Americans are too desensitized
School shootings should not seem like an everyday occurrence

By Jordan Blum
Skiff Staff

It seemed school shootings had become passé in the eyes of the viewing public, but apparently they’re coming back in vogue in a retro sort of way.

It’s happened recently with bellbottoms, the Volkswagen Beetle and with disco music. In a similar fashion, a 15-year-old high school freshman apparently felt the urge to bring back the trendiest crime of the past few years back into the national spotlight.

Just when it appeared hate crimes had cemented their place as the most popular crime, school shootings suddenly came roaring back with a vengeance.

The sad truth of the matter is that much of the American public actually sees these situations from this perspective, even if just subconsciously.

If this had happened a little over a year ago, in the midst of the spree of shootings that were seemingly occurring on a weekly basis, virtually no one would pay much attention to it. People would read that only two students were killed and think to themselves that this was nothing compared to Columbine and go along with their daily routine without giving the matter much thought.

In fact, one friend of mine muttered in reference to Monday’s shooting spree that it wasn’t that bad because “just” two people were killed. Excuse me, did I hear that correctly? Maybe the earthquake in Seattle wasn’t a big deal either because hundreds of people weren’t killed (which still got more attention than the earthquake in India that killed tens of thousands).

The sad reality is that many people have already become desensitized to these types of incidents. It seems as if someone is going to have wipe out an entire student body in order to truly shock the public.

I sat watching CNN in horror, seeing students waving their arms and sticking their tongues out at the camera while they were being evacuated and after just witnessing a virtual bloodbath at their own school. When people actually observing these shootings firsthand still aren’t emotionally affected, then something is seriously wrong.

Doing that is almost as bad as the shooter’s friends not turning him in when he said he was “going to pull a Columbine” at Santana High School. Sure they thought he was joking, but it seems they took him at least relatively serious if they patted him down for weapons Monday. If there was even a little doubt, they shouldn’t have hesitated to report him — especially when lives are at stake — regardless of friendships.

What’s obviously the most disturbing aspect of the atrocity is the fact that the shooter was smiling as he took aim and played God with his peers’ lives. It’s truly impossible to fathom what would drive someone to commit these horrors in such an utterly evil fashion. I’d like to extend my vocabulary to describe it, but no word better encapsulates it than simply, evil.

Just imagining someone committing these crimes with a smile invokes a surreal and an almost sardonically cartoonish feeling.
I don’t want to sound clichéd, but I can’t help asking what the world is coming to. And, sadly, I’m not so sure I want the answer.

Jordan Blum is a sophomore broadcast journalism major from New Orleans.
He can be reached at (j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu).

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