opinion

Mass shooting in Mesa: Horrible is the new normal

It shocks us. It always shocks us. Particularly when it happens in the state where we live, the county where we live, the city where we live. We can't help but be shocked.

But it no longer surprises us.

We knows these things will happen. Sooner or later. Even here.

We tell one another how horrible it is. Because that's true, but we're not surprised. One of the worst things about news like this is that horrible is the new normal.

When news broke that a gunman had shot six people and killed at least one Wednesday morning in Mesa, the Internet and social media world kicked into high gear.

We all know the routine. We've had plenty of practice from incidents all over the country. We check Twitter. We have phone alerts. We sign on to the nearest computer for instant updates from sites like azcentral.com and other local news operations. From television stations. From radio.

Word got out quickly Wednesday morning that the shooter was a White man in his 40s, bald head with a large tattoo on his neck. That some of the victims were connected to the East Valley Institute of Technology and a small restaurant operated by students. That the nearby community college campus was locked down.

Police SWAT teams and others were searching for the gunman.

Photos from the scene:

There's little that most of us could do. Local residents were told to stay inside, try not to get in the way of police and keep an eye out. The rest of us were told to stay away.

And so, for us, news of a mass shooting becomes a waiting game. Not the old-fashioned kind in which we would check the television news later in the day or read the next morning's newspaper.

It's the new way, the way we've learned in the past couple of years, where every scrap of information is posted online instantaneously and becomes fact, even when it isn't.

In this case we knew early on that at least one person was killed in Mesa and several others were injured. But we didn't know who and we don't know why. That would come later.

We simply knew that something like this was bound to happen somewhere. Soon. Harvard University researchers last year said that mass shootings since 2011 occur on average every 64 days.

That's the new normal, statistically defined. An army of news professionals reports on each one of these events, trying as best we can to do some good. To gather information. To explain the unexplainable.

The same will be true of this event, beginning early Wednesday afternoon when a suspect was caught.

Following the mass shooting near Tucson, President Barack Obama invoked the name of the youngest victim, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.

"I want us to live up to her expectations," Obama said. "All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."

We haven't yet.

And even with all this new technology and instantaneous information the only useful action available to most of us is something very old-fashioned.

We pray for the dead and the injured.

We hope for the best.