Our culture is changing because of the gun fetishists, and not in a good way. School children, blameless and vulnerable, are marked for life by the trauma of watching other children around them get killed.
That this happens in this country as often as it does, and is continually dismissed as left-wing hysteria, is beyond words.
The gal you’re going to listen to now is not beyond words. She’s telling you her own story. This piece has gotten over 1.1 million views since it was released this morning.
A survivor of the Sandy Hook School mass shooting in 2012 is a student at Michigan State University: “I am 21-years-old and this is the second mass shooting I’ve lived through. We can no longer allow this to happen. We can no longer be complacent.” pic.twitter.com/Jcafl57tmZ
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 14, 2023
Jacquelyn Matthews is a senior at MSU.
The school shootings have changed our culture. I remember talking to kids about lockdown procedures in their schools when such things began happening. I sensed not only fear from them, but futility. And who can blame them? If you see a school shooting on the news over and over again and legislation to ban assault weapons does not take place, over and over again, how can you feel anything but futile?
So far this year the Gun Violence Archive has counted 67 mass shootings in the United States. Six of them involved four or more fatalities. That’s pretty sobering considering that the year itself is not 67 days old.
Last year, the group counted 647 mass shootings. Of those, 21 involved five or more fatalities.
We have not gone a single day without a mass shooting in this country in a very long time. It is now a daily occurrence. This used to be the stuff of cynical jokes and black comedy. No more. We have arrived. Daily slaughter is as American as mom, the flag, and apple pie.
School shootings are known to have a devastating impact beyond victims’ immediate family and friends. Research investigating the long-term health of survivors suggests they use antidepressants at a higher rate and have a lower likelihood of completing their educations.
Authorities announced early Tuesday morning that the suspect in the MSU shooting, 43-year-old Anthony McRae, had shot and killed himself after an hours long police pursuit.
Police say McRae began his attack around 8:20 p.m. on Monday, firing shots at both Berkey Hall on the north side of the campus and the MSU Union to the west before fleeing on foot. Panicked community members called in reports of shots fired at other locations as they sheltered in place awaiting word from law enforcement.
Eventually, a tipster led police to McRae’s location after authorities released an image of the suspect taken from security cameras late Monday.
He had no affiliation with the university.
The three deceased victims were Alexandria Verner, a junior from Clawson, Michigan; Brian Fraser, a sophomore from Grosse Pointe, Michigan; and Arielle Anderson, a junior from Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
The silence from the gun lobby right now is deafening.
Say it all together now: thoughts and prayers.
Fucking hypocrite ‘pube cons. Fucking worthless pieces of shit.
Maybe if more republican lawmakers were shot instead of innocent kids, they’d see the light. As Bruce Cockburn sang about the helicopters dropping napalm on villages…”if I had a rocket launcher…some son of a bitch would pay.”
Michigan Majority Whip Rajeev Puri began his statement on the shooting with this line: “F**k your thoughts and prayers”. Michigan is largely Democratic, so may have a better chance of making/changing laws to stop some of this crap. I applaud him greatly for his response to Republicans pushing these events under the rugs with their “thoughts and prayers” since they hold their guns more sacred than human life.