You aren't surprised are you? Americans proved they really didn't give a fuck about dead kids when "thoughts and prayers" and "it's too soon" and "don't play poliitics", along with all the other talking points won out after Sandy Hook. That was 15-plus years ago. Now Americans can't even be bothered to go through the motions of being horrified. Just another day in the USA.
Most of the mall shootings don’t ever make the news. They aren’t even news adjacent as I found out the first time I experienced one in a mall. I heard gunshot, looked around the corner, and saw a stream of panicked people running my way. A stampede of people streamed into the building where I was working knocking over and trampling anything in their paths.
I ducked down a hallway and out of a fire escape door with a stream of other people. We were greeted by sunshine, multiple helicopters, and a fleet of black armored SUVs.
We streamed into shops across the road to hide. I ended up in a cell phone shop, I think it was T Mobile but it wasn’t the biggest thing on my mind in that moment.
The manager was on the phone with mall security. They told him that one shooter had been apprehended and the other two were being hunted for lack of a better word.
I called my husband from the loading dock hallway where we were sheltering. He was at a local pub having a drink with friends. It sounded like he yawned into the phone. I called my parents. Same response. A big nothing-burger, shrugged shoulders.
I had to run away from an active shooting and it meant absolutely nothing since I was still alive to make the call. I think that is the weirdest aspect of the entire situation. I had been at the scene of a mass shooting with multiple shooters and my family collectively shrugged.
A lady I worked with told me that each of her three daughters had been in situations like this so now the whole family had experienced it. I had already been in one at college. This wasn’t the first or last time for me.
Did it make the news? No. Did my workplace level with its employees about what had actually happened? No. They actually lied about it to my face. If I hadn’t been in TMobile when the manager sought and received accurate information from mall security, if I hadn’t seen 3 helicopters and a fleet of armored suvs, I would still be none the wiser.
By the way, when it happens to you don’t try to get in your car and drive away. You will be a sitting duck in gridlock. The police shut all exits down. Find a safe place to shelter and if some idiot keeps opening the door to “see what’s going on” stop them. They could get everyone including you killed by their stupidity.
For the record. I was in one of the wealthiest areas of a fairly large, multicultural city. Bigger than Minneapolis or St. Louis, bigger than San Francisco, millions of people…it wasn’t an area known for crime or poverty. It can and does happen everywhere in America every damn day of the week.
Apart from ignoring violence within non-Anglo and lower socioeconomic level groups (we as Americans do seem to highlight it when those involved cross those boundaries), Americans have seemingly grown inured to domestic violence. This one made more news because of the number of deceased and how many were children, but domestic violence homicides of two, three, four family members are shockingly common and hardly make the news. During COVID, when criminal violence spiked, if I recall it was domestic violence (already probably the most common form of homicidal violence? Someone tell me if that's wrong) that spiked most severely. Often, though not always, involving firearms. And women are murdered by husbands and romantic partners all the time. What is it about domestic violence that we as a nation just don't want to deal with?
We can start with appraisals of the 3 approaches to gun violence: guns, protection, and mental health. Discussions of any of these reveal the deepest ignorance of the issues involved in each of these, especially on the part of politicians whose eye is always on the donor. Who are the stake holders in each category? Gun manufacturers? Educators? Psychiatry? Hollywood? Law enforcement? The legal profession? The clergy? Parents? Kids? Each requires a lot of unpacking and people just want an answer. Here it is: move to Australia. BTW, my wife's family is from just across the border from Shreveport and I could talk a long time about another factor: culture.
I've lived in Shreveport for almost 20 years now, and the shooting happened two blocks away from an intersection I bike through several times a week. It's not a terrible neighborhood, but it is in the red-lined area of Shreveport. So, it's a lower income, majority minority neighborhood and was gerrymandered out of Mike Johnson's district.
But we're used to the rest of America not caring what happens here. Several years ago there was a derecho with hurricane-force winds that damaged thousands of homes and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people for days or even weeks. I've been through a category 3 hurricane and the town looked like it had been hit by a slightly less powerful storm afterwards. But this didn't even make the national news; none of my family even heard about it before I let them know I was OK.
