Mass Shootings Define “American Exceptionalism”

A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper

Posted February 14^th, 2023 on Niagara At Large

Another Day. Another Mass Shooting in America.

This one at a campus of the Michigan State University in that state’s City of Lansing – a nice campus I remember attending as an environment reporter many years ago on a conference being held on the Great Lakes.

At the time of this posting, three students from this once-proud public university campus are dead, the shooter is dead and five other students are in hospital with serious or life-threatening wounds from yet another mass shooting attack.

Of course we all feel terrible for the victims of these serial events andfor the families and communities where they unfold. But at the risk of sounding a bit callous, I am getting sick of the turning on these American cable news channels – CNN and MSNBC included- and listening to person after person repeating the same old lines – “I never thought this would happen here. “ “When I was sending my child to school, I didn’t think I was sending them to a war zone.”

My first response now is; “Why didn’t you think it would happen here. The only real surprise is that it didn’t happen ‘here’ sooner or more often.”

Hey America, you’got hundreds of millions of guns at large in your country – many of them assault-style weapons with high-capacity bullet clips. That’s more guns per capita than any other country in the world.

If the Ukrainians had that much weaponry, they may have pushed Putin’s army out of their country more than half a year ago.

Yet you’ve got a National Rifle Association with more clout than the President of the United States and Members of U.S. Congress wishing for even more guns on the streets. For more on that, click on the screen below-

Nothing seriously is going to be done in the United States to reduce gun violence in the United States. It is going to go on and on.

This year alone, you have 67 mass shootings across your country and counting. That is 67 mass shooting events in the first 45 days.

If that isn’t “American exceptionalism,” what is.

All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable crossing the border to the United States and going to the Walden Galleria or any other shopping mall where large groups of people gather in that country. I’m not even sure about a grocery store.

As John Lennon once wrote and sang- “Happiness is a warm gun. Bang, bang. Shoot, shoot.”

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

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