America is processing not one but two more mass shootings that took place over the past weekend.

Trevor Noah grappled with how to process the El Paso and Dayton tragedies, and why America seems so reluctant to tackle this issue head-on.

Someone who knew the Dayton, Ohio shooter, Connor Betts, also came forward with the disturbing revelation that she had actually reported him to the police for being a violent psychopath a decade ago, and nobody did anything about it.

Meanwhile, Trump and the rest of his circus go on about video games and just about anything else, as long as it isn’t the obvious need for gun control.

Finally, whenever a mass shooting happens (it feels like they happen every other week these days) people jump onto social media to debate gun regulations.

This time things got a little weird, though.

Here’s WIRED:

30-50 unkillable feral hogs may or may not be terrorizing one Arkansas man’s backyard, but they’ve definitely infiltrated Twitter.

…It started on Sunday, while the United States was reeling from back-to-back tragedies: mass shootings in both El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which together accounted for at least 31 deaths.

In response to the politicians who put their own careers ahead of public safety, musician Jason Isbell tweeted the following:

The tweet racked up likes, retweets and responses, including this one:

Twitter users quickly latched onto this bizarre imagery and demanded proof. McNabb responded:

Cue the memes:

There are so many more memes – peruse here if you’re not yet satisfied.

The hog memes have unseated the reigning absurdist mass-shooting-response meme which was “thoughts and prayers,” which politicians—many of whom don’t support stricter gun laws— throw about in an attempt to comfort their constituents while avoiding the real issues.

If you’re in a group where opinions on gun control are mixed, and the discussion stays civil, it’s something like “People are dying” versus “There are actual use cases for guns.”

Team Gun Control is used to those use cases being edge cases. Team Gun Rights is used to those use cases being dismissed out of hand. Enter hog-beset citizen Wiliam McNabb.

To some, especially in rural Texas or neighboring states like Arkansas, McNabb is raising a reasonable safety concern and being roasted for it. To a (coastal) city slicker, needing to defend your family against feral hogs seems fantastical and worthy of spoofing, and, admittedly, McNabb’s hog count seems high.

So while feral hogs are actually a problem in some parts of America, so are mass shootings.

And a few wild pigs certainly aren’t enough of a reason to dispense with moving forward on gun control measures.

[source:wired]