This Isn't Sports
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Newtown?
A little piece of me died there.
Babies.
They were just babies.
Cut down like wheat
Babies
Six and seven years old
Still learning how to read and write
Big block letters
Unicorns and baseball cards
Teachers
Jumping in front of a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle
A Glock 20SF handgun
Hoping to save one
How did we not all die in Newtown?
How did any of us walk away unchanged?
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Tucson?
A little piece of me died there
Christina Taylor-Green
Nine years old
Dreamed of changing the world
Came to see someone changing the world
Bullets sprayed across a parking lot
A Glock 19 semi-automatic with a 33-round magazine
Six dead
A day later the parking lot was a crime scene
Surrounded by yellow police tape
While onlookers took selfies
And looked for the blood in the pavement
How did we not all die in Tucson?
How did any of us walk away unchanged?
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Las Vegas?
In Virginia Beach?
In Chippewa Falls?
In San Jose and White Swan and Sebring and Aurora
In Yountville and Paintsville and Nashville and Asheville
In Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit
Just as in Lutcher and Gravette and Ascension Parish
In a Pittsburgh Synagogue
And a Charleston church
And a Sutherland Springs church
And an Annapolis newspaper office
And an Orlando nightclub
And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
And an El Paso Wal-Mart
And just outside a Dayton Bar
What do you do after dying so many small deaths?
Where can you stand in the howling wind?
Nothing can be done
Nothing will be done
If we didn’t do anything after Newtown
If we didn’t do anything after Parkland
If we didn’t do anything after Las Vegas
What do you do after dying so many small deaths?
Do you just keep on dying?
It isn't just one man, whatever shape his Office is;
It isn't just one man, however his upbringing went;
It isn't just one man, whatever the color on his ribbon;
It isn't just one man, holding the gun.
It's all of us, who keep on dying,
Or staring away,
Or justifying the actions of the others,
Or accusing the other side of the aisle.
We need to scrap boundaries,
We need to stop grouping or separating,
We need to look in the eye of the stranger and see ourself,
We need to live together.
It is only the big ones that get noticed. Defining a Mass shooting as an event where 4 or more people (not including the shooter) are shot. there have been 255 such events this year, with 275 dead and 1065 wounded. August is a big part of that with 7 incidents, 36 dead and 74 wounded in just 5 days.
Despite all the attention Mass shootings get, even with broad definition they represent under 2% of the gun deaths in the US.