Two weeks ago I wrote a diary in which I predicted 9 consequences of the Sikh Temple shooting, which occurred on Sunday, 8/5/31.
Let's see how accurate I was.
1. The police and the emergency respondents will do their absolute best to investigate the crime and assist the wounded. That's actually happening right now. The truth is, our police, although they have their issues, are generally pretty good at what they do, and our EMTs and emergency care facilities are excellent.
The police responded quickly to the scene. One officer was shot multiple times, but survived, probably because of his body armor. Another officer shot the perpetrator, who then killed himself. In additional to the wounded officer, two other victims had to be hospitalized. As predicted, the police and emergency medical response was excellent.
2. There will be substantial media attention, the extent of which will depend on the number of people who were shot. If enough people are shot, a special mournful dirge will be written (as it was with the Aurora shootings) .
The Aurora theater shooting merited it's own orchestral score, whereas for the Wisconsin shooting, there was only a piano dirge. One thing I should have predicted was the regurgitation of the
gun massacre hero story, where X, confronted by a crazed gunman, gives up his/her own life to protect Y.
A few of many examples:
* DailyMail.co.uk: "Seattle gun massacre hero ..."
* Current.com: "AZ Massacre Hero ...
* CNN.com: "Heros of the Virginia Tech Massacre"
* ABCnews.com: "Hero kids saved lives at Sikh temple massacre"
I don't criticize self-sacrifice. I criticize the fact that our society is so poorly organized that these self-sacrifices occur. Also, at some point these stories become a distraction from the real issue, which is why is our society willing to put up with these massacres.
What these stories do however is feed the myth that if some citizen had been armed at Virginia Tech/Aurora theater/pick one of 50 others they would have been able to gun down the shooter. See for example Unsung Hero of the Midnight Movie Massacre... (Hint: it's not who you might think).
3. In a day or so, various politicians will state that "our hearts and prayers are with the victims and their families."
Romney complied almost literally with this prediction, as the LA Times
reported on 8/5/12, the day of the shooting that, in the reporter's terms, "Romney extended his thoughts and prayers to the victims". To be fair, Romney's actual statement was a bit more elaborate. But the trite editorial phrase "thoughts and prayers" becomes the shorthand version for basically doing nothing.
4. Many people will find themselves without medical insurance to cover their injuries, and will have to beg the community to pay for their bills, or the medical providers to reduce or waive them.
Fellow Sikhs set up a fund for the victims, this can be viewed
here. Also, as of 8/13/12, it was reported that the Organization of Chinese-Americans (OCA) and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) have
set up a joint fund to assist the victims of the crime.
I don't condemn or mock these efforts. But consider this: The constitution (or so it is said) protected the right of the perpetrator here to acquire the means to rapidly shoot and kill a large number of people. And what protections does the constitution afford of the people who are shot with this lawfully acquired lethality? Butkis!
In a land with essentially unlimited access to firearms and highly limited access to health care, these financial drives will be necessary.
5. Some freakin' jackass like Allen West will claim that if he had been there packing heat, he could have shot the perpetrator dead. And there will be "other blame the victims for being unarmed"
We didn't have to wait long for the Charles Bronson wannabes to come out of the woodwork. Over at Forbes.com, heir to a once interesting and powerfully-written and edited magazine, one can read that
To Deter Gun Slaughters, the federal government must cease disarming the innocents. (Uh, when has the federal government disarmed
anybody?)
6. The gun industry will benefit as sales of whatever weapon was used here will go up. The more people who are killed the better the sales will be.
Here the shooter employed a pistol called a
Springfield XD(M). I couldn't find any articles indicating that the sales of these specific weapon had increased. There were however several articles like this one from CBS,
Gun sales to women, elderly jump after recent mass shootings, which mention the Aurora and the Wisconsin shootings as contributing to an overall increase in gun sales.
7. People like me who criticize the ready availability of firearms capable of this type of mass killings will be criticized as "politicizing" the event.
This began almost immediately, and not just on the tin-foil hat sites of the right wing blogosphere. On 8/6/12, one could read, at Breitbart.com, that
Obama Admin Liberals Politicize Sikh Temple Tragedy. And on the very same day, the one and only Michelle Malkin
wrote:
I’ll leave the vulgar politicization of this evil massacre to others. The usual suspects are in full-blown Blame Righty Syndrome mode. They are as ghoulish and galling as the disgusting Westboro publicity hounds.
Now, I would have thought that the term "ghoulish" would have been more applicable to the numerous people who profited from increased gun sales engendered by these various massacres. But apparently not so.
8. The whole thing will be forgotten by the general public (but certainly not the victims) in two weeks, max.
Can't really say what is "forgotten", for surely some will remember. But soon this massacre will fade out of the common memory, just as did the
the Geneva County Massacre (10 killed on 3/10/2009), the
Red Lake Massacre (9 killed on 3/21/2005), and the
Appomattox shootings (8 killed on 1/19/2010), to name just a few.
9. Another massacre will occur. Repeat steps 1 through 8.
Actually the massacre is continuing. At the rate of 32 gun deaths per day, there have been approximately 450 such deaths in the 2 weeks since the Sikh Temple shooting. But of course, ordinary
retail gun violence, at 1 or 2 victims at a time, is nothing new. And even the
shooting of four Louisiana police officers on 8/16/12 doesn't seem to have earned the "massacre" label. For that you have to get one or two people dealing out massive rapid death in a manner that until recent times could only be carried out by a country's armed forces.
But another media-denominated "massacre" will surely come. To save yourself some time, just clip N' save this article.