On Saturday night, three people were shot outside Nationals Park, the gunshots clearly audible within the stadium and on television broadcasts. It was a terrifying scene, with spectators—rightly fearing a mass shooting was in progress—scrambling for safety and players ushering family, friends, and fans onto the field and into the shelter of dugouts. There are moments in which the current culture, for better or worse, is reflected clearly. This was one of them.
One night prior, about two miles south-southeast, six people were shot, one of them a six-year-old girl who was killed. The incident received little attention, tragic but not altogether uncommon, and far in a physical sense from anything like a Major League Baseball game. There are moments in which the current culture, for better or worse, is reflected clearly. This was one of them.
Homicide rose in the United States in 2020. Preliminary FBI data suggests the murder rate rose by 25%. Overall violent crime was up much less, just three percent, even with the murder increase. Property crime decreased. We’re far from the peak of the early 1990’s, but the murder rate rose in 2020. Substantially.
It’s interesting, talking about this in specific cities, how much people talk about where the violence occurs, at least among my predominantly safe-and-comfortable social circles. They don’t, in my experience, talk much about the tragedies themselves. They talk about where they happened. In Chicago, it’s often, “[incident] even happened in Lincoln Park.” In speaking with a friend of a friend from Atlanta last month, it was mentioned that shootings had occurred “even in Midtown.” This is a fair response—on one side, occurrences of violence in statistically safer areas are evidence of an overall surge; on another, fear for one’s personal safety naturally and rightly rises when violence occurs close to home. But it’s also sad, because it demonstrates an embarrassing truth about these tragedies: For many of us, individual incidents of violence are only tragic when there’s a personal tie. We can be troubled by the overall existence of such violence. We can want it to be solved. But we don’t enter that emotional sphere in any way but a voluntary way unless there is a personal tie drawing us in: A feature story about the victims. An intersection we frequent. A harrowing video from a baseball game.
This is all natural, of course. It’s sad, but it’s natural. Repeated contact with these matters in an individual manner is numbing. There is only so much space in the news, and the news is an industry from which we demand variety. Shootings go unmentioned. Terror goes unmentioned. Death goes unmentioned. Until it happens outside a baseball game.
But while it may be natural, it’s unreasonable as well. It’s unreasonable that people die, cut down by one another with years upon years upon years of life left ahead, and we bat no eyes. We, who purport to value life so dearly. We, who purport to care about our neighbors.
And of course, it’s hard to bring these things up for fear of stumbling upon a culture war. Discussion of urban violence is rife with dog whistles. Lament of gun deaths can be quickly turned upon the lamenter in some attempted ambush of political persuasion. Action, of course, is necessary, but so many of us look at hammers all day and so many of us look at screwdrivers that a shooting becomes a nail to some and a screw to others and it’s not a nail and it’s not a screw, it’s a shooting. It’s the sound of gunshots. It’s bullets whizzing instantly across the air. It’s terror, and it’s pain, and so often it’s death. Terror for those in a baseball stadium. Pain for the fan who left the game early. Death for a six-year-old girl two miles across the Anacostia.
It’s hard to notice, most of the time. It’s hard to hear. And it’s fair—so, so fair—to react more largely when it happens outside a baseball stadium, because it’s not just grief at that point, it’s fear, and valid fear.
But we can’t just listen when we’re afraid. And we can’t just listen when we’re looking for a nail or a screw. We need to listen every time. We need to grieve every time. Until we figure this out. Until the commonness is gone. Until the numbness has no reason to remain.
