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Did you know there was a school shooting in Colorado yesterday? Did you hear about the Florida State University shooting back in April? The one in Tennessee in January? If you're like many Americans, you've maybe heard about one of them but it's not like school shootings are a major national conversation most of the time anymore. We just don't really pay much attention anymore and even the rare times we do even somewhat like at the Catholic school, it's still mostly ignored by the general populace and pundits and politicians.
Despite the fact that as many libertarian and gun advocacy groups point out, school shootings are actually really rare. So rare that there's been a growing pushback against the insane idea of shooter drills. And it's not just school shootings either, right as Charlie Kirk died yesterday, he was even making the point that mass shootings are not common, especially when excluding gang violence.
And yet despite them being really rare, we're all tuned out and no one even knows when a new one happens. It doesn't really take much for people to shrug and go "well, that's just another Tuesday isn't it?"
So you can tell something in the reaction to Charlie Kirk's death, people aren't treating it as just another Tuesday. Politicians, pundits, all sorts of internet forums were talking about it even internationally. It's a big shock. I think that says something about just how rare political violence must be, that even compared to the very rare school shootings people aren't just shrugging it off.
Of politicians and pundits killed in the last few years, it's just two. Melissa Hortman the Dem speaker of the Minnesota house, and Charlie Kirk yesterday. There's been a few attacks without killings but even those are of course still rare. And even of those, most attempts aren't even for political reasons! Many of them are personal grievances, someone trying to make a name for themselves, weird conspiracies, antisemitism, etc. This is true even historically in the US, many famous attacks on politicians are like Ronald Reagan (crazy fanatic who thought it would impress an actress) or James Garfield (delusional guy who thought he helped win the election and deserved a job). We don't know the Charlie Kirk motive yet, the tiny bit of evidence (the claims of engravings) that did exist has been retracted and likely isn't real so maybe this was an explicitly political targeting but even so, that's still quite rare.
There's a bunch of edgy internet comments and rhetoric like always, but real action basically never happens. Just like most internet Edgelord behavior, it's chest thumping by people who are too scared to even make a phone call. And even those are so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that is being passed around has to a cast a web so wide for a decently sized list that it includes people saying things like I hope there isn't more violence in response, dark humor jokes, and comments literally saying it was awful he got shot. That's how far the digging has to go, it includes people who literally say it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk.
The plain and simple reality is that the US just doesn't have much political violence, and the negativity algorithms and Chinese/Pakistani/Iranian/Russian/etc bots and trolls trying to convince you there's some sort of civil war going on are lying. They want to convince the people of a deeper chaos and to hate and fear our fellow citizens. They hate the US and want to see us fail.
It's not just another day, it's rare. We are a great country with peaceful citizens and letting the few crazies and nutjobs and accelerationists wash over that is exactly what those enemy governments want. The claims of civil war (apparently one of the most peaceful war in the history of earth with only two deaths in multiple years) are by people who want you angry, many are literally paid money either literally by foreign governments or by algorithms that incentive emotional distress.
As far as other shootings go, most stuff like that stays local. I imagine there were probably tens of shootings in various cities that we don't have national conversations about. Normally if this stuff gets big it is either involving somebody famous, race/gender based violence picked by media outlets to push a narrative, or has an attached video that is especially heinous looking. (Floyd yelling he can't breathe with Chauvin on top of him or the recent train stabbing as examples.) Otherwise, I agree. There is relatively little political violence in the US and I hope it stays that way.
As they should. Targeted workplace violence is targeted (schools are workplaces).
Even some shootings that make national news tend to follow the same pattern- "shoot the people you have a grudge on, then pick off targets of opportunity because your life was forfeit with the first murder". Lockdowns are only effective insofar as they manage the number of targets of opportunity the criminal will encounter.
Perhaps we should be questioning why workplaces are so violent in a time when the average worker can't just mail-order a gun, but the answer to that question forms part of a serious refutation to the politics and ethics of those paid to manage those workplaces. (So naturally, it's the outgroup's fault.)
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