I grew up religious. People around me in church would hold their hands in the air when they felt especially moved during a worship song. I was never one of those people. But thirteen days after the most prolific mass shooting in U.S. history, I overcame my anxiety and went to a concert. An Imagine Dragons concert. And as Dan Reynolds sang the opening lines of the chorus to “Walking the Wire,” I held my hands in the air with all the religious zeal I never had–and I cried.
I didn’t just cry because “Walking the Wire” is my favorite song, or because it was especially moving (though believe me, it was especially moving). I cried because I thought of those hundreds of people who went out thirteen days before I did to do the exact same thing I was doing: to breathe the same air as their idols, to unite with people through music, to buy overpriced sweatshirts to commemorate the occasion. Only they didn’t make it to hear their favorite song of all time during the encore. Hell, I’m not even sure they made it halfway through the set. Because they were interrupted by the sounds of gunfire and the reality that people around them were falling victim to yet another mass shooting.
The title of “Deadliest Mass Shooting in U.S. History” has been assigned to a shooting four different times in my life to date. I am only twenty years old. Yet, despite all of these shootings, despite all of these people whose loved ones went to school, or to a club, or to a concert and never came home, nothing has changed. Sure, the government likes to talk a lot about change. The NRA just released a statement that they are willing to consider some stricter rules. But that’s just it: they’re willing to consider. How many more people have to leave their homes to do something they’ve always done, or something that they’ve been planning for a while only to never return to those homes before we as a nation finally put our proverbial foot down? Before we finally act on all of these considerations to prevent people from slaughtering their fellow citizens en masse in the middle of what promised to be a great night?
I don’t pretend to be an expert on governmental policy by any means, but it seems to me that we should be making more strides towards real change. Because I think that every single person should have the opportunity to go back home after a concert and re-listen to the album eight times and gush about how Dan Reynolds is probably descended straight from heaven like I did. Music is supposed to bring people together: to heal them, to unite them, to make them feel alive. Why, then, are we still letting gun violence like this tear us apart?