You know, it is really a sad statement when you see a shooting, like the one that took place at Santa Barbara, and not be surprised at all.
Imagine the psychology of the person that is about to go off on a murderous rampage. Knowing that killing people, murdering them en masse, is perhaps considered the most evil thing that you can do, and just how far over the edge you have to be to be willing to do it. To be willing to go to a place and just start shooting as many people as possible.
This was not a movie or a television show. This was real life, and yet another angry and clearly disturbed young man with a gun goes off on a killing spree.
He made a video, and posted it online. Someone caught it, and warned his mother, who tried to intervene. Obviously, it was too little, too late.
And six people, plus the gunman himself, are now dead.
As with most mass shootings, it made the headlines. We are learning about the young man, Elliot Rodger. He was the son of one of the directors of the Hunger Games. He was angry at pretty much everyone, but particularly at women who had rejected him, and the men that they had chosen over him.
He was a virgin, and was incensed by this. And someone was going to pay. Quite a few someones, as it turned out.
Yes, and as I was writing this, there was a brief mention of the recent shooting on the news, saying that there had been clear red flags everywhere, although somehow, they failed to prevent the tragedy from unfolding. The news anchors mentioned one or two lines about the story in a sober voice. A few seconds later, they were talking about someone dancing, with plastic smiles on their faces.
I can't help but think that, somehow, this is part of the problem.
Of course, there are a lot of parts to this problem, and they keep getting debated, each time something like this happens. Gun advocates blame psychologists and such, and it seems that is why there is more emphasis lately on the "red flags".
And yes, I'll admit that to me, the problem seems a bit clearer than that. Not that I understand the rage, the torment, that was going on in this young man's life. Or Adam Lanza, the shooter at the Sandy Hook School shootings about one year and a half ago. Or James Holmes, the shooter at the Aurora Theaters in Colorado, a couple of years ago. I do not know what was going through any of their minds just before they did what they did. Probably, neither did the people around them. There were red flags in many cases, true. But you can't exactly predict a mass shooting.
But the one thing that does seem clear to me is that, once again, American logic runs counter to the logic that prevails in pretty much the rest of the world. When Australia had a mass shooting in 1996 on such a scale that shocked the whole world, gun laws were tightened, and they never had such an incident again. The same with Great Britain, which tightened their gun laws after both massive shootings that occurred in that nation, and they have not had another mass shooting on that level since. Other countries have had similar instances, and tightened their gun laws in response. I elaborated on this quite a bit, right around the time of the Sandy Hook school shootings, in response to it.
Here in the United States, there is a gap in the thinking on this issue from the rest of the world. We reject this approach that other countries have taken because, we are told, it is increased government control, because it is a step closer to fascism, or communism, or whatever else radical gun activists claim it to be these days.
To me, the thinking that most of the rest of the world came to on this subject seems pretty clear cut and logical: less guns, less gun violence.
They have a lot less guns in Europe, and Japan, and Australia and New Zealand, and South Korea, and other comparable industrialized nations. And wouldn't you know it? They have a lot less gun violence and death, too!
Hmmm.....makes you wonder. doesn't it?
We are told by gun rights advocates here that limiting access to guns legally would not do anything positive. Bad people are going to find a way to get their guns, they say. The only thing that better laws would do is prevent good people from getting guns and protecting themselves and their families, and presumably others.
Some go so far as to say it is the responsibility of every American citizen to own a gun, and not owning one is irresponsible. So they say. Teachers, the idea has been proposed, should also carry guns. So they say.
Follow that thinking to it's logical conclusion, and you get this: more guns will end (or at least limit) gun violence.
The rest of the world is scratching their heads. The former prime minister in Australia, I remember, was particularly discouraged after the Sandy Hook shootings, because while he, a conservative in his country, felt that Australia's tightening gun laws had gone a long way to addressing the issue of gun violence in his country, he did not expect similar legislation to occur in this country. Not then, after that school shooting. Laws did not change after the Aurora school shootings in Colorado. Or the shootings at Virginia Tech. After either of the Fort Worth shootings. Or Columbine. Or Jonesboro, in Arkansas. Or any of the many, many shootings before, in between, or since the ones that I mentioned here.
