three people…That is the most instances and most people shot during the back-to-school period since Everytown for Gun Safety started tracking gunfire on school grounds in 2013.”
If this trend continues, we could be embarking on the deadliest school year in American history. All of which begs the question, where is the outrage? Frankly, there isn’t any because Americans have been conditioned to believe that school shootings are normal and predictable. Dale Topham, a teacher at Timberview High School, even remarked at how quickly the students reacted to the shooting, “[Topham] described how students immediately turned the lights off and comforted each other as they hid. ‘The students handled it pretty well themselves. They hid. They huddled together.’”
When describing these events, Topham probably believed that he was offering some comfort to concerned parents. In other words, “Don’t worry. Your children were prepared for this eventuality. They knew what to do.” I would argue, however, that children should not have to be trained for an “inevitable” school shooting.
That is not to say I don’t recognize Topham’s point of view. My parents have been teachers for over forty years and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve received texts from them saying that their school was in lockdown because of a nearby shooting. When I was a university student, I was supposed to participate in a debate on gun control legislation. Two days before the debate was set to occur, twenty first-graders and six school employees were massacred less than twenty miles from my university at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Throughout my career, I’ve written several articles about mass shootings and never published one. Why? Because the news cycle had already moved on.
There is a predictable routine associated with American mass shootings that I described in an article last year: “Whenever there is a mass shooting, Republicans know the drill. Ignore the outcry for legislative action, dodge any personal responsibility, collect their ‘donations’ from the NRA, and offer up some paltry ‘thoughts and prayers.’ The public, again, realizes that elected officials will take no meaningful action against gun violence and we move on. It’s a pattern that is so seeped into the American consciousness we hardly even notice it.” It’s worth noting, the shooting at Timberview High School was viewed as so inconsequential that we didn’t even bother going through the motions of this meaningless routine.
I understand why Americans react to shootings with little more than shrugged indifference. Gun violence is normalized in the United States because it is so common. On average, 100,000 Americans are shot each year, and 36,000 die as a result of gunshot-sustained injuries. Many of these victims are children: “Each day eight children die from gun violence in America. Another thirty-two are shot and injured. Guns are the leading cause of death among American children and teens.”
The amount of gun violence that occurs in the United States is simply unacceptable. Our perspective towards it must change. Gun violence is not an inevitable quirk in American society. We are choosing to live like this. Or, more accurately, choosing to die like this. Over the summer, Texas enacted some of the most lackadaisical gun legislation in the country. Several other states including Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Tennessee, passed similarly reckless gun laws. By electing politicians who happily accept checks from the NRA and adamantly oppose gun control, we chose to live in a country in which any of us could be gunned down at any moment. While I can’t speak for anyone else, that certainly isn’t the type of country in which I want to live.
