Imagine coming home from a trip without any knowledge of what has happened in the past week. You didn't have a computer, radio or television. You had very limited cell phone use, which you only used to quickly browse social media and check in with your friends at the end of the day. There was no way of learning about any news unless your friends told you directly, which they did not because they probably didn't realize it was the only way you could learn what was going on. This was the position I was in just a few days ago. From July 11 to July 19, I was relatively cut off from the world while I participated in a mission trip. A lot can happen in nine days, including the Chattanooga shooting that took place on July 16.
The few times I looked at Twitter and Facebook, I saw mentions of a shooting in Tennessee. It sparked my interest, since my mission trip was in Kentucky, and we had traveled through Tennessee only a few days earlier. But I didn't look into it further because I was too busy, and I assumed the shootings were awful and hateful attacks on random civilians, like the Sandy Hook shooting or Kate Steinle’s murder just a few weeks earlier. When I finally came home and began seeing social media posts and news reports about the event, I quickly learned about the details surrounding the event.
On July 16, Mohammad Abdulazeez shot four marines and a sailor at a recruiting station and a Navy facility. The motives behind the attacks are still unclear. Some speculate that it was an act of terrorism, spurred by a somewhat recent visit to the Middle East. Other pieces of information and sources, including his family, point to mental illness fueling his rage. He had been arrested for driving under the influence, but nothing about him led any close friends to think he was capable of such a crime. According to former teachers, friends and family, Abdulazeez was a normal guy. He did have an interest in guns, which one of his friends defended as being a Southern hobby and just like any American, he had his differing opinions than that of the government on how the U.S. should be governed. So why did he do it? It seems as though no one will ever know for sure, since he died as well.
In the days since the attack, many people have shared their opinions about it. Everyone can obviously agree on how awful it was, but there are assumptions being made about his motive, which have already been explained as unclear. This event also spurred many conversations among people about gun control, which is a topic that people will never stop disagreeing over. Additionally, people criticized the White House's "slow" response to the attack by waiting to lower the flags in remembrance of the victims. These were the things I read about before I knew any details; they are what led me to researching the attacks. Without seeing all of those posts, I probably would not have looked into this event and would have been terribly confused when someone eventually brought it up to me. So basically, I learned everything about the Chattanooga shooting from social media.
