Perspective: Mass shootingsInside a Deadly American Summer
They were octogenarians shopping at a Texas Walmart. They were family members watching TV in California. They were late-night revelers standing on a crowded Ohio sidewalk. They were casualties of a violent summer. Mitch Smith writes in the New York Times that during the unofficial summer season, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, America endured 26 mass shootings in 18 states. One massacre followed the next, sometimes on the very same day. In sudden bursts of misery, they played out in big cities, along rural roads, inside trim suburbs. They left behind shaken neighborhoods, tearful memorials and calls for change, but little concrete action. “And the summer ended much as it had begun, with a new round of panicky 911 calls, another set of wrenching vigils, a new wave of pleas for change,” Mitch Smith writes.
They were octogenarians shopping at a Texas Walmart. They were family members watching TV in California. They were late-night revelers standing on a crowded Ohio sidewalk. They were casualties of a violent summer.
Mitch Smith writes in the New York Times that during the unofficial summer season, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, America endured 26 mass shootings in 18 states. One massacre followed the next, sometimes on the very same day. In sudden bursts of misery, they played out in big cities, along rural roads, inside trim suburbs. They left behind shaken neighborhoods, tearful memorials and calls for change, but little concrete action.
A New York Times review of every shooting, from the first, on the late afternoon of 31 May, to the last, the night of Sept. 2, found that each one was distinct. Yet clear patterns emerged.
Mass killings can be inspired by bigotry, by domestic anger, by botched drug deals, or, in one case this summer in California, by an argument over golf. But sometimes, including in Las Vegas in 2017, the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the reasons for a massacre are never discovered.
The same has been true in Des Moines, where the police accused a man of killing three people, including two children, in a house this summer. Grecia Daniela Alvarado-Flores was 11. Her brother, Ever Jose Mejia-Flores, was 5. Their mom died, too.
The suspect, now charged with murder, lived in the same house, but was not related to the victims. The police still do not know why he did it.
The shootings came one after the next. On 23 June: In South Carolina and California. On the last weekend in July: In Wisconsin and California. On 3 August: In El Paso. And then, early the next morning, in Dayton.
Even in a country numb to the daily toll of gun violence, the pace of mass death struck deep. When Ohio’s governor spoke at a vigil in August, Dayton residents drowned him out with shouts of “Do something!”
Before the end of that month, there would be seven more mass killings across the nation.
Smith writes:
By Labor Day weekend, the national debate about gun control, reopened by El Paso and Dayton, had returned to a familiar stalemate. Democrats wanted stronger background checks and, in some cases, an assault weapons ban. Many Republicans did not. Sweeping national action seemed unlikely.
Then a man fleeing a traffic stop began shooting at random at motorists between Odessa and Midland using a military-style rifle. ABC News reported that he bought it through a private-sale loophole after failing a background check because of a mental illness.
And the summer ended much as it had begun, with a new round of panicky 911 calls, another set of wrenching vigils, a new wave of pleas for change.
