Don’t Just Be Sad or Angry About the Buffalo Shooting, Take Strategic Action

This is not just about guns. It’s about resisting the natural urge to accept institutionalized antiblackness and racialized violence as normal. The longer we succumb to passivity, the more normal it will become. And the best opportunity to take action? It might surprise you.

“Thoughts & Prayers” a satirical image of a fictional 70s-era action flick based on a common expression of generic support that tends to follow mass shooting tragedies

As time marches forward, there’s a tendency for outrage over tragedies to dissipate. The only reason why the summer of 2020 became such a thing is that people decided not to let the moment pass without taking action. Because this wasn’t a police shooting, though, our justice frameworks that focus on reducing police violence are, while ever necessary, insufficient to respond to this moment.

And I want to be clear about one thing. I don’t have the answer to solve this problem, because there is no one answer.

Complex problems require complex solutions.

In the case of the young white man who was radicalized into racial violence and killed thirteen people at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, a host of complex problematic culprits can be found. Not just the obvious racism and antiblackness, but also abundant access to guns, internet group dynamics that normalize antisocial behavior, toxic masculinity that prioritizes…