We woke up Thursday morning to news of another mass shooting, in another city, with another statistic: 12 victims. As a reporter, it feels like I'm doing the same story over, and over again.
"I think it was George Bernard Shaw in the late 1800's that said the worst thing in the world is not hate, but indifference," said Daniel Kanter, senior pastor at First Unitarian Church in Dallas. "We are accepting it. We are getting used to it."
Kanter looked at a list of shootings in the U.S. this year. It was seven pages, single spaced. "It's the 307th shooting in 312 days," Kanter pointed out. "I think we're all feeling the volume of this because it happens almost every day."
It happens so much, it almost feels as though the flag is stuck at half staff.
"What's that flag at half staff for? I'm not sure this week," Kanter said. "Maybe, in our hearts and minds, it's for this entire list."
"I just think it's the survival instinct, the numbness," said Amanda Johnson, an activist with Moms Demand Action. "We're all so busy putting one foot in front of the other, and the headlines on the news are always horrible, so you see it and nod your head, and then you tune out."
Johnson said she couldn't tune out after her sister died by gun suicide.
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"I feel like, for so many people, it takes a straw that breaks the camel's back," Johnson said. "It takes that one shooting that just pushes them over the edge. It strikes some personal chord. It's in their hometown, or maybe it is just the cumulative nature that people just say, 'Enough.'"
Both Johnson and Kanter said common sense gun laws, more focus on mental health should be part of the answer. Today there are just questions.
"There are moments I feel like you do," Kanter said. "You know, what I might just have to stand up there on Sunday and say, I don't know what to do. But sometimes that's gonna have to be a legitimate answer, and we're gonna have to work on it together."
