Yes, these things are starting to feel inevitable, are they not?
I have written about this before. I will likely write about it again. Sooner rather than later.
Another nutcase who never should have gotten access to a gun is responsible for another mass shooting. This time, not at a school, or at a mall, or at a business complex.
At a church. While those in attendance were praying.
Dylann Roof killed nine people in that church, and injured many others.
This particularly mass shooting may have one particular difference than a lot of other mass shootings, because it was motivated by race. This, at a time when the United States seems to be confronting racism all over again, with riots in Ferguson and Baltimore dominating headlines in recent months, and police brutality and excess, particularly towards blacks, has been making huge news headlines as well.
One of them occurred near Charleston, South Carolina, just a couple of months ago. A black man being stopped for a routine procedure was shot in the back by Michael Slager, a police officer, when he started to run away. The officer is being charged with murder, but he is generally speaking an exception.
Two months later, Roof's mass shooting has brought the problem of racism in America back under the microscope. Also, it has brought the issue of gun control into the limelight once again.
Roof claimed that he wanted to start another Civil War. He is a young, white male, and was described as quiet and rather strange. There are pictures - now infamous - of him wearing a jacket with the old flags of Rhodesia and South Africa, during the days when white supremacy reigned supreme in both of those two countries.
Clearly, his motivation for doing what he did was based upon race. He has admitted as much. I think they are less sure as to whether or not he acted alone, although it appears that he did.
News headlines were made on other matters since the shooting, however. The Confederate flag was waving high, not even at half mass.
Also, gun sales spiked, which is a common trend in America after these mass shooting incidents. It is almost as if gun advocates and enthusiasts load up on guns while they can, in anticipation of stronger, frankly, more common sense gun legislation that never actually comes, this assuring more shootings for the future.
Here is another point that I have made before, after similar occurrences. When these kinds of incidents happen in other industrialized countries, they do what makes sense, which is to tighten up their gun laws. Mass shootings are usually not replicated in those countries.
But they happen here in the United States, over and over again. When was the last time you remember a year without some kind of mass shooting here in America? Hell, when was the last time you can remember a year where we did not have multiple mass shootings somewhere here in America?
We are alone among industrialized nations with this unique problem. Brings new meaning to the oft-repeated words: Only in America.
It is unbelievable. There are still many gun enthusiasts and neocons out there who still suspect that Obama is a secret Muslim, and that he is just waiting for the right moment to take everyone's guns away, and begin the new, American Holocaust. Seriously, that is what a lot of people out there seem to believe. That is why Obama, of all people, has been compared with Hitler, the most extremist white supremacist of all time.
Only in America.
As with so many other areas, the world watches in horror at the images from yet another mass shooting, and another gun loving lunatic who snapped being taken into custody. They know that the country has loose gun legislation, and that that is unlikely to change because of this particular mass shooting. Unlike in other countries, when they have experienced such horrific incidents and done something about it, nothing will be done about it here, thus assuring that this will be repeated somewhere again, at some time in the future. It is almost guaranteed.
Only in America.
The family members of victims from Wednesday night's shooting had their opportunity to speak to the killer in court on Friday, and they generally forgave him. They acknowledged that he had caused them a great deal of pain, that he had ripped their loved ones from their lives. But they forgave him.
He looked down from circuit television, showing no emotions.
One strange twist in this already bizarre and tragic story: Roof and Michael Slager are now cellblock neighbors, of all things.
Only in America.
Sometimes, our way of thinking, not to mention our collective behavior, more than puzzles the outside world. We remain the only industrialized nation to see anywhere near as much gun violence as we see, and that is definitely true also for mass shootings such as the South Carolina church shooting this past Wednesday. We also happen to be the only industrialized nation in the world that fails to provide it's own citizens with some form of affordable, universal healthcare. The only industrialized nation that does not provide long paid leave for new mothers, and the only industrialized nation that fails to provide new parents with affordable childcare. The only industrialized nation where a significant portion of the population believes in Creationism, and that the world is only 6,000 years old, despite the overwhelming evidence against this. Until recently, we were the only industrialized nation in the world that routinely rejected the "global warming theory" and, once that disbelief had to be amended, we have now become the only industrialized nation that acknowledges that global warming/climate change is real (although trust me, a large percentage of the population still does not believe) but stands by and does nothing to try and combat it, because officially, we do not believe that it is caused by humans. Finally, we have more people in the prison system than any other country in the world, industrialized or otherwise.
In other countries, steps have been taken to make higher education more affordable, if not outright free. In the United States, not only is it not free, but the prices keep skyrocketing upwards. Also, student loans have offensively high interest rates, that it has produced a generation of young people who start off life already highly burdened by debts. In fact, that is in keeping with the United States being the most indebted nation in the world, with both the government and the people on average owing a ridiculous amount of money. The federal government owes so much, in fact, that they will never pay it off. In the meantime, Americans also have the lowest minimum wage of any country in the industrialized world.
People in America have a lot of things. Author François Lelord, in one of his Hector series books, described it (without ever naming it) as the country of more. We Americans always seem to want and need more. More accumulation of wealth, of things. Consumer goods is one thing where we still lead the world, which also means that we lead the world in producing trash. We produce enormous quantities of trash, and until just a few years ago, we were far and away the most polluting nation in the world by far - a status that we easily kept for decades. But Americans love things, love consumer goods. More cars in the driveway, more perfect lawns with chemical enhancers to make the grass appear perfect and green and free of weeds. Many of these chemicals that people feel helps their lawn actually are like poison, and many environmentalists point out it would be better if people did not have lawns, but small vegetable gardens in their backyards. Instead, Americans have traditionally opted for a very unhealthy diet, which made Americans the fattest country in the world, lending a new meaning to that title, "The country of more."
