Another day and nothing changes

Justin Yost, Staff Writer

Another day in America, and another mass shooting. This time during a Madden video game tournament in Jacksonville Florida.

David Katz, a professional Madden player, opened fire at the GLHF Game Bar in a downtown shopping and dining center. The shooting left two dead and 10 more injured. Katz was participating in the tournament and lost earlier in the day. Fellow gamers said he was really upset and left shortly after losing.

The tournament was being broadcast on the popular video game streaming website Twitch. Katz had a history of mental health issues according to his parents’ divorce records obtained by CNN. He was placed on a psychological medicine to help treat schizophrenia. His father said he objected to Katz being on the medicine saying he never saw any signs of anything wrong with him. It is reported that Katz was only targeting other gamers in his attack and did not shoot fans of the event or patrons in the mall.

I don’t know what to say about mass shootings anymore. It seems every other week another shooting takes place and I have to sit here and talk about it. I feel sick every time I have to look up details and watch videos of shootings. How anyone can see these details and not feel like they need to do something to help change doesn’t make sense to me. But yet we see more conservative voices sending their thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, while more liberal voices call for change. Then the conservative voices fire back saying it’s too soon to talk about gun control. My question is when is enough time to talk about it?

There have been over 200 mass shootings so far in 2018. This is excluding gang violence, or this statistic would be much greater. And we have yet to see any meaningful congressional actions being taken. President Donald Trump had what was essentially a photo op after the Marjory Douglas High School shooting also in Florida. Senator Marco Rubio tweeted out his thoughts and prayers to the victims of the shooting, but that wasn’t enough for David Hogg, a survivor of the Marjory Douglas shooting. Hogg asked Rubio in tweet how many shootings in his state would be enough before he did something.

This is a fair question to ask not only to Rubio, but to every senator Republican and Democrat. How many times will we have to sit here and read or watch videos of mass shootings before we do something?