When we talk about mass shootings, extreme emotional reactions all over a spectrum are assertively pressed into the narrative. But we don’t stop to ask what exactly it means 'to keep and bear arms’, and what exactly is the definition of a ‘mass shooting’. The right to ‘bear arms’ indicates a right to self-defense by whatever means that puts you on equal ground with those that are approaching you with intent to cause harm. in fact, the Brown Bess musket, a ‘weapon of war’ used by the British during the American Revolution, is the same musket used by the civilian colonists. A ‘mass shooting’ is defined as four or more people being shot. When cities like Chicago, with strict gun control, see 51 people shot over Memorial Day weekend, or when a woman pulls out a legal handgun and kills an active shooter in West Virginia, nobody wants to publish the stories because they indicate gun control allows for more crime, and private ownership stops killing But when copycats, psychopaths, mentally ill people, and criminals shoot people within a narrative, it becomes the only thing anyone is concerned with despite the fact that only four people being shot is a 'mass' shooting, and the number of firearm victimizations in the U.S. declined by 131,000 from 2019 to 2020, according to the bureau justice statistics.

But so-called mass shooting cannot actually be a ‘mass’ event, because that involves far more than four people. The word is redefined to imply something even worse than the tragedy that just occurred. This is why every story tells us about a shooting with words like slaughter, massacre, or slaying. Despite shootings happening every day, until one fits with the narrative, there’s virtually no attention, or they are passed over for stories about foreign wars and positive cases of a particle in the body. These are reasons why the media won’t talk about Chicago or West Virginia. Now, like clockwork, the number one issue for most voters in the midterm election is gun violence, after abortion.

We overlook all of this while subconsciously absorbing the numerical sequences that communicate to us an underlying ritual.