He said there was no sound

For Alto Saxophone, Violin, and Piano | 10’ | 2015

Program Notes: At the completion of this piece, there had been 50,219 gun-related incidents in the year 2015. 12,717 of those ended in death. The definition of a mass shooting is disputed by multiple sources as different things. Some sources (typically those that argue for less strict gun control laws) inflate the definition of a mass shooting at 4 or more victims (victims as defined by fatalities), while other sources define victims as injuries and fatalities. Regardless of these statistics, mass shootings in America have plagued our schools so much so that you cannot go a week without hearing about a mass shooting in a school on the media.

President Obama who has been outspoken in regards to this subject has said, “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this.”

Beyond all this talk about gun control, something that we rarely talk about is victims who get injured or who witness these atrocities. The PTSD that occurs is something that is hard to report on because by the time these victims have a chance to breathe after a couple of days, another mass shooting has most likely occurred and the media has moved on to a new city, but these victims do not move on. They can’t move on. Their best friends are being murdered in front of their eyes. Soldiers who have been conditioned to see violence experience PTSD, but average civilians with no training are just thought to sit there and move on? This is horrifying.

Commissioner: The Lotus Trio

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