Tuesday 14 June 2016

Normal For America

There have been far too many people killed by terrorist attacks recently and after each one flags have been flown at half mast, buildings have been lit up in the colours of the national flags of the affected nation and minute silences have been held but strangely, none of this has happened after the 50 clubbers shot dead in Orlando.
I asked the building manager at work why not and the answer was 'It probably wasn't a terrorist attack' and that 'Americans are always shooting each other'.
While a debate is on whether it was terrorism or a hate crime against homosexuals, news reaches us that a heavily armed man, a disgruntled employee apparently, has taken hostages at a Texan supermarket.
Such is the staggering amount of deaths from guns in America each year that this appears to be viewed as mass shootings being one of those things that just happen in America and not viewed on the same lines as the attacks in Paris, Belgium, Egypt or Turkey.
Probably because it happened at the same time as the Queens 90th birthday celebrations and the problems with the Russian and England fans at the EURO's, it was often relegated to second or even third story on the news bulletins.
In America last year there were more mass shootings than days with a resulting 13,000 gun deaths so someone running wild with a weapon in America is hardly news anymore although the death toll of this attack sets an unpleasant high water mark.      
After the shocking killings at Sandy Hook where 20 children aged between 6 and 7 years old were shot dead and the resulting lack of movement towards any sort of gun control even after such an atrocity, people dying in large numbers by men armed with powerful weapons in America just gets lost in the awful message that be it 20 dead children or 50 dead clubbers, Americans seem to consider it a price worth paying and so when things like this happen, it is considered elsewhere as normal for America and that should be abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans but we all know that even this won't change anything.

6 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

Didn't know his religion, wasn't mentioned.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

I did look out my window just to confirm it but it appears I'm not in Texas.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

I assume the media briefly thought it was part 2 of what happened in Orlando. Whenever there is a mass gun killing in USA the media here mention any other gun related incident there for the next few days as part of the, 'look at this gun madness' head shaking and tutting.