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Among all the things you can't count on in this world, count on this: in the week between when I wrote this introduction and you read it, there will undoubtedly have been 10 or more mass shootings in America. After all, last month there were at least 48 in this country. (I counted them myself at the Gun Violence Archive.) Of course, none of this should be faintly surprising to anyone who watches the TV news. We live in a land where there are more guns than people.
The U.S. is, in fact, by far the most over-armed country on the planet. In 2018, Americans reportedly possessed almost 400 million guns (no, that is not a misprint!) and that was before gun-buying soared from about 13 million annually to 20 million in the pandemic years. Worse yet, the weaponry itself is growing more deadly. By 2020, about 20 million of those guns were AR-15-style weapons and their popularity only seems to be growing, as does that of semiautomatic pistols. And given that Congress will do nothing about limiting gun ownership in this country in any imaginable future (and neither will the Supreme Court), you know perfectly well what's going to be a significant and repeated news story this year, just as it was last year and the year before that and the year before that.
Among all the things you can't foresee in this strange world of ours, mass killings are a predictable part of American life. Perhaps the only strange aspect of any of this is that I'm writing about it to introduce a piece by TomDispatch regular, author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, and former New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte on the hit Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin took on a football field last month. You know, the one that, for days, seemed to sweep even mass killings off-screen. But if so, blame Lipsyte, not me, since, as you'll see, he brings up that very subject in considering why -- as so many of us head for our TVs to watch the Super Bowl -- so little is done about the violence that's the very beating heart of America's favorite sport.
Now, reach for the popcorn, and consider what he has to say before you turn on your TV. Tom
Why Damar Hamlin Didn't Die for Our Sins
The Super Bowl After the Big Hit
The echoes still linger from that national sigh of relief last month when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, slammed into cardiac arrest during a game on January 2nd, was declared out of danger. It was a justified sigh. A vibrant young life had been spared.
But was that really what the nation was relieved about? If football fans had been so invested in the health and safety of the players, why were some 23.8 million of them watching that game in the first place?
By now, everybody should be aware of the incremental deadly damage inflicted on players' brains in any game, so why will 200 million or more of us be watching the Super Bowl on February 12th?
That may be one of those unanswerable "Why do fools fall in love?" questions, but just thinking about it seems like a worthwhile exercise in everyday sociology. So here are my questions in response: Is it because we've evolved into people indifferent to the pain of others? Or maybe because many of us, as part of an evolutionary survival response, are hardwired to enjoy violence?
And while I'm at it, let me ask you one other question: Should we do something about it -- like cancelling football?
Jacked Up
I think most of those who saw the Hamlin hit and heard the news about his recovery were sighing with relief not for him but for themselves, given the guilty pleasure of watching someone "jacked up" -- an old ESPN phrase all but banned these days but still descriptive of one of football's major thrills and horrors. I doubt anyone was rooting for an actual kill shot. Still, I suspect that, however unwittingly, many viewers were longing for the sensation that might accompany one, followed quickly by the usual cathartic release of a player lurching back onto his feet and being helped off the field, while giving his teammates a thumbs-up. (I'm okay, bros, so you're okay, too!)
But is everyone really okay, especially us spectators? And what, if anything, happens next? A day after the Hamlin hit, a talk-show host asked me what I thought might result from Americans viewing the prospect of death in such an up-close-and-personal fashion on their favorite TV show.
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