Larry D. Bernstein feels an unnatural sense of not-caredness about the latest public shooting, even though it happened five minutes from his house. Should he?
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I should care. I should be worked up.
Scared.
Nervous.
I should feel something.
Yet, I don’t care.
I’m trying to care.
Earlier this week, a gunman entered the Garden State Plaza mall in New Jersey at 9:30 P.M. He fired a number of shots at the security cameras. Customers and store workers were trapped for hours as police searched for the gunman. Police found the gunman dead at 3:20 A.M. due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head from a rifle.
The 20-year-old was a known drug dealer. The news outlets have reported his goal was to die by the hand of police in a blaze of glory. Why exactly he wanted this type of end? Well, that has not been reported or is simply unknown.
The Garden State Plaza, the biggest mall in New Jersey, is located 5 minutes from where I live. I have seen many movies at the movie theater that anchors the Garden State Plaza. I have put my children on the carousel that dots one of the main thoroughfares of the Garden State Plaza. I have checked out clothes at the Macys located in the Garden State Plaza.
So, this madman shooting up the place should bother me – shouldn’t it?
It’s close to home. I could have been there. My wife and children could have been there. I actually know someone who was there (the boys’ babysitter).
But I can’t seem to get too worked up about it.
It’s not because no one was murdered. Thank G-d a million times that a greater human tragedy did not occur, other than a drugged out 20-year-old wasting his life in a terribly sad way.
No, that’s not it.
I never thought that I lived in a bubble and was safe from tragedy. I watch the news and read the newspaper. Hell, I live just outside of New York City and travel the city every day. I am not naïve.
Everyone I know, myself included, has a 9/11 story.
I shook my head and fought back tears at other such events throughout the country and beyond.
But for the Garden State Plaza shooting, I am indifferent. I don’t really feel a need to know all the details. It happened and it sucks. I get that. Okay, what’s next?
This is our world today. Random shootings in public places happen. As much as it sickens me to think, read, and write that, I know it’s true. And there ain’t a damn thing that I or anyone can else do about it.
Maybe, I am becoming desensitized. What choice do I have?
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Details of the event were gleaned from the Newark Star Ledger.
Originally published on larrydbernstein.com
Photo: (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
I agree with you Laurie. However, the degrees of seperation were not so great in this instance. So, I think its a case of violence fatigue or reaction to violence fatigue.
Interesting post Larry, I think that the world is so full of violence that these events tend to elicit very little response from those away from the action. It all comes down to degrees of separation.
The trouble seems to be that we are getting used to what used to shock us and/or revolt us. There is probably an element of self-preservation in our acceptance, together with the fact that, as you wisely remark, we cannot do a damned thing about it. Yet as educators we have a chance to reach some hidden crevice in our students’ souls. Most of the times it will amount to preaching in the desert, but if one listens, and this one reproduces what we succeeded in conveying, perhaps there is still hope.
I think self-preservation is exactly the right diagnosis.It’s kind of scary.
As an English teacher, opportunities clearly exist in espousing ideas, morals, etc. I try to take these opportunities but not to be too heavy handed.
I sadly sort of feel the same way as you, I hear about one of these stories and sort of just shrug and disregard it as “another one.” What does go through my head though whenever I hear one of these is, “what if this was at work?” It’s not something I think about or dwell on a lot but I was just curious, as a fellow HS English teacher, if this elicited the same reaction in you at all.
It would be chaos at my school. We do have drills but I find it hard to believe kids would act as instructed. Too many would strive to be a vigilanate.