It’s hard to say that one mass shooting is worse than the next — other than in the brutal metric of body counts. They’re all different flavors of the same horror. But the news out of this afternoon’s shooting in Buffalo is particularly sobering, shocking, enraging. One of the ten dead was a retired cop working as a security guard at the grocery store. He engaged the shooter and shot him. But it didn’t stop him because the shooter was wearing body armor. That little detail is the one that just stopped me in my tracks.
Police appear certain that the shooting, allegedly by an 18 year old from out of town, was racially motivated, though they haven’t yet discussed the evidence that makes it so clear. Eleven of the thirteen who were shot are Black. Two are white.
