By the time Americans went to bed last night, they were tired.. the massacre that took place in El Paso was too much to handle for some, especially given the fact that a 4-month-old was reportedly among victims of the shooting at Walmart near the Cielo Vista mall..
So that’s why 13 hours after the world learned that Patrick Crusius was suspected to have killed 20 and injured 26, a brand new blood bath in Ohio has further shocked a shocked nation.
At 1am Sunday morning, a gunman walked into a club in Dayton. Police say he was wearing body armor and had a long gun — 9 were killed in the bar and 16 were injured.
Witnesses to the Ohio massacre talked to CNN. One woman told the CNN reporter that she was out for a girls’ night and complimented another bar-goers’ dress. Moments later the same woman the witness talked to was laying on the floor of the bar in a pool of blood, dead.
This has been a hard weekend to be awake — I myself went to bed around 8pm last night in a form of mental exhaustion and sadness.. The thought that the Walmart in Cielo Vista is still a crime scene with bodies laying in the same positions they were in when they were shot is devastating..
There are so many grieving witnesses on newscasts right now.. so many witnesses demanding to know where family members are.
We are told that the El Paso killer started his murder spree with younger children outside of Walmart collecting money for a fundraiser.
The Ohio shooting left the shooter dead.
The El Paso shooting left a shooter captured. The El Paso suspect also is suspected of writing a long manifesto about how there was an immigration invasion..
AMERICAN BLOODBATH
In just 24 hours, dozens are dead and injured in separate mass shootings in the United States. Various other nations’ news services are reporting America to be a violent and soulless nation.. they are viewing the free 50 states as breeding grounds for gun murder.. The Pope offered prayers at Sunday mass for the United States.
The suspect in El Paso is 21-years-old and seemingly lived in an affluent neighborhood with either parents or grandparents–unknown at this time–in a highly priced beautiful home in Texas. A 21-year-old has an entire life ahead and that age, especially, should be filled with joy and love.. not hate and mental pestilence.
21-year-olds were surely at the Dayton bar where the second shooting of the day took place..
All of this is horrible and terrible.
There were ‘thoughts and prayers’ posts and ‘Support El Paso’ Facebook profile photos being uploaded all the while another shooting was occurring on the eastern side of America..
WHAT IS A MASS SHOOTING
There is no broad or official definition of a mass shooting–which leads to a difficult time counting the number that have taken place over the years. However, one definition that seems to attract the most agreement is one in which a shooter kills at least 4, and it is not someone who defines himself or herself with gang violence, domestic violence, of organized terrorism from a nation state. With that guidance, the Gun Violence Archive that is quoted by media, stated that 2,128 mass shootings have taken place from 2013 through 2017, roughly 1 per day.
The LA TIMES has provided a run down of the recent mass shootings in America since 2015:
May 31, 2019: Virginia Beach, Va., 12 deadDeWayne Craddock, 40, a civil engineer for the Public Utilities Department in Virginia Beach, opened fire inside a municipal building adjacent to City Hall, killing 12 people before being fatally shot by police. Eleven of those killed were municipal employees who had collectively served the city for more than 150 years; the 12th was a contractor seeking a permit. Six others were also wounded in the shooting.
Feb. 15, 2019: Aurora, Ill., 5 deadGary Martin, a 45-year-old factory worker in Aurora, Ill. killed five co-workers at the Henry Pratt Co. manufacturing plant in suburban Chicago during a meeting in which he was fired. One other co-worker was also wounded, as were the first five police officers to arrive at the scene. Martin was able to acquire the .40-caliber handgun he used because a background check didn’t turn up a prior felony conviction for aggravated battery in Mississippi. After a 90-minute manhunt inside the 29,000-sq. ft. plant, he was killed in a shootout with police.
Nov. 7, 2018: Thousand Oaks, 12 dead
A former U.S. Marine burst into the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks on a night when it was jammed with dancing college students, tossed a smoke bomb into the space and proceeded to open fire with a .45-caliber handgun. Twelve died in the attack and 18 were injured, including a Ventura County Sheriff’s deputy. The gunman, Ian David Long, 28, killed himself at the scene.
