Mass shooting

In Fort Myers, A Non-Terror Mass Murder America Decided To Ignore

For a brief time, the mass shooting at Club Blu became a subject of intense focus by both law enforcement and the media. Then came an announcement that transformed a scramble into a shrug even though the dead included an 18-year-old basketball player of great promise and a 14-year-old who leaves behind a twin brother.

“The Fort Myers Police Department would like to confirm that this incident is not an act of terror (as it has been referred) or terrorists.”

Instead, the shooting appeared to be just more gangbanging such as rages in America cities with such frequency that it is reported in year-to-date statistics instead of at the top of the evening news. The country did not even shrug when 47 people were shot just in Chicago this past weekend, raising the total there for the year to just under 2,300.  The killing of bystanders tends to rouse some interest, especially if the victim is a baby, but even that is quickly forgotten.

Mass shooting

Five police officers killed in Dallas, seven others injured during shooting at protest

At least five Dallas police officers were killed and seven others wounded Thursday evening as a protest over recent police shootings was interrupted by chaos. The Dallas police chief said an attacker told authorities “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

After a peaceful march, downtown here suddenly exploded into violence at around 9 p.m. local time when gunshots echoed through the streets, sending protesters and police officers alike scattering for cover. Authorities said two civilians were also injured during the shooting.

“We’re hurting,” David Brown, the Dallas police chief, said Friday morning. “Our profession is hurting. Dallas officers are hurting. We are heart broken.”

Mass shooting

Attackers slay 14 in Calif. in deadliest mass shooting since Sandy Hook

As many as three gun-wielding assailants opened fire on a holiday party for county employees Wednesday, killing 14 people in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre three years ago this month.

Hours after the shooting, law enforcement officials said two attackers — a man and a woman, neither identified by name — had been killed in a police shootout several miles from the site of the original attack. A third suspect who had been seen fleeing the scene was taken into custody, but police said they were not sure whether he had been one of the shooters.

Mass shooting

'Thoughts and prayers are not enough': Why the US has so many mass shootings

There was a palpable weariness in President Obama’s official response on Thursday to the gun carnage at Umpqua community college in Oregon. He leaned repeatedly on the word “another” – another mass shooting, another community stunned with grief, more American families “whose lives have been changed forever”.

But underneath the tired exterior of a president who has had to deliver essentially the same speech nine times over the past six years, there was also an evident seething anger. “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said. “It does not capture the heartache and grief we should feel, and it does nothing to prevent this carnage being repeated somewhere else in America.”