More indeed.
Many of these things just mentioned persist, because there is one nagging belief that separates Americans from all others. Paradoxically, this is the belief that far too many Americans want to believe, so they choose to believe in, and that would be "American exceptionalism." When it comes to foreign policy, this translates to sticking our noses in everyone else's business, because we can. Because we feel uniquely entitled as a nation to do so, and to transparently pursue our own, selfish interests in the process. Domestically, this belief has led to the routine rejection of many of the benefits that other countries now take for granted, because too many Americans believe that these things would lead to a socialist dictatorship. That is true of a truly better healthcare system, true of more sensible gun control legislation, true of more sensible climate change legislation, true of more equitable taxes and a more sensible distribution of wealth.
All of this has served to make a harsher, more polarized nation domestically, and to humiliate and discredit the United States around the world. How can people around the world fail to notice the sheer number of mass shootings, the sheer number of the tens of millions without adequate health insurance, the sheer amount of debt that exists here? Police forces across the country have been beefed up dramatically, as they have bought surplus military supplies. I live in a quiet, suburban area. But a few years ago, I saw oversized military trucks at an automotive shop near me, belonging to Wayne, New Jersey. Wayne is filled with suburban homes and strip malls. It has parks and schools, of course. But in many ways, it is a very typical, comfortable suburb, which begs the question why the police force feels that they need oversized military trucks? When are they ever going to need it? When did police forces begin to act more like some occupying force, rather than as police that are supposed to serve and protect the community?
All of these things should be huge issues here in the United States itself. Instead, we have the Kardashians/Jenners dominating the media. We have so-called "reality shows" that divert us from the much grimmer reality that exists within the country. Many Americans now seem to shrug and accept mass shootings these days as a new normal, although we all know that there is absolutely nothing normal about it.
Already, the media is in the process of butchering this story. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested that this shooting was directed at Christians, while a Fox pundit suggested that this happened because America is tolerant of trans people. Both of these fly in the face of what Roof himself, the actual killer, said he did it for: race. He is a white supremacist, and specifically targeted these people because they were black.
One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, has begun to really become a lot more vocal recently, as he weighs in on gun violence in America. He posted some Tweets the day after the South Carolina shootings. These are the three that he posted on the subject:
Until responsible gun owners support responsible gun control laws, innocent blood will continue to flow. How many times must we see this?
Too many closed minds on gun control. Worse, far too many PROUDLY closed minds. Meanwhile, the American shooting gallery remains open.
According to Bloomberg Business, gun deaths will exceed traffic fatalities in America this year. Can't put a seatbelt on a semi-automatic.
In his small book on the subject of gin control that was released shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings, titled simply Guns, he makes a very solid, hard to refute point:
No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to take away your shotguns. No one wants to take away your revolvers, and no one wants to take away your automatic pistols, as long as said pistols hold no more than ten rounds. If you can’t kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range.
More people should read that book. More people should pay attention to what the rest of the world is thinking and saying about us Americans, too. In fact, more Americans should really pay attention to what's going on in this country, and the cycle of violence that keeps spiraling out of control.
Too often, Americans seem to want to impose a pseudo-unity. In order to achieve this, anything that can be polarizing or divisive is automatically removed, so that an artificially sanitized unity is imposed. No serious subject matter is broached, and the emphasis comes to be on entertainment. Because one of the few things where America still leads in the world is entertainment.
The problem is that this has permeated the entire society. We want to be entertained, and have grown so used to it, that we have come to expect it. This includes our news sources, which are increasingly about personalities and entertainment, than they are about actual content and substance.
And in our haste to impose some superficial unity, the nation has in fact grown more polarized than ever before. Now, once again, we have suffered a national tragedy, and are dealing with it with the national humiliation of closed minds. As Stephen King wrote, what is worse is that these are PROUDLY closed minds. And that means that, barring some kind of a miracle, it is virtually guaranteed that we will be seeing similar headlines again soon, and debating this same topic once again. It might be days, weeks, or even months. What are the chances that we can go the rest of this year, 2015, without another mass shooting? Not good. That is something truly unique to America, because other countries, those with more sensible gun laws, will not see or have to worry about this kind of senseless gun violence themselves. Those countries that suffered such violence in the past have passed common sense legislation that makes gun access more difficult, as they realized the dangers involved.
Why can't we?
Here are the links to the articles that I used to write this particular blog entry:
Stephen King urges gun owners to support 'responsible gun control' in wake of Charleston murders BY ISABELLA BIEDENHARN, June 19, 2015:
This was a particularly interesting article as well, because it has a video link to a comedian from Australia, Jim Jefferies, who weighs in on the gun debate here in America. The link is down below, as is the video clip. Before that, however, please read this one paragraph from the article, which explains just how much more likely it is that guns will be used for murder and senseless killings, rather than on legitimate self-defense. Then, please do yourself a favor (particularly if you are American, and especially if you are a strong gun rights activist) and watch the video of Jim Jefferies, and see if you do not agree that he makes some very valid points:
However, a new study by the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group, shows that, when guns kill people, they are overwhelmingly used for murder rather than self-defense. In 2008-2012, guns were used in 42,419 criminal homicides and only 1,108 justifiable homicides (defined as the killing of a felon during the commission of a felony by a private citizen), according to the report -- a ratio of 38 to 1.
Quote taken from: A hilarious Australian stand-up comic explains what U.S. gun laws look like to the rest of the world by Ana Swanson June 19, 2015:
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