For the rest of the world, it seems obvious enough" less guns will lead to less gun violence. It seems so simple, so elementary, that it should be self-evident to any rational, objective person.
But in the United States, things are always different. We take a different approach on that, just like we take a different approach on affordable, universal healthcare, and we take a different approach on global warming, and we take a different approach on pretty much everything. We always have to be the exception. The "American exception".
And the shootings at Santa Barbara were yet another example of the "American exception". Not because these shootings happen. They have happened elsewhere. But because of the response. or rather, the lack thereof. For how quickly news anchors (they were on NBC, by the way) can so quickly go from somber moods in talking about the shooting, to smiles while talking about dancing. It just does not seem to be taken very seriously.
One wonders what it will take for it to finally be taken seriously? Six or seven dead obviously will not do it, we've had those before. We had twelve killed at Aurora, and 27 killed at Sandy Hook (if you include Lanza's mother). We had 32 people killed at Virginia Tech.
Nothing changed any of those times. Oh, there were plenty of heated debates. But nothing changed.
And the shootings still make headlines here, when they inevitably occur.
How many victims will it take for people to really begin to notice? 50? 100? More?
Or, will the thinking that runs counter to conventional logic around the world (and frankly, runs counter to simple common sense), continue to make the United States, truly, the "American exception" when it comes to gun violence, where far, far more people are killed in the United States every year, than in any other country in the industrialized world. it's not even close.
And how about this statistic: there is almost one gun per person in America. Now, understand what that means fully. There is almost one gun for every man, woman, and child in this country. Those who believe that more guns will translate to less gun violence (and that is what they are saying, unless they are outright stating that they do not care about gun violence as an issue) think that a return to the days of the wild west, with gun shootouts to keep the "bad guys" in check, is the best, surest, most reliable, and most sane answer to the dilemma of gun violence in the United States today. Does that make sense?
It sure makes sense to gun rights lobbyists, activists, and supporters of the NRA. The answer, always, is more guns. Every time there is an incident like this (and let's face it, it's far, far too often), there is a spike in the sales of guns. It is hard to imagine that gun stores might actually consider these tragedies good for business, but this is a sick topic to begin with, and I do not believe that the American position in this, which is unique in all of the world, happens to be particularly healthy. The results should speak for themselves. I have discussed this particular topic a few times already on this blog site, and let's be honest for a minute here. Nobody truly expects this to be the last such mass shooting, right? Or second to last, or even third to last. This is only the latest one to make waves, and foster the gun debate yet again. And like has always happened before, the debate will likely fade away, slowly but surely (in fact, it seems to be happening already), and other topics will dominate the news, and allow Americans to forget. At least until the inevitable headlines from the next such mass shooting. And let's not kid ourselves into thinking that will not happen, and probably pretty soon, too.
Yet, nothing changes. Oh, the locations change, and so do the names and faces. The voices of the victims families and friends, too. And, of course, the shooters, each with their own, unique circumstances and stories.
But what never changes are the shootings, always the shootings. Americans seem to have come to accept that these kinds of things just happen from time to time - just not in other industrialized nations, though - at least nowhere near as regularly). In other countries, when these things do happen, they truly jolt the population, and things change.
Here in the United States, we have seen more gun violence than any other industrialized nation in the world, by far. And nothing ever changes, guaranteeing that we will continue to see tragedies like these for a long, long time to come.
I hate to say this, but you better get used to it.
A Guide to Mass Shootings in America published by Mother Jones, May 24, 2014:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Killer's family tried to intervene before rampage by MARTHA MENDOZA and MICHAEL R. BLOOD of the Associated Press, May 26, 2014:
http://news.yahoo.com/killers-family-tried-intervene-rampage-073702315.html
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