Once again, we’re reading, writing, listening and watching coverage of a mass shooting. It’s obvious that there’s a problem, and with each passing day of peace, it’s clear that we’re that much closer to another horrific event. What happened in Orlando wasn’t just another shooting, of which there have been nearly a thousand in the last few years. What happened in Orlando was the worst mass shooting in the history of America. We still think of Columbine, or Sandy Hook as the bars set for terror, for innocence shattered, but now we have to admit to ourselves that the grotesque marks made by the sick people involved have been topped and unless something changes, they’ll be topped again.
Tonight, late night hosts around the country had the impossible task of making America laugh again after yet another tragedy, so they addressed the subject head on — America has a gun control problem. We don’t have a liberty problem, no. We are simply not controlling our guns. Gun control =/= President Obama eradicating gun ownership in the United States. We need to control the weapons of destruction that so often fall into the hands of mentally disturbed individuals with a motivation to kill.
Trevor Noah and The Daily Show did their best to make sense of another senseless mass shooting. That’s four “anothers” in one article about mass shootings. One is already too much.
Noah began by considering Obama’s place in history and whether he could’ve ever anticipated such madness:
“I wonder if President Obama ever thought to himself that mass shooting speeches would be such a large part of his job. At this point, he’s hosted 12 State Dinners, but has had to make 16 mass shooting addresses.”
Noah went on to make an appropriate analogy:
“When I was young I didn’t tie my shoelaces… I would run around I would trip on my shoelaces I would fall down and cry. ‘Mommy! Mommy! I fell!’ And my mother would ask, ‘why did you fall?’ ‘Because I tripped.’ ‘Why did you trip?’And she goes, ‘your shoelaces.’ And we realized I fell because of my shoelaces. I’ll tie them then move on. I could’ve said, ‘Mom why are you bringing shoelaces into this conversation? Why are you blaming the shoelaces for something the sidewalk did to my knees? Who even says there’s a connection between anti-shoelaces and falling anyway? You’re violating my right to keep my shoelaces untied!’ I didn’t say that… I realized after falling, after falling a lot, that there was a connection between leaving my shoelaces untied and getting hurt.”
The bottom line is a simple one.
“America needs to make it a lot harder for people who shouldn’t have guns, to get guns.”
