Character Assassination
He “was begging for help from everybody around him … The adults around him failed him.” That’s the aunt of America’s latest school shooter on the 14 year-old student’s struggle with mental health. We’ve also learned that the shooter was investigated last year for online threats. Meanwhile, the NYT is reporting on possible motives. “Troubling details emerged Thursday from the investigation of a 14-year-old student accused of opening fire in his Georgia high school. Police found evidence that the boy was interested in mass shootings, particularly the 2018 massacre at a high school in Parkland, Fla.” These sad updates following mass shootings have become a gruesomely rote part of the media’s regular crime beat. The headlines, like the weapons that drive them, seem semi-automatic at this point. But mental health issues and troubled kids with sick obsessions happen in other places, so why does the evergreen headline from The Onion of all places continue to ring so true: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. Maybe a good place to start is with these characters: AR-15, and a headline that should be from the The Onion, but it’s not: Georgia school shooter used an AR-15. Why are these weapons so popular for mass shootings? “An AR-15 is a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle that has been called ‘America’s rifle’ by the NRA with well over 15 million sold by 2019 … in 2023, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults owned an AR-15 … the weapon was used in at least 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in America … New AR-15 rifles can sell for $400 to $2,000 and nearly every major gun manufacturer produces one. Ammunition is inexpensive and can be bought in bulk online, and magazines are interchangeable between manufacturers … The AR-15 was designed to inflict what one of its designers called ‘maximum wound effect.'” Politicians who have cravenly allowed the unabated proliferation of these weapons usually argue that the hours and days after a shooting tragedy is no time to discuss gun policy. But in America, that would mean there’s never a time to discuss it.
