The Most Powerful Story The Onion Ever Wrote

The WIRED world of culture is covered in The Monitor, a weekly column.

Living in America can feel like a repeat ofGroundhog Day, but with less Bill Murray piano-playing. Its citizens wake up to a nation recovering from another mass shooting and feel as if they are still in a nightmare. No single headline captures that sense of hopelessness better than this one from The Onion.

The Onion is aware of this. It has been publishing versions of the story since the incident in Isla Vista, California, in which six people were killed and many others were wounded. Every time there is a mass murder in America, the site posts it again. The details of the shooting changed to reflect the new location and number of people killed, but the rest of the incident remains the same. On Wednesday, as details of the deaths at the Uvalde school emerged, The Onion covered its homepage with each of the individual stories, and posted them all in a lengthy Twitter thread.

The cycle of gun violence in the US was shown by The Onion's move. Americans know that each incident will be followed by calls for gun control, political stonewalling, and ultimately, little to no action. Sharing the story becomes the thing distraught people do to remind themselves that things shouldn't be this way. I worry it's just another part of the mass shooting ceremony, said the author of the original headline eight years ago.

I've committed the original Onion article to memory over the years. In each iteration, it starts with a sentence that gives the location of the attack and the number of people killed or injured, and it ends with the citizens of the country where this kind of mass killing occurs. According to reports, onlookers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde begged police officers to go into the school to stop the massacre, but they did not. The father of a fourth grade girl who was killed in the attack told the Associated Press that people should rush into the school.

The question of whether parents were trying to get into the school to save their kids was not asked during the press conference. The police response to the Uvalde shooting will be determined over time, but regardless, Cazares' statement is true on a grand scale: More could have been done. A majority of Americans want stricter gun laws, but they may not be enough to get politicians to act. More could have been done before Tuesday's shooting. The Onion's headline is relevant because America never does preventative things. If it helps people channel their anger and sadness, it's not so bad.