A shooting in a distant city? Before social media, before the internet, how would you hear of it? How would you know it existed?
It did, and you didn't. Your local news stations and news papers had no time for that. If they reported every shooting in America they would literally have no space or time to report on anything else. They prioritize. Your news was chosen. They chose variety, or different issues. Only shootings they deemed worthy made it to their headlines.
Now there is a national connection. A fabric and social awareness like nothing humanity has ever seen. We can witness the world as it is more truthfully today, more than our parents could ever imagine or dream of in their youth. Imagine if, in 1992, you got a news feed for every one of the 14,000+ victims of gun violence in the United States instead of a statistical number at the end of the year. That was more than one and a half every hour. Something that is always in your face. Phone beeps, oh another murder. Beep. Beep. Beep. It's ringing, that twitter feed can be a murder hotline if you want it to be. You can be aware of all sorts of events occurring in the nation. That was largely impossible before.
On the flip side,
the more we hear of these things... the more copycats will imitate it. The more it makes sense to them to cause this sort of violence instead of another kind. In addition, thanks to trickle down (40+ years and counting) our people haven't felt this kind of pain or misery since the great depression. There's a lot of guns and hopelessness in this country. Mix it together and that's a lot of stress and desperation with itchy trigger fingers.
The police know how dangerous this country is. They are trained to shoot first and ask questions later if their suspect so much as flinches. Why? Because they are afraid. Of being killed in a split second by a guy with a gun. That is why they end up killing so many people when they shouldn't. They are reacting properly to an improper setup. A system filled with fear and of gun violence. Their reality is also our reality. I know it may be shocking to learn just how much there is, but maybe that awareness can become the impetus for change.
Maybe Americans can become educated enough to learn how they are living, and that it does not need to be that way anymore.