There were lots of topics discussed on the Sunday shows this week, but one topic was noticeably missing: the Saturday night shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Chris Hayes noticed, though, and he called it out. Good for him.
It seems as though this country is able to stay angry at a lot of things, but not gun violence. We're lucky if it scores a couple of news cycles before we go back to just accepting the status quo.
Transcript via Media Matters:
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): That was the president speaking today at the National Governors Association referring to gun violence over the weekend including a particularly horrifying case which took place in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Jason Brian Dalton, a 45 year old father of two was charged today with six counts of murder for a shooting spree that took place over six hours in Kalamazoo Saturday. Dalton who was moonlighting as an Uber driver is accused of carrying out the shootings in three separate locations leaving six people dead and two more injured.
Police say the victims appear to have been chosen at random. The suspect continued to pick up passengers after the bloodshed began. President Obama called the mayor of Kalamazoo and local law enforcement to offer federal support in the investigation. Dalton had no criminal record and Uber said in a statement today that he had passed a background check.
While authorities say they have not determined a motive right now, it does not appear to be any evidence of a connection to say ISIS or a foreign jihadi group.
While the president's remarks today relating the San Bernardino massacre to shootings in the past several days, point to a fundamental truth about our society and political system's disparate levels of tolerance where violence committed by people who we view as quote "the enemy" or as terrorist and the violence that Americans inflict on each other.
Think for a second about how different the reaction would be if, in fact, a social media post pledging loyalty to ISIS had been uncovered in the wake of this mass murder in Kalamazoo.
But since there is no such connection, or at least none discovered yet, it's just another day in America with guns.
Of course it's not foreign terrorists. It's just a guy with a gun who maybe was a Good Guy With A Gun until he wasn't.
