Why Americans don't give a damn about mass shootings
One month ago, the worst mass shooting in US history took place at a country music concert in Las Vegas. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 500 people injured. Bill O'Reilly boiled the massacre down to six words: "This is the price of freedom."
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I hate to say it, but he is right. Sunday, just 34 days after Vegas, 26 people were gunned down and about 20 others were wounded during a church service in Texas. And here's what is really sick -- we won't be surprised when there's another mass shooting next month. Maybe it'll be your church, your mall, your concert or your movie theater. That's the price of freedom.
In America, we are free to stockpile weapons. We are free to order ammo online. We are free to outfit our guns with bump stocks, like the Vegas shooter did. This is the price we pay for freedom, alright. The freedom to not give a damn.
Tweeting "prayers for the victims" does not equal giving a damn. Feeling bad for a day or two does not equal giving a damn. Changing your Facebook profile photo to support the victims does not equal giving a damn.
Giving a damn requires us to commit to solving the problem. And the fact is, we have a serious problem in America with gun violence.
The statistics speak for themselves. A mass shooting is defined as an event where at least four people are shot. We now have one every day in America, if you adopt the broad definition used by the Gun Violence Archive. In fact, Vegas wasn't the only mass shooting on October 1, it was just the biggest. There was one outside the University of Kansas on the same day.
When we care, we solve problems. The military cares, that's why the Air Force court-martialed the Texas shooter for assaulting his wife and child. But we give no damns about gun violence, which is why a "very deranged individual" as President Donald Trump put it, was able to buy an AR-556 rifle. The Texas governor said the gunman applied for a license to carry a gun but was denied by the state. Gov. Greg Abbott asks a key question: "So how was it that he was able to get a gun? By all the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun. So how did this happen?"
Congress doesn't care either. It's up to us to stop this public health crisis and unfortunately, we haven't reached the tipping point like we have with cancer and opioids.
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Everyone knows someone who has been diagnosed with cancer. That's why we give a damn about solving the problem of cancer.
Virtually everyone knows someone who has died of an opioid overdose. That's why we care enough to declare it a public health crisis.
We are dangerously close to a moment in time when every one of us will know someone who has been shot in a mass shooting. And unfortunately, based on the research, that's what it's going to take for us to care. It has to become personal.
Why the apathy?
Until gun violence impacts your family directly, you won't care enough to do something about it. There's a ton of research to explain this apathy.
After World War II, the famous Cambridge psychologist J.T. MacCurdy studied an interesting phenomenon about the bombings in London in 1940 and 1941.
He found that people affected by the bombings fell into three categories: those who died, those who were a "near miss" (who closely witnessed the horror of the bombings but lived), and those who had a "remote miss" (people who may have heard the sirens, but were removed from the direct scene of the bombing).
Here's what's interesting. MacCurdy found the people who witnessed a "near miss" were deeply affected by the bombing -- while the "remote miss" group felt invincible and even excited.
They were far enough away from the event and had survived, leading them to feel invulnerable and no longer scared.
Until you've experienced a "near miss," it's easy for your mind to compartmentalize mass shootings that you hear about -- thinking they will never affect you.
Read full article on CNN.com