School Shootings Are Completely Normal. Stop Pretending Like They Aren’t.

I hate to be the one to break this to the American populace, but reports of school shootings in the news should’ve stopped shocking the nation years ago. It’s old news. It’s time to move on to the next trendy news item.

Look, gentle American, the United States is the embodiment of violence. In your mind, run through the average teenaged boy’s day. His alarm wakes him up and music blasts from the speakers. It doesn’t matter if it’s rock or country, the theme of violence is there. Whether the music places him rallying around the family with a pocket full of shells or he’s got a shotgun, rifle, and four-wheel drive, an American boy will survive. But will he?

He turns on the TV. It’s laden with violence. He hops on Instagram, older men he looks up to are posing with their weapons trying their best to look like killers. Bored with that, he switches over to Twitter where he finds people discussing whether it’s ok to run people over with their cars for blocking a road during a protest over another unarmed person getting spattered by a cop, who is deemed a hero. People bring up the fact the deceased had too many tickets and how he should’ve just done what the man with the gun said. What’s the takeaway? Everybody has it coming, killing people over minor inconveniences is ok, and a man with a gun is unquestionable.

He goes to school, and a teacher assaults a student for not standing up for the pledge (Google it.) He remembers dad saying how he’d beat someone for burning a flag. That’s right. Violence is justified for insulting an inanimate object. It’s America, violence is always justified.

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