How many need to die in mass shootings in the United States before things change?Getty
Exactly how many people need to be murdered in a mass shooting for us to really, truly take notice?
It’s more than a dozen. That’s how many innocents were gunned down last week at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California[1]… remember?
The Pittsburgh synagogue massacre which preceded Thousand Oaks by less than two weeks gave us 11 new obituaries to think about…which we did, for a couple of days.
These are the victims of Thousand Oaks shooting.
No "Wall" would have stopped this horror - only gun reform!#ThousandOaks #GunControlNow #GunReformNow #GunViolence #Newtown #DomesticTerrorism #CaravanInvasion #BorderlineBarShooting #StopGunViolence #StopNRA #NRA #MAGA #Trump pic.twitter.com/1k0DKJquRT[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]
— US News Agency (@USANewsAgency) November 9, 2018[16]
And how can we forget the school shootings in Parkland, Florida in February (17 dead), and Santa Fe, Texas in May (10 dead).
1/ Texas is as gun-friendly a state as they come. But how do voters feel about gun control, according to recent polls?
More than half of Texans polled wanted stricter gun laws. And that was before the Santa Fe school shooting. https://t.co/ojrUkzNLBx pic.twitter.com/MKeEdjYCQ7[17][18]
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 22, 2018[19]
As it turns out, we Americans are really good at forgetting these senseless, utterly inhumane tragedies that are happening with frightening regularity.
But let’s give ourselves a
