Let's All Be Quiet About Mass Shootings

Daily Beast writer calls for a moratorium, a 'wordless groan'
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 3, 2015 12:16 PM CST
Let's All Be Quiet About Mass Shootings
Flowers are left by the side of the road near the site of the mass shooting in San Bernardino.   (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

The mass shooting in San Bernardino has set off familiar refrains from all camps about gun violence and related politics, and Ana Marie Cox at the Daily Beast would prefer a much different reaction for once: silence. "The right ridicules calls for gun safety measures. The left mocks what it perceives to be hollow nostrums about 'thoughts and prayers.' I think they're both right. I think it's time to say nothing at all," she writes. Cox calls for a "moratorium" on print and TV pundits alike, because "I want to share with the world the wordless groan that is only a prayer the grieving have," she writes. "There's nothing left to say, so let's just not say it." Her full column, and some other viewpoints related to the shooting:

  • Counterpoint: Yes, this cycle "gets old," writes Ed Kilgore at New York. But "it's precisely this fatigue, and the underlying assumption that both sides in the perpetual 'gun debate' are equally to blame for its unproductive nature, that is the secret weapon of the NRA and Second Amendment ultras everywhere." Gun-control advocates must speak up loudly after every shooting, he writes, even if conservative "elites find the topic boring." The full column.
  • 'Prayer shaming': The Daily News set off a firestorm with a cover headline belittling Republicans: "God Isn't Fixing This." But Russell Moore at the Washington Post criticizes the "prayer shaming" embodied in that cover and all over social media. "Those of us who watched others mock politicians who called for prayer also felt as though prayer was an unnecessary target along the way. For most people who are religious, prayer is more than just another way of saying 'Message: I care.'" The full column.
  • 'Prayers aren't working': That's the lead paragraph of Rich Schapiro's Daily News roundup of reaction from Republican candidates in the wake of the shooting. They called for prayer but "were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control." The full piece.
(More mass shootings stories.)

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