Oct. 27, 2018: Pittsburgh, 11 dead
Robert Bowers, 46, a Pittsburgh truck driver with a history of posting anti-Semitic material on social media, entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in the city’s quiet Squirrel Hill neighborhood and killed 11 people and wounded six others. He was armed with an assault rifle and three handguns and wounded a total of four officers before being shot and taken into custody. According to the Anti-Defamation League, it was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
June 28, 2018: Annapolis, Md., 5 dead
For years, Jarrod W. Ramos, 38 had obsessively harassed journalists at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., for publishing a story that outlined the ways in which he had criminally harassed a woman who had rejected his advances. On June 28 , 2018, he burst into the paper’s offices with a 12-gauge shotgun and killed five staffers. Police arrested Ramos at the scene. The paper’s staff nonetheless put out a paper: the next day. On the front page: “5 shot dead at The Capital.”
May 18, 2018: Santa Fe, Texas, 10 deadThey had just picked up their caps and gowns and were days away from graduation, but some of the victims wouldn’t live to claim their diplomas. At 7:30 a.m. on a Friday, a 17-year-old junior named Dimitrios Pagourtzis entered Santa Fe High School, in the suburbs of Houston, and proceeded to kill 10 people and injure 13 more with a shotgun and a .38 caliber revolver he’d taken from his father. Pagourtzis ultimately surrendered and was arrested.
Feb. 14, 2018: Parkland, Fla., 17 dead
Nikolas Cruz, 19, had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. for disciplinary reasons. He returned to the campus armed with a semiautomatic rifle and killed 17 students and staff members — seven of whom were only 14. In the process, he wounded at least a dozen others, some seriously. Cruz was ultimately arrested without incident. The attack surpassed the 1999 Columbine High School shooting as the deadliest shooting at a high school in U.S. history.
Nov. 5, 2017: Sutherland Springs, Texas, 26 deadWorshipers had just filed in for Sunday services at First Baptist Church in this rural San Antonio suburb when Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, an Air Force veteranwith a history of domestic violence, pulled up wearing a bullet-resistant vest and carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle. He killed 26 people ranging from 5 to 72. After being shot in the leg by a bystander, Kelley fled the scene, turned a gun on himself and died. Later reports showed that the Air Force had failed to report Kelley’s court martial for domestic violence to an FBI database, thereby allowing him to pass a background check and buy guns.
Oct. 1, 2017: Las Vegas, 58 dead
In a meticulously plotted attack, Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on spectators at the Route 91 Harvest music festival from his suite on the 32nd story of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. He killed 58 people and wounded more than 500. Investigators later found a cache of 23 weapons in his hotel room, including 14 firearms that had been illegally modified with bump stocks, which allow a shooter to fire more rounds at a rapid pace. Paddock, a real estate investor who had once worked for the IRS, was found dead after a SWAT team burst into his hotel room.
June 5, 2017: Orlando, Fla., 5 deadAfter being fired from his job at a Florida awning factory, John Robert Nuemann Jr., 45, a U.S. Army Veteran, returned to the cavernous Orlando manufacturing site with a semi-automatic pistol and killed five people. He then killed himself at the sound of an approaching siren.
Jan. 6, 2017: Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.,5 dead
Esteban Santiago, 26, a U.S. Army veteran based in Anchorage, who had complained that the government was controlling his mind, drew a gun from his checked baggage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and proceeded to kill five people and wound eight. He was taken into custody after tossing aside his empty weapon.
Sept. 23, 2016: Burlington, Wash., 5 deadThe plan had been to ambush moviegoers who had gathered at the Cascade Mall theater in Burlington to watch “The Magnificent Seven.” But Arcan Cetin, a 20-year-old fast-food worker, had to abandon that idea when the theater door he had propped open was discovered by someone and closed shut. Instead, he used the semiautomatic Ruger .22 rifle that he had stolen from his stepfather’s closet to shoot five people at close range inside a Macy’s department store. Cetin was found dead in his jail cell in April of the following year — an apparent suicide.
