Generic Responses to Mass Shootings
Let’s stop following the script
And now there’s another one. In Virginia Beach this time. Is it any less horrible because the shooter was a colleague in a workplace? No
Mass shootings have become so common that genres are emerging in response.What an awful statement about our current world.
The deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, stood out in numbers, but it was, according to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza’s source, one of 338 mass shootings this year.
338 mass shootings this year
In response, politicians give speeches, news reporters conduct interviews, law enforcement gives press briefings, and social media light up with eyewitness videos, expressions of horror and sympathy, debates over gun rights and regulation, and hashtags. And the NRA goes silent.
These responses have become almost ritualized, as Lizza notes about Washington politicians’ responses. They are genres emerging.
Look at the president’s speech Monday morning after the Vegas shooting. Lizza describes it as a classic “thoughts and prayers” version. I’d list these conventional moves:
- Express shock and horror
- Thank first responders
- Offer prayers for the…
