ABC News: There Have Been More Mass Shootings Than Days In 2023
Recent Maine Mass Shooting Spree Adds To The Annual Firearms Body Count
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
The above cartoon was done in 2016, after one of the numbing number of school mass shootings and then periodically rerun online after particularly high-profile mass shootings. In the United States of Mass Homicide, the cartoon is always — tragically —timely.
The recent mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine claimed 18 innocents dead and 13 wounded. (Update: On Oct. 27th the shooter — an Army Reserve weapons specialist — was found dead from a self-inflicted wound at a nearby river.)
It would be nice to think something will happen to bring some small scrap of sanity to U.S. firearms laws. As a firearms owner, I would like to believe that can happen. But no, that will not happen and the mass killings will continue as a now all-American tradition.
About a year ago, after another bloody tragedy, I offered use of the cartoon to a local newspaper. The editor nervously declined. So I paid $300 to run it as an ad. To its credit, the paper did not bury it on a back page among the garage sale ads, but ran it on the letters-to-the editor page.
Given we have had more mass shootings this year than days of the year — 565 — the cartoon will be as timely tomorrow and the day after … and all the days to come.
The cold, numb callousness of a nation.
Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink
