Six-twenty on a Sunday evening. Remember back when the Dayton shooting happened earlier this morning? People were shocked that a 24 year old white guy shot forty people in under a minute. Ten of them died, including his sister. That kind of thing happens in America.
We don’t pay close attention to the overwhelming gun violence epidemic. Over in Dowagiac, Michigan, another guy shot his wife and then killed himself. That kind of thing happens in America.
Around the same time, a teenager in Winston-Salem was shot near where 16th Street crosses Route 52. Gilmore’s Funeral Home is about a block away, but he’s still alive. Police are silent about why he was shot, but he was a teenage boy on a Saturday night. That kind of thing happens in America.
Another 16-year-old wasn’t as lucky. The Detroit Police say that he was playing with a gun and fatally shot himself. Kids killing themselves while playing with a gun is an often-told story. That kind of thing happens in America.
The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. also announced a shooting last night. They warned people to watch out for a six foot tall black man wearing a gray shirt, which sounds like a dysfunctional version of the Where’s Waldo game. This man shot another in the leg. They didn’t say why, but that kind of thing happens in America.
In Modesto, California, a man was involved in a car crash and also had a gunshot wound. Police have no idea what happened or in what order. They only know that a woman called, said she was involved in the crash, but knew nothing about a gun. Nothing, she insists, as she continues to be interviewed by detectives. That kind of thing happens in America.
A different car crash, this one in Revere, Massachusetts, also happened last night. The police were chasing a man driving a black SUV. He hit a curb and a hedge in a residential area and was shot by police. ABC5 says that there have been four confirmed shootings in Revere in just over one month. This was the second fatal one so it’s clear that this kind of thing happens in America.
About one hundred miles west of there, on the other side of Massachusetts, a man was shot and killed in downtown Holyoke around midnight. The only thing police are telling people is that he’s dead. They’re not even telling people if he’s young or old so his is a report that no one will empathize with unless they’ve also been in a town somewhere around midnight. That kind of thing happens in America.
Still more from there, but around Boston, where police say a man walked into their station on Washington Street in Roxbury. It’s that ugly tan and glass building near the little spit of grass. It’s right where Malcolm X crosses Washington. Anyway, the police got him an ambulance because he had been shot. That kind of thing happens in America.
Another man got his own ride to the hospital after being shot. Someone took him in a private car to Yale University’s hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. We don’t know how old he is or what has happened there either. We only know that this kind of thing happens in America.
Down in Philadelphia around the same time, two men, 24 and 19 years old, were shot. The younger man was brought to Temple University Hospital by his friends with a gunshot wound to his torso. He’s in critical condition. The other way to say critical condition is “likely to die”. No one knows yet what happened, but we all know that this kind of thing happens in America.
The Philly police do know that a 31 year old man went upstairs to get an assault rifle last night and fired it into his father’s head. His mom was there at the time. The man has schizophrenia according to the police but had easy access to a gun. He left after shooting his father still hasn’t been caught. That kind of thing happens in America.
Down south, there were more shootings. One was at The West End Watering Hole in Mobile, Alabama. Two men were shot there by a 23 year old man. Police found them in the parking lot around 2:45 this morning. That’s also when the shooter turned himself in. But it was Saturday night closing time at a bar. That kind of thing happens in America.
I haven’t bothered to tell you about the people who decided to shoot themselves. There are an average of 59 people who die every day from shooting themselves. That’s one every 24 minutes. You could watch binge watch three episodes of The Office, and three more people will have shot and killed themselves while you enjoyed the show. You can kill yourself lots of ways, but ask an emergency room doctor which method succeeds most often. Guns, they’ll tell you. That kind of thing happens in America.
Many of the suicides won’t be shown for what they are. A stigma still exists around them. My family’s own genealogy has a record of a 19 year old dying in a hunting accident. But it was not a hunting accident even if that’s what the record written by a kindly medical examiner or police officer shows. That kind of thing happens in America.
America also doesn’t talk about the number of people shot by children as young as two years old or the number of children shot. There have been 395 children shot in 2019, including a one month old girl who was shot in the head yesterday in Shreveport, Louisiana. That kind of thing happens in America often because we know that a little three year old boy was shot to death in Colonial Heights, Virginia just the day before. And 393 other little ones have been shot in the last seven months according to the Gun Violence Archive. That’s too many children.
We don’t talk about that often in America because we prefer civility and turning away from the horror. The police and media aren’t writing about the Shreveport infant girl or Virginia toddler. Let the parents grieve in peace, let the memory fade to a constant dull ache instead of the searing white hot agony their families endure. That kind of thing happens in America.
7:20 now. There are more stories to read. They never stop in America.
Note: I am indebted to the Gun Violence Archive for its continuing mission to present the facts around gun violence. Please visit them and support their work.
