The Onion
Merely altering the details to reflect the specifics of what happened, satirical news site The Onion has published the same exact mass shooting story five times since 2014.
Titled “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”, the dark, yet poignant article is lightly edited to detail the specific locations and tragic death tolls, yet remains largely identical throughout.
Originally ran back in May 2014 after a shooting at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the article has been republished 4 times since (5 total) — following tragic events such as the shooting at UCSB, Charleston, Oregon, San Bernadino, and now Las Vegas.
The original article reads as:
“In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” 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 five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
The latest version ran after the senseless Las Vegas shooting that left 58 dead was more of the same:
“In the hours following a violent rampage in Las Vegas in which a lone attacker killed more than 50 individuals and seriously injured 400 others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Iowa resident Kyle Rimmels, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” 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.”
While bleak, in typical Onion fashion, it is a remarkably succinct way of describing the hypocrisy that is our nation’s gun laws. The fact of the matter is that American’s gun laws and the death statistics they result in are unlike any other advanced country on Earth, and until the people we put in charge realize that and make tangible change, we’re going to be reading the same heartbreaking headlines, over, and over, and over again, and unfortunately, they won’t be satirical.
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