[Meta] Another day, another mass shooting in my country.

I am an American. This is really on of the few subreddits where I would feel comfortable posting this. I apologize for the break from the norm, but I feel like you guys will "get" this better than most of Reddit would.

My country has a problem, but we won't admit to it. American citizens are killing other American citizens, American police are killing American citizens, our political rhetoric at best condones and at worst encourages killing American citizens, and the public is numb to the loss. Maybe calloused would be a better word, like a seamstress who's jabbed herself with a needle so often that she can no longer break the skin my fellow citizens sit back and watch these shootings knowing full well we should mourn yet feeling nothing more than the silent irritation at having to watch yet again as innocent lives are lost.

I know this is a sub dedicated to the dumb and often times ignorant things that I and my fellow Americans say, perhaps for some users there is even a degree of disdain for America and Americans, but these are my people dying and these are my people killing and all of my people are suffering as a result of that. I cannot explain how painful this is for me. Murder happens everywhere, lives are lost regardless of nationality, but here murder comes en masse; we don't hear about one death, we hear about fourteen; we don't hear about one injury, we hear about twenty, and it's my countrymen doing the killing.

This is not ISIS slaughtering whole towns, these are not rebels fighting against what they perceive as a corrupt government, these are not killings at the hands of an invading army, these are my people killing my people. As hard as it is to lose someone you love, it's harder still to know that loss was at the hands of another who you cared for and trusted. It's doubly heartbreaking.

I wish I could believe the lies about gun violence, I wish I still bought into the bullshit, but I can't any longer. Would that I could blame these shootings on mad men, on the mentally ill, on the lone wolves, on the emotionally disturbed, on the chemically intoxicated, but I can't entertain those untruths and delusions. Why did that mad man have a gun that can shoot thirty rounds in a minute with pinpoint accuracy? Why did that mentally ill individual have access to a handgun that can be hidden in a pocket? Why was the lone wolf able to buy a high caliber long gun with accuracy up to a half a mile? Who sold the alcoholic the shotgun he used to murder his entire family? There's a common denominator here, a uniting theme: Guns.

Germany has mentally ill citizens just like the United States does, so why don't we read about mass shootings in Berlin? Great Britain has political extremists just like the United States does, do why don't I read about armed gunmen taking out the patients at a women's health clinic? Australia has drunks just like the United States does, so how come I've never watched a news broadcast proclaiming "Fourteen dead, fourteen wounded at Sydney Opera House?" You already know the answer to those questions.

The contents of r/ShitAmericansSay notwithstanding, my country doesn't suffer from mental illness at extraordinarily higher rates than the rest of the world. We might not be the best educated, but we're not so stupid that we don't recognize the consequences of shooting other humans. We're certainly not inherently more violent than any other people on earth. So what's the difference? We're well fucking armed. This gives the mentally ill, the angry, the sick, the stupid, the fearful the ability to do more damage more quickly than almost anywhere else in the world.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, and I know that some of you may even be looking at today's events with a degree of smugness, but I can't. All I feel is anger and sorrow; sorrow for the lives lost, anger that the killers are my fellow citizens. We are almost literally cutting off our own nose to spite our face and no one sees it, no one is willing to see it. Over and over and over again we keep hurting ourselves, killing ourselves, then fleeing from our responsibility to solve the problem.

Did you know that the United States has had 355 mass shootings in the past 336 days? It's true.

We love our mother Great Britain. We love our father France. We love our brother Australia. We love our confidant Germany. But do we love our own people? No, never.

We have our faults, we have our weaknesses, but do innocent human beings deserve to be killed because we refused to remedy our problems? Never. Not here, not anywhere.

Thanks for indulging me. I feel a little better, a little less enraged now; at least until whatever tomorrow brings.