A bunch of charts and graphs in the Globe and Mail today attempts to illustrate gun violence in the United States, on the grounds that words no longer suffice. It's well-worth perusing.
Tuesday's shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and 2 teachers lost their lives, only features at No. 9 in the lust of deadliest US mass shootings since 1982. It was only the 3rd deadliest school shooting, paling into relative insignificance compared to 2007's Virginia Tech shootings and 2012's Sandy Hook massacre.
The top 5 deadliest mass shootings were Las Vegas Strip, Nevada (2017, 60 deaths), Orlando Nightclub, Florida (2016, 49), Virginia Tech, Virginia (2007, 32), Sandy Hook elementary School, Connecticut (2012, 27) and Texas First Baptist Church, Texas (2017, 26).
Wait, 60 people were shot in Las Vegas as recently as 2017? Why don't I remember that? (I checked and my wife doesn't either.) I have no real memory of the event at all. Now, I know my memory is not what it was, and I know I live in relatively civilized Canada, but US news is a big part of Canadian news and I do tend to follow current affairs. So, why don't I remember this? Maybe I was away somewhere? (Nope, I just checked, and on 1 October 2017 we were doing a ravine clear-up right here in Toronto.) I remember Orlando. I remember Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech vaguely. Texas First Baptist not so much. But Las Vegas Strip? Nothing.
I guess there have been just so many mass shootings in the USA that we become innured, desensitized, blasé, especially as American shootings seem somehow so distant (they're not), so exotic (definitely not). One just fades into another. We have shootings here in Canada too, more and more it seems, but not in the same kind of league as the US. Depending on which definition you favour, there have been either 1, 3, 7, 230 or 268 mass shootings in America in the first 5 months of 2022 alone. Regardless of definitions, though, mass shootings have been on a steady upward trend.
The fact that I have no memory of the shooting of 60 people just 5 years ago is shocking, shameful and depressing. For what it's worth, here is a news report on the Las Vegas Strip shooting of 1 October 2017. It occurred during an open-air country music festival right on Sin City's main Strip, and the shooter, 64-year old Stephen Paddock, sprayed the crowds with bullets from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel for no apparent reason, killing 60 and injuring 411 (the ensuing panic brought the number of injured up to 867). Even today, his motive, as Wikipedia notes, is "officially undetermined" - Islamic State's attempts to take "credit" for the shooting have been dismissed as opportunistic claptrap - and Paddock killed himself before police could apprehend him.
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