Why does the American media do this? Every time there’s a terrible event such as Monday’s massacre in Virginia – after the initial shock and horror has settled for a day or so – the drumbeat begins anew that the culprit is gun control. That it is simply too easy to get a gun in this country, and something should be done about it.
I can understand why we want an easy solution. It’s difficult to look at the horror of how someone could walk across a college campus – what should be a safe, bucolic haven nurturing the future leaders of America - and shoot thirty young people to death, without wanting answers, without wanting someone to blame.
And often the last person to get the blame is the one who pulled the trigger.
Although a gun was used to commit the crime – a gun purchased legally, mind you - this was not the impetus that did the killing. A disturbed young man was behind it. And no matter what kind of laws we make about guns, if this disturbed young man had been denied his gun permit, if he wanted a gun he would have gotten it illegally, and would have used it.
The two teenaged boys who perpetuated the Columbine massacre had, along with the automatic weapons they’d convinced other people to buy for them (as they both had mental health issues on their records), material to make bombs that they'd downloaded from the Internet. These were sick, sick children who practically screamed with signs they needed help, and got some, but not enough. But yet again, we blamed the weaponry. And this time, video games.
Timothy McVeigh also wanted to kill a lot of people in a hurry, except he found it more expeditious to build a bomb out of fertilizer. Should fertilizer be banned?
No one wants to answer the difficult questions. Such as, why are we raising people sick enough to do these acts? The parents of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had to have seen that something wasn’t right with their boys, yet the help they got was inadequate at best, and perhaps they refused to admit that something was happening at all. Maybe they thought it was a phase they’d grow out of. Or didn’t want to go through what they might have perceived as the embarrassment of additional therapy, or couldn’t afford the expense. After all, who wants to believe that their children were murderers? And more evidence is surfacing about how disturbed this poor young man in Virginia had been. That as early as 2005 his teachers and classmates had been noticing his behavior yet although it was “recommended” that he get counseling, there was no evidence that he got the help he so desperately needed. Yet he passed his legal background check and was allowed to buy a gun. What I want to know is where were the parents? If the school is noticing how disturbed he was, why weren’t the parents involved?
Or did they simply hope it would go away, too?
No one wants to look at this part of the problem because it’s so complex. It’s not an easy fix, like passing a new gun law (when we don’t even enforce the gun laws we have) or putting a metal detector at the door. Some people I’ve talked with want the problem solved by arming everyone, which I don’t accept. I can’t imagine this doing anything but making a bad situation worse. Can you imagine someone with a latent mental illness (or even someone under extreme stress) reaching their tipping point and trying to shoot their way out of it? No. We can’t let this happen.
The truth that we don’t want to see is this: there are sick people in America. There are sick people who aren’t getting the help they need. Either because they can’t afford it, or families think they can handle it themselves, or because the stigma is so great that they don’t want to pursue it. Some can’t afford the medication. Or they take the medication but either can’t afford or can’t otherwise get access to the follow-up care that goes hand in hand with the pills.
We want to blame the guns.
Because it’s easy.
And when we’re in grief, when we’re bombarded with this overload of tragedy, we want answers.
And we want them now. Then we want to pass a law guaranteeing that it will never happen again.
And then something else knocks it off the headlines and we forget about it.
Until the next time.
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8 comments:
You know, I honestly was NOT expecting that.
Congratulations on the clear thinking.
Of course, now that you know I agree...
Actually, that's not fair. For a self-professed 'liberal', you're actually very grounded in common sense. Must be the two 'x' chromosomes...
Well reasoned, I agree. But here's my question -- is there any need for automatic weapons outside of the military or law enforcement? If I'm not mistaken, one of the guns used by the killer had been outlawed not that long ago, then re-authorized by Congress under pressure from the NRA. You can blame parents, friends, teachers, rap music, videos, electronic games, the medical profession, television, even guns, but you'll never stop people from killing short of medicating the nation. We can, though, do something about reducing the level carnage.