The bloodshed is going to continue, and likely expand. Why wouldn't it? We have millions of people who love their guns more than they care about your kids. For a lot of people, guns are symbolic of power and control. For all to many, guns are a fascination and in some cases, an addiction.
When people's perception of becoming powerless grows, their guns will become even more important. And when life throws one too many obstacles, some of them will assert their power through their guns.
We are approaching a period of economic upheaval, as advanced forms of technology replace human workers. Since 2024, over 500,000 tech workers have been laid off.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, predicts 20% to 30% unemployment developing over the next several years as AI matures and becomes more productive. Add to that, major advancements in robotics.
The Supreme Court's record on guns and gun control is horrific and their justifications on Constitutional grounds are more driven by ideology than Constitutional fidelity. "Originalism" is a farce.
One need only read Madison's Federalist Paper, No 46, to understand the perversion of the 2nd Amendment that has resulted from their "interpretation".
Jonathan, Thanks for devoting the time to reminding us of this under reported tragedy. As if our indifference wasn't bad enough, we have a President and administration that adds fuel to the fire. Before laws can change, people must change. Hopefully, the younger generations will learn from our mistakes and ignorance.
I dont see why we are calling this a mass shooting when most of these were the shooters own kids. This is just Republican abortion taken to its logical conclusion. Furthermore, as the shooter is labelled as a military veteran I question of what service, since the US extends veteran recognition and benefits to members of the IDF, and the IDF uses kids for target practice all the time.
Its important to recognize nothing can be horrific if its not surprising, and the only thing surprising about a bunch of kids being killed in a red state like Louisiana would be if the shooter isn't white and the kids arent of African American decent, and that the police weren't standing around at the scene doing nothing.
This is who America is. This isn't some magical new change, its been like this for at least a generation. If we want to be something different then we need to start acting like it, especially considering we have members of "homeland security" who are currently active fugitives and murders, and the president is a serial rapist who has dozens or more child victims, a war criminal, and has attacked the US capitol.
America’s love affair with guns over children, is much like its love affair w Trump over everything and everyone else, including the Pope - they are both forms of mass mental illness, and they are deeply intertwined or comorbid.
I'm somewhat near where this happened, so it hasn't gone away here, but I don't know what to say. It just seems hopeless.
No, nothing will be done about the guns. And "showing the pictures" won't help and will very likely make it worse. It is an obsolete myth that gun violence in entertainment is sanitized and people don't know what it actually looks like. No one who has seen anything rated R, MA, 18+, etc. for graphic violence since about 2015 is in doubt of what it looks like. Yes, it's realistic now. (Let alone that the fact that "show the pictures" IS such a frequent rallying cry. What does that imply? That millions of people do indeed know what it looks like.) And even worse, we've "run an experiment" on this before with REAL images. On Twitter, after the TX shopping mall mass shooting, a graphic photo DID leak out. And what happened? It went viral. And that was before the advent of generative AIs. Nowadays what we'd see would be "TAKE THEIR CLOTHES OFF" to gunshot victim images.
People seem to have decided that doctors, public-health experts, and biochemists (that's who "Big Pharma" really means, biochemists in labs developing medications) are the enemy and that some huckster promoting supplements, raw meat, and happiness training online is the kind of health care they want. I don't see the conversation on mental health changing for the better either.
And male violence against wives, girlfriends, and their own children? The narrative these days is "all those poor, poor guys who can't get a girlfriend or start a family because the women won't date them and make more money than they do." Convincing people that they are victims never helped anyone.
And there's your biggest reason the murders have already been relegated to background status.
A large portion of this country just doesn't care about atrocities unless the victims look and live like they do. Empathy isn't something America does well outside of its comfort zone.
I was working at a college when the Columbine massacre happened. Many of our students had come from the area- freshmen who had graduated less than a year previous. We were all summoned to deal with kids crying and screaming and glued to a TV screen in the student center. (This was pre-phone ubiquity-27 years ago)
The assholes who committed that still seem to be held in reverence around the world. ( see: Mexico, yesterday)
We do just shrug now- this is life in America. This is 2nd Amendment freedom. Oh, yay….
This whole idea breaks my heart. Sick of it!
