‘No Way to Prevent This’: The Onion Reposts Every Satirical Mass Shooting Story on Front Page
18:28 GMT 26.05.2022 (Updated: 13:29 GMT 06.08.2022)
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In a bit of not-so-subtle criticism of national inaction on the epidemic of gun violence in the United States, satirical news website The Onion covered its front page with different iterations of a story it’s run after numerous mass shootings that garnered national attention in the last eight years.
“No way to prevent this’, says only nation where this regularly happens” - the Onion has run a version of this story in response to 21 different mass shootings in the United States since it first published the story on May 27, 2014, in response to the misogynistic killings of six people and wounding of 14 others in Isla Vista, California.
In each iteration, the details of the story are updated to include the location and number of killed and wounded victims, but otherwise the framework stays the same: a series of quotes and paraphrasing of comments expressing powerlessness to stop mass shootings, despite living in the only country where they routinely happen.
Following its publication of the 21st such story on Wednesday, in response to the killing of 19 students and two teachers by a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, the day prior, The Onion decided to increase the power of its satire by covering the website’s front page with every single version of the story published since 2014.
On May 26, 2022, satirical news website The Onion put on its front page all 21 versions of its story “No way to prevent this’, says only nation where this regularly happens” printed in response to mass shooting events in the United States.
They did the same on their Twitter account, reposting all 21 versions of the story. The most recent prior to Wednesday’s had been published just nine days prior, in response to the killing of 10 Black shoppers in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket by a white supremacist gunman.
When asked about the practice in 2017, following the fifth republishing of the story in response to the October 1 killing of 60 people as a country music concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, The Onion managing editor Marnie Shure told Vice that “By re-running the same commentary it strengthens the original commentary tenfold each time. ... In the wake of these really terrible things, we have this comment that really holds up.”
In the wake of the Tuesday shooting, which was carried out by an 18-year-old who bought an AR-15 rifle on his 18th birthday, Democratic lawmakers pledged action to make gun access harder but were immediately confronted by the extremely powerful firearms lobby and the conservative lawmakers who depend on their support.
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is slated to speak at a National Rifle Association (NRA) event in Houston this weekend, claimed that gun control legislation “doesn’t work,” is “not effective” and “doesn’t prevent crime,” and that the solution is to devote “far more law enforcement resources to stopping violent criminals.” Ken Paxton, the Lone Star State’s attorney general, called for arming teachers in response to the massacre.
Sen. Ted Cruz said Texas & the country “are grieving horrifically” after an elementary school shooting in his state
— Ali Zaslav (@alizaslav) May 24, 2022
But Cruz said he still doesn’t see gun reform as a solution, via @jessicadean pic.twitter.com/u3qPnC5Mua
Later, when a reporter from the UK’s Sky News pressed Cruz on why such shootings only happen in the United States, the Texas lawmaker accused him of having a “political agenda” and hating “American exceptionalism.”
The Onion has been lambasting American politics since the late 1980s, although many of its fake stories have no political focus and derive their humor from being surreal or just plain silly. However, despite being well known as a comedy site, its straight-faced headline delivery has still managed to fool many, ranging from the everyman to international figures and publications.
In recent years, a popular internet meme has played upon several instances in which surreal events first described in Onion articles later happened, suggesting that reality is getting too weird for its own good and that it may put the satirical site out of business.
As of May 25, the US has seen nearly 200 mass shooting events.
