After a shooting that killed six people, including three 9-year-old kids, last Monday in Nashville, I found myself thinking about how we process the ever-growing list of mass gun murders.
For me, each mass shooting adds to the list of places near and far that I’ll forever associate with the day someone, empowered by easy access to plentiful firearms, decided to kill.
I visualize them as pins on a mental map of the communities and locations across the U.S. that has been filling up my whole life. The familiar ones stick with me most: A shopping center I still drive by. A nearby school. A grocery store I went to growing up. These places become inescapable reminders of our leaders’ decades-long acceptance of mass death, and the everyday terror of living in a country where your life could be cut short at any time, at any place, for any reason, by someone with a gun. How many of us have these coordinates accumulating in our minds?