You aren't surprised are you? Americans proved they really didn't give a fuck about dead kids when "thoughts and prayers" and "it's too soon" and "don't play poliitics", along with all the other talking points won out after Sandy Hook. That was 15-plus years ago. Now Americans can't even be bothered to go through the motions of being horrified. Just another day in the USA.
Most of the mall shootings don’t ever make the news. They aren’t even news adjacent as I found out the first time I experienced one in a mall. I heard gunshot, looked around the corner, and saw a stream of panicked people running my way. A stampede of people streamed into the building where I was working knocking over and trampling anything in their paths.
I ducked down a hallway and out of a fire escape door with a stream of other people. We were greeted by sunshine, multiple helicopters, and a fleet of black armored SUVs.
We streamed into shops across the road to hide. I ended up in a cell phone shop, I think it was T Mobile but it wasn’t the biggest thing on my mind in that moment.
The manager was on the phone with mall security. They told him that one shooter had been apprehended and the other two were being hunted for lack of a better word.
I called my husband from the loading dock hallway where we were sheltering. He was at a local pub having a drink with friends. It sounded like he yawned into the phone. I called my parents. Same response. A big nothing-burger, shrugged shoulders.
I had to run away from an active shooting and it meant absolutely nothing since I was still alive to make the call. I think that is the weirdest aspect of the entire situation. I had been at the scene of a mass shooting with multiple shooters and my family collectively shrugged.
A lady I worked with told me that each of her three daughters had been in situations like this so now the whole family had experienced it. I had already been in one at college. This wasn’t the first or last time for me.
Did it make the news? No. Did my workplace level with its employees about what had actually happened? No. They actually lied about it to my face. If I hadn’t been in TMobile when the manager sought and received accurate information from mall security, if I hadn’t seen 3 helicopters and a fleet of armored suvs, I would still be none the wiser.
By the way, when it happens to you don’t try to get in your car and drive away. You will be a sitting duck in gridlock. The police shut all exits down. Find a safe place to shelter and if some idiot keeps opening the door to “see what’s going on” stop them. They could get everyone including you killed by their stupidity.
For the record. I was in one of the wealthiest areas of a fairly large, multicultural city. Bigger than Minneapolis or St. Louis, bigger than San Francisco, millions of people…it wasn’t an area known for crime or poverty. It can and does happen everywhere in America every damn day of the week.
Thank you for posting about this. Absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking.
Apart from ignoring violence within non-Anglo and lower socioeconomic level groups (we as Americans do seem to highlight it when those involved cross those boundaries), Americans have seemingly grown inured to domestic violence. This one made more news because of the number of deceased and how many were children, but domestic violence homicides of two, three, four family members are shockingly common and hardly make the news. During COVID, when criminal violence spiked, if I recall it was domestic violence (already probably the most common form of homicidal violence? Someone tell me if that's wrong) that spiked most severely. Often, though not always, involving firearms. And women are murdered by husbands and romantic partners all the time. What is it about domestic violence that we as a nation just don't want to deal with?
We can start with appraisals of the 3 approaches to gun violence: guns, protection, and mental health. Discussions of any of these reveal the deepest ignorance of the issues involved in each of these, especially on the part of politicians whose eye is always on the donor. Who are the stake holders in each category? Gun manufacturers? Educators? Psychiatry? Hollywood? Law enforcement? The legal profession? The clergy? Parents? Kids? Each requires a lot of unpacking and people just want an answer. Here it is: move to Australia. BTW, my wife's family is from just across the border from Shreveport and I could talk a long time about another factor: culture.
I've lived in Shreveport for almost 20 years now, and the shooting happened two blocks away from an intersection I bike through several times a week. It's not a terrible neighborhood, but it is in the red-lined area of Shreveport. So, it's a lower income, majority minority neighborhood and was gerrymandered out of Mike Johnson's district.
But we're used to the rest of America not caring what happens here. Several years ago there was a derecho with hurricane-force winds that damaged thousands of homes and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people for days or even weeks. I've been through a category 3 hurricane and the town looked like it had been hit by a slightly less powerful storm afterwards. But this didn't even make the national news; none of my family even heard about it before I let them know I was OK.
So yeah, no surprise.
The bloodshed is going to continue, and likely expand. Why wouldn't it? We have millions of people who love their guns more than they care about your kids. For a lot of people, guns are symbolic of power and control. For all to many, guns are a fascination and in some cases, an addiction.