June 12, 2016: Orlando, Fla., 49 dead
It was Latin night at Pulse, a gay dance spot in Orlando, when Omar Mateen, 29, entered the nightclub with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and launched an attack that left 49 people dead and 58 injured. At one point, Mateen took 30 clubgoers as hostages. Just after 5 a.m., a local SWAT team moved in and opened a hole in a wall with an armored vehicle; less than an hour later, Mateen was dead. Among the motives attributed to Mateen were racism and homophobia.
Dec. 2, 2015: San Bernardino, 14 deadBefore it was a massacre, it was a holiday potluck for county workers. Government health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, had attended the event at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino with his co-workers. He then left the party and returned with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29 — bearing combat rifles and handguns. Together, they killed 14 people and wounded 22 others. Farook and Malik later died in a gun battle with police, who uncovered an arsenal of ammunition, pipe bombs and other weapons in their Redlands townhouse.
Oct. 1, 2015: Roseburg, Ore., 9 deadChristopher Sean Harper-Mercer, 26, entered his Writing 115 class at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. — only the second time the class had met — and began firing. He killed nine people and injured another nine, before killing himself during a gunfight with sheriff’s deputies. Law enforcement sources later described him as a “hate-filled” individual with anti-religious and white supremacist leanings. At the time of the shootings, he was armed with six legally purchased handguns and a flak jacket.
July 16, 2015: Chattanooga, Tenn., 5 deadArmed with an assault rifle, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, opened fire on two military centers more than seven miles apart in Chattanooga, resulting in the deaths of four U.S. Marines and a Navy petty officer. He was finally killed by police.
And when you consider incidents itself, America turns even redder in a pool of blood:
HISTORY
America’s violence has not been contained to only the previous few years — we know this. Even in 1968, TIME magazine pointed a loaded gun at readers with a poignant cover story:
TIME magazine in 1989:
TIME magazine in 1993:
TIME magazine in August 1993:
And again in August 1993:
TIME magazine in 2011:
TIME magazine in 2012:
X X X X
Back on the TIME 1968 cover story of guns in America, consider this: America just watched presidential candidate Robert Kennedy get gunned down in front of them in California.. TIME reported this,
Though states and localities have a bewildering crazy quilt of 20,000 weapon laws, only two are on the federal books. One is the National Firearms Act of 1934, taxing interstate shipments of such gangster-style weapons as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. The other is the pallid Federal Firearms Act of 1938, prohibiting interstate gun shipments to felons. In 30 years, Congress has failed to enact a single new gun bill, thus allowing, as the President declared, “the demented, the deranged, the hardened criminal and the convict, the addict and the alcoholic” to order weapons by mail with no questions asked.
Gun control was seemingly agreed upon by the nation.. at that time. Another event that propelled gun violence to the forefront back in 68 was the Texas Clock Tower shooting on August 1, 1966. Though shootings took place prior, this was this event was the first modern media-fueled mass shooting in the United States. Joseph Whitman killed 17 people from the top of the University of Texas clock tower in Austin before police finally reached the top and killed him.
Back to the future — now with the 250th mass shooting taking place in America, people feel bewildered and confused.. The gun debate? Really, nothing has changed amidst the carnage. People who support guns still do, people who want gun control still do. Politics may change, as Democratic candidates proclaim that America is under attack.. Trump will hit back.
Minus away all of that political chatter and matter, the splatter is still there. Bloodbaths across America.. we are a nation that fears sundown–heroin, opioid overdoses, and gun violence. All the rage over rage in the United States cage.
There are glimmers of goodness. Yesterday when a call went out for help, blood and food banks in El Paso were overwhelmed with people donating. That’s the beauty in the nation, which comes together.
But …we are blinded by the violence and exhausted by the results. We are feeling helpless as a nation. Confused as to how to change anything.. and just feeling lost in the dust of murder and mayhem across the fruited plain..
