Another day, another horrific shooting. An angry man with a grudge against his former workplace killed his former co-workers as they did their jobs. It’s so sickeningly common there’s even a name for this very specific form of mass killing: “going postal” after a series of workplace gun massacres by postal workers going back to the 1980s. Yesterday’s had the unique and extra-disturbing characteristic of first taking place during a live TV spot and then further unfolding on twitter and Facebook where the shooter posted video of the murders from his own point of view. He was a failed celebrity who used all the modern forms of media to document his depraved acts.
But the unusual public nature of this particular crime does not mean that similar gun murders aren’t an everyday occurrence. The Washington Post published a shocking statistic yesterday: In the 238 days of 2015 America has had 247 mass shootings. This is happening more than once a day. We are so inured to it that we don’t hear of them most of the time unless there is something conspicuously different about it. (This is very likely attributable to the depressing fact that the vast majority of mass killings are perpetrated by men murdering innocent women and children in their personal lives.)
