Gee & Ursula: Each mass shooting now just a ‘blip on the screen’
Apr 19, 2021, 1:03 PM
People lay flowers in honor of the deceased during a vigil in Monument Circle on April 18, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The vigil was held in the wake of a mass shooting at a FedEx Ground Facility that left at least eight people dead and five wounded on the evening of April 15. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
It was another weekend of mass shootings across the country. Three people were killed in a shooting near Austin, Texas. And then in Kenosha, Wisconsin, three men were killed, and three others were injured after a shooting at a bar.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been nearly 150 mass shootings across the country.
“It’s not to sound callous, but at some point I can’t even keep track of where they’re all happening,” KIRO Radio host Ursula Reutin admitted.
Two recent mass shootings reignite local, national gun control discussions
Included in a long list of locations and cities that have had a mass shooting in 2021 — typically defined as involving four or more people — was Seattle.
“We had to look up where the one in Seattle happened, and that was in the Central District recently,” Ursula said. “Something needs to be done. But what is that? It just seems like we keep talking about it each and every single time, and yet very little changes. Right now it seems like whether it’s copycats or it’s become kind of this contagion effect — actually there is some research that shows that each new shooting is likely to spark another one — we are in a very bad cycle right now.”
“Very bad cycle,” co-host Gee Scott agreed. “No matter where you side when it comes to gun reform, it is a very bad cycle, and one in which I don’t believe that we can get this toothpaste back into the tube.”
Gee believes that there have been so many recent shootings that, sadly, most of us have probably mixed up which mass shooting was which.
“Like, wait, which one? Wait, is this in Texas? Oh wait, no, this is Wisconsin? Because it’s happening so rapid, so much so that we don’t even stop anymore,” Gee said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, did you hear about what happened in Austin, Texas?’ ‘Oh yeah. That’s crazy. Anyways, so what’s for dinner?'”
“Where as before, if we go back to our past, right? You go back to, let’s say Columbine, … you guys remember, the nation stopped during those times,” he added.
“We could talk about the names of the victims. We could talk about, unfortunately, the people involved, knew all the details, what was learned, what they did,” Ursula said.
“Now it’s become a blip on the screen, and it’s scary,” Gee noted.
Listen to Gee & Ursula’s conversation below:
Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
