The release of security camera footage from last week’s Washington Navy Yard shooting makes me wonder: what’s the point of security cameras? They are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and are undoubtedly helpful after the fact in identifying and capturing wanted subjects who have fled and are at large. But is anyone watching them in real time? It would seem that in Washington no one was. If anyone had been, an alert could have been sounded and lives could have been saved.
On a related note, Slate.com has compiled these sobering statistics: In the past five years, there has been a mass shooting, on average, every three months. There have been five so far this year. Since the Newtown, Conn. massacre of 20 first-graders and 6 adults last December, 24,580 people have been shot to death in the U.S. “Most of these deaths…barely registered in public awareness,” commented The Week.
At a memorial service in Newtown last December, President Obama said, “These tragedies must end.” Ah, but how? That is the question.