A Forgotten Group of People in Mass Shootings: The Disabled
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By Sonya Dickerson
Sonya Dickerson is grateful to be a disabled model and best selling author of Diary of A Sick Chick: A Year in the Life of a Chronically Ill Woman. She is the main personality and podcaster on “The Mad Chronically Ill Girl Podcast” available on iTunes and SoundCloud. She enjoys listening to music, cleaning her apartment, and running into the back of your ankles on the street.
If you ask someone what they think of when they think of America, you are likely to get a variety of responses. Apple pie, freedom, bald eagles, or rugged individualism. However, there is something else that Americans have been recognized for and it’s as deeply American as apple pie.
Mass shootings.
I’m nowhere suggesting that the mass shooting was created by Americans alone, nor was this intentional. Some of the worst shootings in the world didn’t happen on American soil. What I am stating is that mass shootings happen so frequently here in this country that somehow, they’ve woven themselves into part of the American landscape.
We even have our own traditions surrounding mass shootings. The news media reports on the horrific incident and soon we’re awash with tweets from politicians sending their “thoughts and prayers”. The media milks the tragedy for all its worth, by showing us heartrending scenes of mourners crying, the looks of utter disbelief, and the words almost as if they were rehearsed and placed on a loop, “I never thought that it could happen here.”
Next, we can see the pundits battle it out on cable network news, angry and shouting, both screaming their opinions at each other with each side simply tightening their resolve, never to come to the table to compromise. However, almost immediately we hear from whack job conspiracy nuts that scream in the faces of victims saying that the mass shooting was nothing more than a mass invention, an event filled with hysterics and crisis actors that move from tragedy to tragedy. One moment they’re acting out a school shooting for the world to see, and the next we see them on as the next…
