Between 1999 and 2025, there was an average of six active shooter events in K-12 schools in the United States per year. As of April 27, there have been 151 mass shootings in the United States this year, killing 178 and wounding 559. Since Jan. 1, 2013, there have been 7,171 mass shootings in the U.S.
Of the few mass shootings that manage to capture the brief attention span of the public, the general response, particularly from the political right, is not one of outrage. Rather, these senseless tragedies are met with milquetoast, hollow and meaningless oblations of “thoughts and prayers,” calling upon the Almighty to “heal our land.”
J. Basil Dannebohm
In the hours following the incident in Washington on Saturday evening, DC Shadow Senator Paul Strauss said, “I got a text from my young daughter who had been in active shooter drills and was giving me instructions on what to do.”
Young people realized long ago that our elected leaders weren’t going to make schools safer. Instead, students train for worst-case scenarios like members of the armed forces being sent to battle.
In quick time since that incident at a hotel in our nation’s capital, where members of the media and politicians adorned in black-tie were gathered, a battery of measures have been ordered. Over the next few weeks, there will be congressional hearings, briefings in the West Wing, and high-level meetings at the DOJ, DHS and FBI. The media who were in attendance will regurgitate their account of the event ad nauseam.
Rather than “thoughts and prayers,” there has been a demand for action and calls for a sense of urgency in the construction of a $350 million ballroom the president wants.
Whether or not Saturday’s incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner was real or an elaborate orchestration is frankly irrelevant. The fat-cat demand, “Change for me, but not for thee” should outrage us all.
Yet it probably won’t.
We’re a nation of blissfully mindless sheeple who obsess over sports figures, reality television stars, musicians and narcissistic grifter politicians. If something happens to a golden calf who sits high atop our cults of personality, we issue battle cries. Yet, when vulnerable schoolchildren hide under their desks and “the least of these” run for their lives, we change the channel in search of the latest score or to find out who’s the most recent contestant to be voted off the island.
J. Basil Dannebohm is a writer, speaker, consultant and former state legislator who divides his time between Kansas and Washington, D.C.