The cover of the last edition honored the victims and families of the El Paso mass shooting. The day after the paper published, I received a rather abrupt voicemail from a reader asking about the victims of Dayton, OH, and my first thought was, âOh no.â But not because I forgot about them. But because I didnât know…well, not exactly. I was confused. But Iâm not ashamed of the confusion. What I am severely disappointed in is that we live in a world where two shootings basically a country apart can happen concurrently.
When I first learned of the reports, I heard them together as shootings in El Paso and Dayton, and I thought, âThatâs weird. I didnât know there was a Dayton, Texas.â I still thought this was one shooting. For some strange reason, I thought that it occurred kind of on the border between two towns, which isnât the strangest idea, seeing that Spring Hill Mall sits directly on the border of West Dundee and Carpentersville.
To make things worse, when I tried reading more on it, the shootings kept being referred to together, further enforcing my presumption that they were one shooting, though that Dayton thing kept bothering me.
All in all, it was just an oversight based on my confusion and my lack of presuming that we live in a world where two mass shootings happened mostly at the same time. I guess shame on me for that. But in no way was the lack of a mention of the Dayton shootings intentional. Of course, the Sun Day extends its thoughts, prayers, and sympathies to the victims and families of Dayton, OH, and any other community that suffers calamity, especially ones of extreme violence. Our hearts and minds are with you Dayton, OH.
When youâre journalist, others might think that we have our fingers on the pulse of all news, but honestly most journalists I know are so wrapped up in their own news reporting and coverage area, a lot of national and international news slips by.
For instance, I actually didnât know about the tsunami for nearly a month after it happened. Things were pretty tight around my home at that time because it was well before the Sun Day started and I didnât have TV (and a subscription to a newspaper was not affordable), but I kept seeing donation boxes at various stores and kept wondering what this was about. Iâm not even sure how I eventually figured it out.
Again, though, the people of Dayton, OH, were not overlooked. Itâs one thing when a natural disaster strikes (or something deemed an âact of Godâ). Those are terrible enough because theyâre usually so massive in scope and can claim hundreds, if not thousands, of lives at once and displace tens of thousands of individuals. But I hate that there are any acts of violence because these completely senseless and donât have to happen. Theyâre just tragedies born from so many stupid reasons mounting to one really big and terrible stupid motive. I even understand certain wars better than random acts of violence, which need to start being controlled because they seem to be picking up speed.
Ever since the 2012 James Holmes mass shooting in an Aurora, CO, movie theater, it seems there have been at least one, if not, three, mass shootings per year. Iâm pretty sick of it at this point. Arenât you?
