“Sorry to be blunt, but we don’t care about US mass shootings. Especially as the lead story in our news. America is unable to change itself. I’m not sure we need to be reminded of that.”

That’s the text message that greeted me when I walked into my radio studio on Monday morning.

It was a shockingly sad news day. A sweet sixteenth birthday party was the latest mass shooting in the USA. Four young people were killed and 32 friends were injured. They were dancing. Then they were dead.

Police were still searching for the shooter. What possible motive could there be for such violence? An Alabaman police officer pleaded for patience as he sought justice. A vigil was underway. Thoughts and prayers. You know the drill.

The birthday party shooting was the lead story in news bulletins across Australia when most people woke up this week. Another American horror show. I’m not sure anyone is shocked to hear of another mass shooting in the US and that’s terrifyingly sad. It’s a permanent part of life in the land of the free. It’s the details that turn your stomach. The names, the faces, the families.

Do we have an ethical responsibility to take on that grief?

Because I think that’s partly what the aggrieved text message was about when I stepped into my radio studio this week. A glass bubble where I talk into a microphone and never know for sure what stories might resonate with listeners. Sometimes it’s a ridiculous moment like a three clawed crab or a local issue stirring emotion. Dog attacks, phones at school or another argument about the Gabba. And we have our share of horror stories here in Australia. Child maltreatment, the search for a body in the bin, racism in sport or politics. We have our pain and our shame.

But there’s a hopelessness when you hear of another mass shooting in America. And this week my listeners told me of their despair unprompted.

So I probed for more. When there’s a mass shooting in the US, should it lead the news in Australia? Some listeners said no. Others disagreed.

“I think it is important to remind us here in Australia of the the importance of strict guns laws.”

“Not talking about it promotes naivety.”

Others simply lamented the long history of gun violence in America. There was no optimism.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a research group who track shootings, there have been 164 mass shootings this year alone. A mass shooting is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot or killed.

You can look at a blood spattered map of America that is populated with a series of red dots to mark fatalities on the GVA website. Americans have been murdered at schools, a bank, a dance studio, in their own homes and in public streets in 2023.

In fact, there’ve been more mass shootings than days in this year. In each of the last three years in America, there have been more than 600 mass shootings. Almost an average of two a day. I shudder to think of a local news bulletin in each of those 50 states.

So, is it an act of morality for us to pay attention? To condemn, to plead, to contrast gun control strategies. It’s a bizarre act of repetition that plays out so frequently, it’s lost meaning.

Remember the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. On a cold December morning, 20 children aged 6 and 7 were killed. The first call to 911 was made at 9:30am. Those children should have been singing songs and perfecting their pencil grips.

I remember thinking at the time that surely America would be so distressed that change would come. The trauma of that day ricocheted around the world. And here we are a decade on with gunshots from the US still ringing in our ears.

Perhaps we must not look away, but my head hangs in desperate disbelief and sometimes you have to close your eyes to the trauma. I find it difficult to locate words of logic to understand the perverse obsession with gun possession.

At Alexis Dowdell’s sixteenth birthday party, her beloved brother was one of the victims.

Alexis told CNN that partygoers were enjoying the music when the gunfire started. People panicked and ran.

“And then all I remember is my brother grabbing me and pushing me down to the ground.”

She felt a pool of blood. Alexis saw her brother wounded. She ran to him and held him.

“Don’t give up on me.”

To honour the victims, perhaps those words should resonate globally in response to the country with millions more guns than people.

Don’t give up on America.

Land of the free, home of the brave.

The majority of Americans support stricter gun control.

Please, please show us you have the courage you sing about under that star spangled banner.