OSCAR KIGHTLEY
WHY GUN VIOLENCE DOESN'T SEEM LIKE A BIG DEAL IN THE US
Maybe it’s just because of where I was, in Hawaii, when I saw the news. A hotel gym isn’t the easiest place to stay up to date on the TV news. Especially when the sound is off.
But the information graphic on the TV relating to the United States’ latest school shooting, this time in Santa Clarita in California, was a shock.
I had to turn the TV up, thinking everyone else around me would want to know what happened – but no one paid any attention. It might as well have been a story about a traffic buildup on some freeway.
These people may have already seen the news and had their own horrific reaction, away from nosy others like me. Maybe it’s just because I’m from a small country, where tragic news tends to be a bigger story that shocks everyone.
Or maybe it’s partly because this stuff happens so often here.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a group that tracks gun-related violence in the US, there have been 365 mass shootings this year.
The archive categorises mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooters. In the Santa Clarita shooting at Saugus High
School, a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy died, so this tragedy may not even count as a mass shooting. Maybe that’s why it didn’t seem too big a deal.
This observation on the lack of reaction is completely anecdotal, based on a tiny sample the number of people in the gym. It’s not intended to be scientific proof of how
Americans respond to the news – after all, the population of the US is nearly 330 million.
It was just interesting to observe the seemingly casual response from people around me. It was reminiscent of the way Kiwis sometimes react to coverage of fatal road accidents.
It’s awful, you feel empathy and you hope it doesn’t involve anyone you know, but it’s generally just absorbed by the rest of the news.
The other subject dominating the headlines is the impeachment public hearings that began this week, as Congress tries to determine whether President Donald Trump abused his powers by bribing a foreign power for his own personal and political gain. From the bottom of the world, Trump’s America is a fascinating place, where it seems the normal way of doing things has been upended. You feel for the citizens of this country.
I thought US politics and gun violence would dominate everyday conversation in bars or cafes.
I thought the kerfuffle online and in the mainstream and social media would be replicated on the street. But it’s not.
These seem to be the most tumultuous and politically fascinating times since Watergate in the early 1970s. But walking around and hanging out with regular North American folks, nobody was talking about the shooting or the impeachment hearings.
Maybe after nearly three years of this Administration, Americans are just exhausted by it. I’d always wondered how ordinary North Americans coped with actually living there. It turns out, like anywhere, they leave it to the powers that be to sort things out, and get on with their lives. Being too busy, trying to survive.
It seemed like just another day in North America.
‘I thought US politics and gun violence would dominate everyday conversation in bars or cafes. But it doesn’t.’