One week of mass shootings: 117 shot, 40 killed

Incomprehensible. Plus, the power of Yellowjackets and more ...

Of all the horrors you can see at the database of mass shootings in 2023 kept by Gun Violence Archive, this line below is quietly stomach-churning.

That’s the list of pages. There are 25 incidents per page.

Today is May 7. On May 6, there are three incidents with 15 wounded and 10 dead. On May 5, there are four incidents with 14 wounded and five dead. (This does not include the shooters.)

That’s 43 different people shot by seven shooters in 48 hours. In mass shootings alone.

Sunday, April 30: 11 incidents, 52 people shot, 36 wounded, 16 dead.

By the way, in seven of those April 30 incidents, no suspect has been arrested.

The total for the past seven days: 23 incidents, 117 people shot, 77 wounded, 40 dead.

What are we even doing here?

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Yellowjackets speaks

Kailey Schwerman/Showtime

Yellowjackets, the bellwether series on Showtime, is as serialized as they come. Yet, I think you could and should pull out this weekend’s sixth episode of Season 2 and not only watch it by itself, but share it across the country.

In the simplest terms, Yellowjackets follows the lives of a collection of teenage survivors of a plane crash in the wilderness, tracking them in the immediate aftermath as well as 20+ years later as adults. You learn from almost the earliest moment of Season 1 that Shauna (Sophie Nélisse as the teenage version, Melanie Lynskey as an adult) is pregnant. In this weekend’s episode, childbirth arrives.

This is one of the most powerful hours of television you’ll see all year. This is also essential viewing for the United States.

If you know what happens or don’t mind knowing, Maira Garcia of the Los Angeles Times helps explain why it’s so important.

For some women, particularly those in America — where the maternal mortality rate is 10 times the estimated rate for other high-income countries like Australia, Israel and Japan — (childbirth) can be a terrifying ordeal marked by medical complications and emotional trauma, long and short term, for mother and baby alike. That’s precisely what makes “Qui,” the most recent episode of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” so horrifying: It’s not far-fetched at all.

The childbirth scene takes place in the wilderness, an environment where Shauna has no control and no medical support. In the U.S., too many people in too many states are stuck in that wilderness.