Mass shootings aren’t a tragedy

Pastor Matthew Best
5 min readJan 26, 2023

It’s difficult to keep track of the mass shootings in this nation. As I write, I have to keep searching to find out how many mass shootings there are. One article tells me 33. Nope. Wrong. The next tells me there have been 36 so far this year. Nope. Wrong again. It’s 39 as of January 23. I’m just going to stop there because frankly that’s appalling.

I’m sick of calling these a tragedy.

Tragedy is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

2 a: a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force…

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Pastor Matthew Best

My name is Matthew Best. I’m an ELCA (Lutheran) pastor who attempts to translate church and churchy stuff into everyday language.