After every mass US shooting, The Onion posts exactly the same article
The satirical American news network The Onion has a knack for encapsulating a moment or a feeling in a headline.
Most of their output nutshells musings on everyday life - or completely fabricated but very funny news stories. Depending on how reflective you feel.
Occasionally they manage to say something about a real-life event that is uniquely profound and accurate that rises above satire or comedy.
One particular area that they have managed to perfectly sum up with a few "quotes" is America's ongoing problems with gun control and mass shootings.
Following the massacre in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, where a lone gunman claimed 8 lives, six of them Asian, they shared an article titled:
'No Way To Prevent This' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
As you can guess the article strongly highlights facts about America has now experienced more than half of the world's last 50 mass shootings and people in the country are 20 times more likely to die due to gun violence than anything else.
Despite all this the ‘people’ they speak to in the article are resigned to the fact that there is nothing anyone can do about the escalating rise of these massacres.
Quotes from ‘residents’ in the article reads as follows:
This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them
It’s a shame, but what can we do?
There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.
Apart from this being a poignant comment of the lack of movement on gun control in America it is proving to be an evergreen article for The Onion.
As of yesterday they have now shared the same article no fewer than seven times, usually following mass shootings.
Each time the article has been repurposed for a different shooting, with a few names changed here and there but the message remains the same.
They first published it related to the Isla Vista killings in southern California in 2014.
Then again in 2015 about the Umpqua Community College shooting in southwestern Oregon.
Prior to Sutherland Springs the last time they shared it was after the Las Vegas massacre in October 2017.
Every single time the article end on a few brutally honest facts.
At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as 'helpless.'
HT The Onion
More: Comedy show perfectly sums up America's problem with guns