The Answer, Ashbey, Is Yes

 

 

“Aren’t you guys tired of this?” Those were the words of Ashbey Beasley to reporters following the shooting that left six people dead, including three children, at a private religious school in Nashville. An Illinois resident, Beasley and her son, both mass shooting survivors themselves, were on vacation in Nashville to visit family when the shooting occurred not far away.

The media are indeed tired of covering these, and we consumers of news are equally tired of seeing the same pattern of coverage after each incident.  Unfortunately, though, the media are participants in this drama. It could be argued that they have paved a road to attention for the shooters, who know that attacking a school will provide maximum exposure for them and whatever cause motivates them. Many outlets, at least, are starting to avoid mentioning shooters’ names for that very reason, and that’s a bit of good news.

The bad news is, we have all been conditioned now to expect continuous coverage of these tragedies. Sometimes, the facts only dribble out, and in between dribbles, the anchors and experts fill the time with speculative babble. Gone are the days of a quick bulletin followed by, “We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.” I remember that when the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana hit the news on a Saturday night in 1978, CBS broke into a movie to report what information it had, then sent us back to the movie, which was, as I recall, “The Demon Seed,” in which a computer wanted to have sex with  Julie Christie. That kind of come-and-go coverage couldn’t pass muster today, but I don’t know what the alternative is now.

That said, the wall-to-walls on mass shootings are the 2x4s repeatedly hitting us over the head to remind us of our gun problem here in America. I was thinking, if we didn’t have these things, would we be paying any attention at all to the gun violence, or gun accidents, occurring around us daily?

We all know that when an individual shows up at a school site with an assault weapon, it’s already too late. We think, and we pray, and we talk about all this, but nothing  much happens.

President Biden has issued executive orders aimed at implementing reasonable gun measures, including a ban on assault weapons, but concedes that his authority is limited and that not much can be done without Congressional action. So how many more times do we have to see THAT movie?