Cardi B‘s take on the Uvalde, Texas school shooting earlier this week has drawn criticism as some fans chastise her for urging consideration for victims’ families over seeking solutions for the ongoing gun control debate. “These mass shooting events are not the time for political parties or you ‘social media politicians’ to be pushing agendas,” she admonished on Twitter. “People have died! Y’all don’t care or have any consideration for what these families are going thru or how they feel or what they want. Think b4 speak.”
And while this take is admirable for its compassion, unfortunately, many deem the situation to be too dire to allow much more time to slip by. With only 146 days in 2022, the year has seen 212 mass shooting incidents, meaning that the next one may very well be around the corner — and for some folks, that’s too long to wait to urge action from the nation’s lawmakers, who have been reticent to cross the gun lobby since 1998, when the first of these widely publicized school shootings took place at Columbine High School in Colorado.
“If we don’t talk about it now we won’t ever have the conversation,” one fan replied. Cardi responded by pointing out some of the arguments she’s seen taking place on her timeline since she tweeted her thoughts about another recent mass shooting. “I seen people have debates on white supremacist mass shooter are getting more coverage then black supremacist who plotted a car in a crowd? LIKE ARE YOU SERIOUS?! both are terrible! Imagine victimizing a mass shooter to push a agenda? While these family just lost a love one.”
It seems, though, that people seem to have missed her point, which she clarified a few tweets later. “Baby I was just repeating what they said and how stupid and irrelevant and inconsiderate they sound comparing events to push their agendas,” she explained. “Im literally tweeting WHAT THEY SAID ABD HIW STUPID IT SOUNDS.” Unfortunately, it seems like this is one of those situations where context is being confused because of the constraints of the Twitter format. Cardi hasn’t said that we shouldn’t talk about gun control, only that making these bad faith false equivalencies helps nothing. That hasn’t stopped some of the replies from focusing on an entirely different problem, though.
“It’s interesting that y’all here acting like y’all care but not the person that made the original tweet,” Cardi noted. “Then I go to yall page and I see wat y’all about !DEUM YALL DONT LEAVE YALL BULLSHIT STAN SHIT ON THE SIDE FOR ONCE!”
And it seems that once again, Cardi has a point. Arguing on Twitter isn’t going to get anything done, and lashing out in trivial stan wars while people are suffering is just the worst kind of self-involvement. However, two things remain true: 1. Whenever Cardi tweets about current events or politics, she’s almost certain to face a backlash, even when she’s right; and 2. The families in Uvalde, Texas who are grieving deserve consideration and support — and the best way to give it to them is for our elected officials to actually make an effort to prevent shootings like this one in the future.