When people's perception of becoming powerless grows, their guns will become even more important. And when life throws one too many obstacles, some of them will assert their power through their guns.
We are approaching a period of economic upheaval, as advanced forms of technology replace human workers. Since 2024, over 500,000 tech workers have been laid off.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, predicts 20% to 30% unemployment developing over the next several years as AI matures and becomes more productive. Add to that, major advancements in robotics.
The Supreme Court's record on guns and gun control is horrific and their justifications on Constitutional grounds are more driven by ideology than Constitutional fidelity. "Originalism" is a farce.
One need only read Madison's Federalist Paper, No 46, to understand the perversion of the 2nd Amendment that has resulted from their "interpretation".
Yeah, that whole well regulated militia thing seems to be absent from strict constructionist judicial thinking. Sure. They’re “originalists.”
Jonathan, Thanks for devoting the time to reminding us of this under reported tragedy. As if our indifference wasn't bad enough, we have a President and administration that adds fuel to the fire. Before laws can change, people must change. Hopefully, the younger generations will learn from our mistakes and ignorance.
I dont see why we are calling this a mass shooting when most of these were the shooters own kids. This is just Republican abortion taken to its logical conclusion. Furthermore, as the shooter is labelled as a military veteran I question of what service, since the US extends veteran recognition and benefits to members of the IDF, and the IDF uses kids for target practice all the time.
Its important to recognize nothing can be horrific if its not surprising, and the only thing surprising about a bunch of kids being killed in a red state like Louisiana would be if the shooter isn't white and the kids arent of African American decent, and that the police weren't standing around at the scene doing nothing.
This is who America is. This isn't some magical new change, its been like this for at least a generation. If we want to be something different then we need to start acting like it, especially considering we have members of "homeland security" who are currently active fugitives and murders, and the president is a serial rapist who has dozens or more child victims, a war criminal, and has attacked the US capitol.
Cutting mental health resources for veterans ....
America’s love affair with guns over children, is much like its love affair w Trump over everything and everyone else, including the Pope - they are both forms of mass mental illness, and they are deeply intertwined or comorbid.
I so tired of feeling like everything about our country is so broken.
I'm somewhat near where this happened, so it hasn't gone away here, but I don't know what to say. It just seems hopeless.
No, nothing will be done about the guns. And "showing the pictures" won't help and will very likely make it worse. It is an obsolete myth that gun violence in entertainment is sanitized and people don't know what it actually looks like. No one who has seen anything rated R, MA, 18+, etc. for graphic violence since about 2015 is in doubt of what it looks like. Yes, it's realistic now. (Let alone that the fact that "show the pictures" IS such a frequent rallying cry. What does that imply? That millions of people do indeed know what it looks like.) And even worse, we've "run an experiment" on this before with REAL images. On Twitter, after the TX shopping mall mass shooting, a graphic photo DID leak out. And what happened? It went viral. And that was before the advent of generative AIs. Nowadays what we'd see would be "TAKE THEIR CLOTHES OFF" to gunshot victim images.
People seem to have decided that doctors, public-health experts, and biochemists (that's who "Big Pharma" really means, biochemists in labs developing medications) are the enemy and that some huckster promoting supplements, raw meat, and happiness training online is the kind of health care they want. I don't see the conversation on mental health changing for the better either.
And male violence against wives, girlfriends, and their own children? The narrative these days is "all those poor, poor guys who can't get a girlfriend or start a family because the women won't date them and make more money than they do." Convincing people that they are victims never helped anyone.
I don't know. It's profoundly depressing.
*The victims were low-income and black.*
And there's your biggest reason the murders have already been relegated to background status.
A large portion of this country just doesn't care about atrocities unless the victims look and live like they do. Empathy isn't something America does well outside of its comfort zone.
I was working at a college when the Columbine massacre happened. Many of our students had come from the area- freshmen who had graduated less than a year previous. We were all summoned to deal with kids crying and screaming and glued to a TV screen in the student center. (This was pre-phone ubiquity-27 years ago)
The assholes who committed that still seem to be held in reverence around the world. ( see: Mexico, yesterday)
We do just shrug now- this is life in America. This is 2nd Amendment freedom. Oh, yay….