The grim anniversary this weekend of the mass shooting at a McDonald’s in San Diego’s San Ysidro neighborhood also is a grim reminder of what has happened since that Wednesday afternoon July 18th of 1984.
That was the day a 41-year-old gunman walked into the most unlikely place for a shooting, America’s most famous fast-food restaurants for kids and their families, and opened fire. He shot and killed 21 people and wounded 19, many of them children, before a San Diego police sniper killed him 77 minutes after the shooting had started.
At the time it was the worst mass shooting in America. And it sent shock waves across the country.
Seven years later, it was surpassed as the worst one ever when 23 people were killed and 27 wounded when a gunman opened fire in a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen Texas. According to the historical record, since the McDonalds massacre 37 years ago this Sunday, there have been close to 1,000 people killed and close to 15-hundred wounded in mass shootings in which at least three people have been killed.
And since that day in 1984, solutions to stopping the mass shootings in America continue to elude us. And during all these years, the arguments have gone on over what to do about it as the mass shootings have gone on.
37 years later we keep hoping and praying for an end to them.
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