I used to be living in El Paso, Tex., on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019, when at 10:40 within the morning a young man began shooting people within the Walmart within the Cielo Vista Mall. As news of the rampage spread across the town, stores and restaurants abruptly closed. People called relatives and friends to ensure they were protected. Even on the opposite side of the town, the streets were mostly empty by noon.
Contained in the Walmart, 20 people lay lifeless within the shopping aisles, and two more would die of their injuries in the approaching days. Eight of the dead would later be identified as Mexican residents. A pall of stillness descended upon El Paso—and upon Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city just five miles from the shooting site. Time stopped.
A pall of stillness descended upon El Paso—and upon Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city just five miles from the shooting site. Time stopped.
That night I stared out my bedroom window as lightning raced across the El Paso sky. A summer desert monsoon followed. Rain spattered against my window, rinsing desert dust from the glass. But no celestial tears could wash away the blood and carnage of the El Paso nightmare.
The next morning, I woke to the news of a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, wherein nine more people had been killed. It seemed that America had gone mad.
Catastrophic events leave a person, a community or a whole nation in shock. They could cause a rupture within the flow of time that disorients after which moves individuals and communities to reconsider the world around them and their place in it. This epiphany can result in substantive change in a community. I call this experience an “interruption,” a term coined by the late German theologian Johann Baptist Metz. Metz viewed history not as a linear progression but reasonably as a series of catastrophes coming one after one other.
Catastrophic events can move individuals and communities to reconsider the world around them and their place in it.
Mass shootings, just like the murder of 19 children and two of their teachers in Uvalde, Tex., three months ago, regularly cause such interruptions. So do terrorist attacks just like the ones on Sept. 11, 2001. The shock of an interruptive experience awakens people and makes them revisit serious questions. How can we prevent future tragedies? How can God allow such a bloodbath? Who might be held accountable, and who pays, for acts of violence?
Awakenings of this kind also can change people’s hearts, dissolving apathy and stripping away callousness, offering a renewed perspective on life. An interruption is nothing lower than a spiritual experience, though a dark one brought on by crisis and trauma. I compare an interruption to the lightning bolts out my window that night in El Paso—the flash ignited across the dark desert landscape that, for an quick, stops time and lays reality bare.
I had gone to El Paso as a part of my 20 years of research into violence; specifically, I used to be studying the development of the huge, expensive border wall that the Trump administration had said was needed due to unauthorized migrants crossing the border and narco-related violence spilling over into america. Yet when violence struck El Paso on Aug. 3, it got here from inside america, motivated by hatred of Latinos by a deranged, white supremacist. In other words, the violence that America seeks to flee just isn’t extraneous. As for Uvalde, we may never know the intentions of the shooter, but once more, the violence got here from inside. No border wall will protect us from the true threat of our national self.
No border wall will protect us from the true threat of our national self.
Our nation had been “on hold” regarding gun control for many years. Only the interruption of Uvalde—and concurrent violent tragedies—was in a position to end the long political impasse, and the gun control measure recently passed by Congress continues to be inadequate. (Meanwhile, on the identical day that gun reform was passed, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Recent York’s gun law, limiting the power of other states and native governments to limit guns outside the house.)
While a few of us would really like responsible others for violence in america—perhaps migrants—the El Paso and Uvalde interruptions forced us to come back to terms with perpetrators of violence who’re “home-grown” Americans, including white supremacists in addition to disturbed individuals with access to deadly weapons.
So while we’re grateful for any progress on gun control, america must take more substantive motion, or violence will proceed. For now, with the passing of limited gun measures and the Supreme Court ruling, we concurrently have taken a step forward and backward. Sadly, other violent interruptions are undoubtedly forthcoming, and more people will die.