Pote: I trust your knowledge of which gun was used. But it is one big knot of a problem, with all those componenets, but I still believe that anyone bent on getting a gun and using it can. Regardless of whether they are legal or not.
AAA: So much for typecasting ;)
As noted here, I'm up, I'm down, I'm an all around clown on the subject of gun rights vs. gun control. Having said that, though, I simply can't let something you've said lie, because I know for a fact that you're way too smart to really believe it:
Timothy McVeigh also wanted to kill a lot of people in a hurry, except he found it more expeditious to build a bomb out of fertilizer. Should fertilizer be banned?
Fertilizer is created and used to, well, fertilize. McVeigh's alternative usage was, to say the least, abusive of the intent and nature of the artifact. Guns, on the other hand, are created and used to kill people. They have no alternative uses, that's what they're for. As I note in the above linked blog entry, when we find ourselves with an urgent desire to have a gun in our hands, it is because we have discovered an urgent desire to kill someone.
Should fertilizer be banned because some creative sociopath found a way to horrifically abuse it? Well, no. Fertilizer is useful for other purposes, and those purposes are, arguably, not simply innocuous, but kinda vital. Should guns at least be closely regulated because a different psychopath, like many psychopaths before him, used one exactly as it was designed to be used? Well, um... gee... yeah, I think so.
For the remainder of my complex and conflicted views on this complex and conflicted issue, follow the link above. Certainly, we should first blame the lunatic who commits the crime, but it is beneath you, and, for that matter, beneath my best man, to even remotely suggest that the VTech slaughter could possibly have taken place if the shooter had not had easy access to high powered hand weaponry. Had he been forced to rampage across campus with a cricket bat -- or, for that matter, with a Brown Bess muzzle loading black powder musket, which is exactly the kind of 'arms' our Founding Fathers sought to guarantee us the 'right to bear and keep' -- I sincerely doubt anyone would have died as a result. And that includes the crazy man himself; he'd be alive to stand trial, and maybe receive some badly needed psychiatric attention, right now.
If that last notation marks me as too much a bleeding heart in your eyes for you to stomach, well, I guess 25 years of separate experience will take two once close people to strangely distant points of perspective.
H: Oh, I can still stomach you, no problem!! And I agree with some of what you're saying.
This is a picky point, but guns have other uses than mass slaughter. Like a woman I know whose ex-husband, a cop, used to beat her so she bought the gun for protection.
But I'm not defending the ease at which guns can be purchased in this country.
I was saying that I get irked that the media lands on gun access as the largest (and sometimes only) factor.
Yes, it would have been harder to kill 30-odd people with a spear or hand grenade or baseball bat, but intent is still intent and the bad guys don't say to themselves, "gee, I can't obtain a gun through legal means, guess I can't go on my murder spree after all." You can always get a hunting rifle with a scope (in fact, you can buy one at Wal-Mart) and pick off people from some remote location. Not that I'm giving anyone any ideas, mind you. And I found it very disturbing that the Columbine boys found instructions on bomb-making on the Internet.
Intent to kill is intent to kill. I'm saying that people who are identifiable as accidents waiting to happen are not getting the help they need.
"it is beneath you, and, for that matter, beneath my best man, to even remotely suggest that the VTech slaughter could possibly have taken place if the shooter had not had easy access to high powered hand weaponry"
It probably would have happened sooner is the only difference. Buying a gun illegally can be done in minutes to hours on a city street. Cho chose to wait 30 days to do it legally. He wasn't an angry hothead, like the waiting period laws are designed to thwart. He was a malevolent and patient sociopath, cold and calculating. There is no gun law short of a confiscation and total ban enforced by regular searches and metal detectors every thirty feet that can stop such a person.
Cho wanted to kill a great many people, and made the decision to patiently wait a month to begin his slaughter rather than risk being thwarted by attempting to obtain a gun illegally and maybe getting caught. Waiting periods and background checks are for stopping angry hotheads and career criminals, not patient malevolent sociopaths.
aaa: Good point.
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