Snippitts of Illusions

Tragedy

A tragedy happened in this country the other day. Tragedies happen around the world on a nearly hourly basis, but when it is a large group of innocent people, namely children were killed by a young man, barely into adulthood, wielding a couple of handguns that he got from his home. He killed his mother, who worked at the elementary school, then proceeded to go to the school and start shooting kids. 20 children lost their lives, as well as 6 adults.

It's a tragedy that is both shocking and sickening all at once. It brings back memories of previous shootings, in particular the shooting at the Amish school in 2006 where a gunman took shot 10 school-girls, killing 5 of them. This seems to happen more and more often. I'm told (via the media) that it doesn't, but each time some evil atrocity like this rears it's ugly head the debate about gun control creeps back up into the nations conscious.

I'd like to tell both sides to shut the hell up.

To the pro-gun folks, a couple of things:
First, stop making the claim that "Guns don't kill people, people do." Yes, it's technically true. People do kill people with guns, knives, and a myriad of blunt objects. The difference between say guns and baseball bats (which I'm told are used considerably more often than guns) are that guns quite literally were only invented as devices to kill things. That was their original intended purpose and still remains so to this day. Comparing to them to automobiles is creating a false dichotomy and is incredibly stupid. So is comparing them to baseball bats or anything else which was invented primarily for any other purpose aside from inflicting death. So while guns are not the most used instrument of death used in murders, they are really only one thing (unlike say a hammer which was a tool first, or a bat which is used primarily for an athletic game) and that is a weapon that is used to kill things.

Second, stop bringing up Israel and Switzerland as examples where guns are prevalent in the society but there are fewer gun crimes. Israel is a country that is in constant threat of military and terrorist attacks. There is a very real threat that somebody could cause, or attempt to cause violence in many parts of the country. I'm not going to delve into Israeli politics with the Palestinians  I do know that violence is a constant threat in many parts of the country so it makes sense for the population to be well trained in the use of guns. In fact, that's exactly the case. The majority of the population is military trained. They know the proper safety of guns. Some of you pro-gun folks know this and understand this, but I'd wager many of you do not. The same goes for Switzerland. Every male in Switzerland serves in the military. Until they're 50. They all have guns. They all know how to use guns. But most importantly they have a culture that values the community over that of the individual (the same could be said perhaps of Israel). America does not. We value individual freedom more than that of the community and it's important to understand that fact before you start rolling out examples from cultures that are very much not American in scope.

If you want to use them as examples of how responsible gun education and ownership leads to fewer gun related deaths in the general populace, I'd agree with that. But understand that it's the culture of those places not necessarily the presence of guns that attributes to the lower crime rate.

That being said, simply arming teachers, or allowing open carry every where is not going to bring shootings like what occurred this past Friday, or crime in general, under control. Most people who own guns, while practiced in shooting and have a fairly good understanding of gun safety are not trained to deal with their fire-arms in high stress situations. Chances are they really could make the situation worse. This isn't all gun owners of course, some are police officers (or were) and military trained, but that's only a partial percentage of gun ownership.

I'll stop picking on you for a moment.

Gun-control people:
First stop ignoring all the data. Yeah, I know guns are used in a lot of crimes. They are also used, quite successfully to help prevent crimes. It shows up regularly in data that is collected by several LEA but also in University studies and studies from outside groups (that are typically politically motivated). Guns, hand guns are risky in the home and certainly lead to more accidental deaths as well as being used in crimes (read murders) of passion and suicides, but accidental deaths can be prevented with genuine gun education.

Also, the pro-gun folks have a point: Taking the legal means to obtain guns will not prevent criminals from getting them. It's true, it won't. Perhaps it may slow them down a little, but they'll still get the gun if they want it. That seems like a shallow point to bring up perhaps. But the principle argument for gun-control is that it will help prevent violent crime (or at least decrease it). In general violent crime has been going down for the last two decades (despite the population increase), I don't think guns or lack there of are a huge contributing factors to that.

But I'm not writing this to take sides on the gun issue. I think we need better education in addition to a different type of control, but that's not even what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to talk about how you both miss the bigger picture.
Fuck your guns or lack of guns. Part of the problem is you think that this is the crux of this issue. That kid in Connecticut wasn't thinking of gun control when he fished the guns from the closest to go on his shooting rampage. Sure if they weren't in the house, if gun laws had been stricter he wouldn't have been able to do that. (Could have got them some where else.) He wanted to hurt as many people as possible in a short amount of time. If there were no guns he was smart he could of certainly made explosive devices. But guns being there or not isn't the point.

The point is we live in a country where this sort of thing is common place. We live in a country where this sort of thing has become acceptable.

Yep, I said acceptable. Our media revels in it. Pushing the cameras into survivors faces, pontificating on the reasons why the killer did what he did. Mourning, very briefly, the victims and then waiting for the next tragedy like vultures in the desert. We live in a culture where as terrible as this tragedy is (and it's rare for something like this to have a grand effect on me, this one did so yeah it's pretty fucking terrible) it's become so commonplace in the collective conscious of the populace that our mourning periods become ever briefer with each one. And if it's not children or 15 to 20 people ending up dead we don't even give it much of a foot note in the news any more.

My question isn't whether there should be stricter gun laws or more lenient gun laws. My question is "What has society become, what social sickness have we developed that has led a young man to want to kill and hurt as many people as possible?"

What's the answer to that question? He was mentally ill? Well that much is obvious. Why? Why is he mentally ill in this way? How has society contributed to this? I don't think the answer lies wholly in guns or lack there of. Nor do I think the lack of religion is the case either (we are an incredibly religious country by all means, so claiming that it's lack of religion seems pretty laughable to me).

You can try to argue about the gun stuff with me. Really I don't give two shits about either side. I want to understand what is it about our culture that leads to these sorts of killings. If you have some insight then I'd love to hear it. However if all you've got is "MORE GUNS!" or "LESS GUNS!" I'm not interested.

Labels: Personal

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 4:25 AM