On August 26, 2018 a man walked into the EA Sports’s Madden NFL 19 championship series being held in Jacksonville, Florida, and opened fire. He killed 2 people, Eli Clayton, 22, and Taylor Robertson, 27, and injured 13 others before turning the gun on himself. This championship was being broadcasted online when the shooting started until the video was cut off, leaving those who were watching from home wondering what just happened. This shooting is the latest in a string of mass shootings that have occurred within the past few years.
The aftermath of any shooting leaves many questions, the main one usually being about the shooter’s motive. In this case, there were reports that the violence was driven by the gunman losing a round of the tournament, which is being investigated. If these reports prove to be true, then two young men lost their lives by the hand of someone angry over losing a game. They lost their lives because someone couldn’t take losing in stride and simply try again next year.
Frankly, this entire tragedy baffles me. That isn’t to say none of the other mass shootings don’t do the same, but this one for some reason feels different. The fact that someone lost and then decided to buy a gun and shoot up a tournament is incomprehensible to me. I found a tweet, written the day of the shooting, that speaks of how men aren’t allowed to lose, how they are taught that losing makes them weak and incompetent. It finishes by saying “We teach men to reclaim pride with violence. And then we give them guns.”
This hits the nail on the head, so to speak. It’s not uncommon to see in the news a woman being killed because she rejected a man’s advances or for a man to kill their partner who left them. Men, particularly white men, who are responsible for a majority of these shootings, are taught from a young age to never lose, to always be victorious no matter the cost, including at the expense of others. So why does anyone expect this shooting to be any different? While some may wish to know the exact motivation this man had for committing this horrible act of violence, it all boils down to a violent white man who got angry at something not going his way and retaliated with a gun.
And, just like most of the previous mass shootings, calls for change will largely be ignored by those who can enact change. Anyone who tries to call out those lawmakers who only offer their thoughts and prayers and don’t try to change anything is met with people telling them to not politicize it. And yet, these same people used the murder of Mollie Tibbets to try and further their political agenda since her killer is supposedly undocumented. But because the Jacksonville shooter was a white male, certain politicians cannot use him to further their own bigoted ideals and instead will largely ignore the issue or blame it on a completely unrelated cause, such as mental illness. There are those who continue to call for change with regards to gun control and, for now, this is all we really can do in addition to supporting politicians who support gun reform in the voting booth.