According to my calculations, there have been a total of 256 people killed in mass shootings as of the morning of July 7th, 2016 based off the numbers told in gunviolencearhive.org. According to CNN, the United States is home to a third of the entire world’s mass shootings.
An entire third of the world in just our country alone.
On my birthday, I woke up not believing that I finally made it to 20 years of age. I felt like a new man, with many challenges soon to come my way in life. In order to feel some sort of normalcy, I turn the television on in the morning just like always and watch the news with my family. What could possibly be the worst way to start off any birthday is what I happened to see in the headline: “Mass shooting in a nightclub at Orlando.” My birthday is on June 12th, the same day Omar Mateen arrived and killed 49 and injured 53 others in an act of hatred against homosexuals.
In February, James Dalton killed four women and injured a 14-year-old girl in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Michigan. In February as well, Cedric Ford, in an attempt to attack his former workplace in Kansas, killed three people and left 12 others injured. In May, Dionisio Garza III executed a man at an auto shop in Texas, all while injuring six others. In June, Robert Syke killed two and injured three in Arizona.
These five tales of mass shootings are just five of what Mark Hay specifically writes about in his Vice article, "It's Only July and 200 People Have Died in U.S. Mass Shootings.”
That article was written a week before another mass shooting that occurred in Dallas, Texas, where Micah Xavier Johnson killed five police officers and left seven more injured, while injuring two civilians in the process. This all happened at the end of a very peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in response to what happened just days earlier— the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by Louisiana police officers due to their belief of him reaching for his gun, even though he was pinned down to the ground by said officers. An eyewitness to the shooting told NBC news that Sterling never possessed a gun nor did he threaten the officers at any point. This occurred July 5th.
Philando Castile, just a day later, was shot and murdered by police in front of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter while in his car. Castile admitted to the police he had a gun in the car and was licensed to carry it. Castile was shot while in the process of putting his hands up right after the officer told him not to move, all this while being livestreamed by his girlfriend.
We’ve seen some of the worst crimes and acts of terrorism this country, and the entire world for that matter, has ever seen in just this year alone. We’re only in July. I can’t even begin to fathom what the rest of this year has to offer.
Acts of racism, revenge, sexism and anti-LGBTQ can all be pooled together to inform us that country is acting on much more than just that: this country is a living embodiment of hatred.
Hatred against the LGBTQ nation has led to what occurred on my own birthday. Acts of hatred against black Americans has led to what happened to Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless of others in the hands of police officers. Revenge for these acts has led to the murders of five police officers in Dallas, Texas.
I won’t even speak about our presidential nominee Donald Trump, who seems to only spew hatred in the feelings of American citizens for everything he does, which could be the reason why acts of violence always spring up in his rallies.
As a Christian man who wishes nothing but love, it seems as if I’m in the completely wrong country for this. At this point, I’m no longer surprised if I hear of another mass shooting or act of hatred on the news anymore. I’m also no longer surprised that no one is probably going to do a damn thing about it because everyone's too busy not doing anything about it and playing "Pokemon Go" instead.
Oh well, might as well just be another ignorant, face-in-the-crowd and try to catch that Pidgey down the block, right?
