Girl who witnessed Planned Parenthood attack has seen two shootings in one month

On Saturday morning, President Obama issued a statement about Friday’s shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

“This is not normal,” Obama wrote. “We can’t let it become normal.”

Unfortunately for him, Obama is wrong. Mass shootings in America are so normal that there have been more of them in 2015 than there have been days in the year.

The Colorado shooting provided a particularly chilling example of the regularity with which such incidents occur in the United States. 17-year-old Miranda Schilter, one of the witnesses to Friday’s murders, had actually seen another shooting just a few weeks ago, the New York Times reported:

[Schilter’s] boyfriend, Jackson Ricker, 18, placed his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder and noted that Ms. Schilter had witnessed a different shooting a few weeks earlier when a heavily armed man shot and killed a bicyclist and two women in the downtown. “The first time she cried,” said Mr. Ricker, looking at his dry-eyed girlfriend. “She’s a veteran now.”

Shootings are normal enough in America that teenagers can now be described as “veteran” witnesses to them.