In April alone, there have been 27 separate instances of mass shootings in the United States, with 20 deaths and more than 130 injuries, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
With more mass shootings than days in the month thus far, these numbers are alarming to say the least. And yet, many of us will read this statistic and continue with our days without significant interruption to our lives. Why is that? Are people becoming too calloused?
Well, yes and no.
People are bombarded with death and casualty in the news on a daily basis. With the internet and access to all of the world’s collective knowledge at our fingertips at any given time, we are bombarded with too much information. Something has to be filtered out. Who among us hasn’t been scrolling on their phone or laptop, paused for a few seconds to read “x number have people have died in a tragic accident,” and continued scrolling?
People are also reading…
Though seemingly callous, this is adaptive. If every piece of negative media we read or saw emotionally touched us, we would never be able to continue on with our work, school, or other life responsibilities to be fully functioning humans. If we let the sheer weight of these losses affect us each and every time, we would never be able to continue forward with what our day calls for.
Therefore, many of us move forward by numbing ourselves to the realities of the world. This choice is not a moral failing of society. In fact, it may not be a conscious choice at all.
Rather, it is a consequence of psychic numbing, or the idea that people tend to have less compassion towards the suffering of a large number of others. Focusing on mass casualty, as many news line headlines do, can lead to less empathy or desires for help, as found by researcher Paul Slovic and his colleagues. Numbing rises and compassion drops as the victim numbers climb. Seemingly contradictory, we tend to have more compassion when there are fewer victims.
But why? Much of this phenomenon is due to the way information is presented to us.
Compassion comes from feeling emotionally moved or connected to an event. Seeing the words “20 mass shootings” written out may create a small ping of sadness or fear but typically does not evoke a strong emotional reaction. Or, at the very least, this reaction is not long lasting until it is replaced by the next hit of social media we consume.
Additionally, numbers alone cannot capture the weight of human lives, whether it be 10 or 10,000; it is hard for us to conceptualize numbers in the way that photos and lived experiences may evoke emotion.
Finally, we become desensitized and less affected the more media we consume.
However, while psychic numbing may not be entirely a callous response, it leads to a diffusion of responsibility. We may think to ourselves that other people know gun violence is a problem — they are seeing these statistics too — but it isn’t on us to fix it.
But if everyone thinks like that, nothing will ever be accomplished. Each of us needs to take ownership of our own responsibility for gun violence and fight against psychic numbing.
Therefore, by finding common humanity and similarity with gun violence victims, as well as seeing them as individuals rather than a mass conglomerate of casualty, we may begin to break through this numbing and reclaim ownership of this epidemic.
News outlets are urged to post pictures and facts about the victim’s lives, like what they do for fun and the name of their favorite animal, in efforts to humanize them. People can strive to try to find aspects of themselves in the victims so strengthen their commitment towards action and policy change.
Missouri has among the highest firearms death rates among the states, a trend that has emerged as state leaders have methodically loosened firearms restrictions over the past few years. Voters can reverse that trend by prioritizing rational gun policy when they vote for statewide officials, state legislators and ballot initiatives.
The upcoming elections are an excellent place to start turning the tide away from apathy and towards action. I’m tired of being numb, aren’t you?