One Death is a Tragedy, One Million Deaths is a Statistic.

"On Friday, July 20, 2012, just after midnight, a gunman opened fire during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in a Century movie theater in Aurora, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. The gunman, acting alone and dressed in protective clothing, entered the theater and set off tactical grenades, then opened fire with multiple firearms on the theatergoers. The attack was one of the largest mass shootings in terms of number of casualties in United States history. James Eagan Holmes was arrested in connection with the crime."

- excerpt from the Wikipedia entry about Aurora, Colorado.

I heard about the news roughly two days later and I was shocked. Sadly for me, not because of the sheer atrocity of it, but because of the thought that I had. "Oh what? Again?"

After I realised my complete and utter insensitivity to the subject, I started to become angry, mainly because I know nothing will be done and it left me wondering. What does it take for US politics to do something about the weapons laws in that country. Granted, not only the US had shootings, but Europe, too. Nonetheless, the laws are the most lax in US of A. Chances are that they will do nothing and a couple of years later, another one will happen and the world mourns once more (after more research, I have to correct myself from a couple of years later to "a couple of months later")

These killings are senseless and a great majority of them could be prevented if it wasn't for the high percentage of gun nuts in the US who feel great with some cold iron in their hand as a penis substitute (NRA anyone? "From my cold, dead hands" anyone?). As a European, this is complete nuts to me.

When Americans say to me that they have firearms in the house to protect themselves, I find this shortsighted. It is so easy to get guns over there, it is safe to assume that when they have guns, so will the people who want to rob, burgle, whatever you. So, let's say a burglar comes into your house with a gun. You notice him and storm out with your shotgun still half asleep. He finds this a threatening gesture (No shit! I would!) and he's high on adrenaline anyways, so he decides to shoot you and leg it or you shoot him, because you are high on adrenaline. Either way one person ends up gravely injured or dead.

If guns were heavily regulated or banned, people would have maybe knifes or clubs. This could still end deadly or with grievous injury, but the chance is much smaller and if one guy has a gun, the odds are higher, he won't fire it, because the situation is clear who has the upper hand... and the little fact that those stand offs would be rarer occurrences.

Anyhow, back to my main point. Why are US politicians not doing anything?!? I took the liberty of doing some wikipedia and google research. I wanted to see how many school shootings (granted this was not a school shooting, but the man was young and a student, so who's counting) there were since the first one in my memory, which was Columbine, 20.04.1999. But after a surprisingly high amount of hits and this very interesting wikipedia article which summarised all school shootings since the early beginnings, I decided to choose my birth year, 1982 as a start date. I am impressed and also appalled by the sheer volume of information on this topic.

According to that table since 1982 there have been a grand total of 111 (!!!) shooting incidents at US-American schools (European shootings are rarer, but they do occur). A hundred and eleven! This is not counting the shootings by students in cinemas and grocery stores or wherever, never mind gang-related shootings. The trend is more horrible when looking at it by year. In the 80s, there were 9 incidents with 14 mortally wounded victims. The 1990s already have that number rising to 30 incidents and 66 victims (The infamous Columbine shooting falls under that 10 year period). This trend is rising even further according to the statistic from 2000 to 2009 with no less than 50 incidents in the US (there were sadly also several in Europe a total of 12 incidents) and 102 victims. Bear in mind, this is only at schools in the country (!!!). I must admit, I find this number staggering and it leaves me speechless as to the inability of US politicians to take actions. If this carries on and the trend will rise further, we can look at the numbers from 2010 to 2012. According to that, there have been so far 22 incidents with 31 victims. You don't have to be a maths genius to calculate that this number should rise for the period of 2010-2019 to grand total of 73 incidents!!!

Unfortunately, politicians will do no such thing and regulate fire arms even further or ban them outright. They are more interested in talking about evil video games and other triggers. Why don't take away their tools! It's the tools that kill not the playing of video games nor listening to satanic heavy metal/rock nor any other artistic outlet. As it stands, I think this will make the above calculation sadly soon a reality and every time after about 6 months, those who were unaffected by the tragedy, will live to Stalin's famous quote:

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

As we slowly add another shooting to the list of shootings...