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In this Discussion
- 1234 December 2012
- Cherry_Pie May 2013
- Clever_girl December 2012
- Dr_William_Hayward December 2012
- ed_chigliak December 2012
- flossy_log_lady May 2013
- Leland December 2012
- lolo December 2012
- Loose_Thread May 2013
- MirandaJuly May 2013
- Schlabe May 2013
- YoursTruly May 2013
Fuck guns
I feel sick.
Comments
But I agree with more attention to mental health/desperation.
And.... flaming coffee from Huber's...
This guy is printing the regulated parts of a gun at $10-$30 http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133514-the-worlds-first-3d-printed-gun. It will soon be cheaper (and quicker) to print and assemble (some) firearms than it is to legally buy them.
I'm not anti gun control at all, I just don't think that it will be doable once 3D printing hits the mainstream. If it's 2016 and I'm running a drug cartel, and it becomes tough to buy assault rifles, I'd just start up a printing facility.
Possibly in the future gun regulation will be harder because of 3D printing, but right now the stats I've seen show that gun regulation totally works. Maybe eventually it's not doable, but I'd be willing to bet that even when the ease of 3D printing means we can all have guns a culture of regulation means the US will still have a shit fuck more gun deaths than other countries. If that's true we need to get on some serious anti-gun culture right away.
It's very sad, the USA is the #1 small arms exporter and the #1 small arms importer in the world. Wild West culture.
there haven't always been school shootings
there aren't school shootings in other countries (not nearly as many, not even close to as many, as there are here)
there aren't other developed nations with as lax gun laws as there are here
the math is pretty basic
We can get better mental health care, that would be great, and maybe it would stop a couple of these things from happening, but bottom line it is the guns that are the problem.
Everyone seems to be totally simplifying what "mental health" means and what "mental health access" means and what it means to be crazy, and it bugs me.
"Crazy, unhinged disturbed" people are ALL AROUND US. And there's no way to just "take care of them." How? Even if we could accurately diagnose (controversial, sometimes meaningless term) everyone in America with any kind of mental health problem, "getting them help" - that term - doesn't even mean much. Help them how? Meds? Therapy? Hospitalization? I didn't realize it until I entered the mental health field, but we are so behind when it comes to understanding how to help people. We're still working on a trial-and-error basis with just about everyone who seeks mental health treatment, and it's awful.
It's just such a huge and complex problem.
But with respect to mass killing, and criminal violence in general, isn't pretty obvious that there is a gender-based imbalance?
Male aggression seems like a public health issue, but I don't often see it addressed in a gender specific way at @J-dawg's elementary school, for example, or in popular discourse. We hear about 'crime' but not 'male crime'. I tend to think criticizing masculinity, rather than just letting it roll, is a good idea.
Maybe we should register young men before we register handguns.... (another modest proposal).
Regarding depression, I'm just keying off comments I've seen recently from Dave Cullen author of COLUMBINE, a pretty remarkable piece of journalism. He mentions researchers that have been tracking detailed analytical data on civilian mass killings since the incident at Virginia Tech (sorry I don't have the citation handy, FBI funded, I think). They have identified three general personality-conditions that account for the great majority (though not all) of these kinds of incidents. Two are relatively rare: Sadistic Psychopathy (Joyfully murderous) and Violent Delusional (Avenging voices) . Far more common, according to this research, is a kind of suicidal depression that shifts into grandiose anger, particularly among untreated male depressives in their 20's.
So untreated male depressives in a society that is incredibly stingy with human services and flooded with firepower.... not good.
I meant no disrespect to your field or the people you serve. I think the public funding of health, education and family services should be increased to at least ten times whatever it is now.
These issues are still a major challenge for women, but the community of support seems to be much larger. The community of support for male-identified people who are struggling with society's fucked expectations for "men" is something that needs to grow much larger.
Just one example: little boys (including myself) do seem to gravitate towards playing with fake guns and weapons the same way that it seems like a lot of little girls love princess things even when their parents are progressive and attempt to discourage it, but maybe we can find ways to educate them on the real consequences of guns in the world. We can help them to practice increasing their empathy and increase their ability to listen to their male peers talk about their feelings without it turning into a shame session.
It's complicated, because the physical structure of a developing brain actually works against the experience of empathy, but if we give them the experience of hearing that they don't HAVE to live up to "being a real man," later in life they may remember it and realize they have a choice, and that there is not a false dilemma of "Either you satisfy the criteria of being a REAL MAN or you might as well kill yourself, cause you're useless to our society. And hey, since we're the ones making you throw your life away, you might as well punish us by taking a few people with you."
I know every situation is different, but I think a lot of the conflict in society is based on people knowing that they can never naturally live up to an ideal and they think "If I can't be what they want me to be, I need to kill myself or punish them for not loving me as I am."
Top Five Regrets of The Dying
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"I am Adam Lanza's Mother" by Liza Long
Read the whole piece.
Mental illness was a factor in this shooting, but it didn't need to be. The alienation and loneliness that comes from being different and not knowing how to properly socialize and express emotions probably played a large role. If Adam Lanza had adequate support and treatment, this may not have happened.
I think it's surreal that an extremely similar attack happened on the same day in China. 22 children were attacked and injured. Everyone survived, though, because the attacker had a knife instead of a gun.
I agree with your sentiments about male psychology completely, MZ.
Our school wide plan is to talk about the shooting as little as possible with students, and to review our crisis plans. Many kids (thankfully) don't know anything about it and we want to keep it that way. At morning meeting I had each child share something they're happy about this week, and emphasized how safe and loved kids are at this school. A lot of them looked worried and tired this morning, and parents have been reporting that some kids have been having nightmares. It's a heavy load for a child to bear.
You have a really hard job, Wanda.
It's hard though, you wound want them to hear it from you (the parent) first, I would think? Then again, why bring this awful news to light if it's not already known...
Want to hug all the moms and pops and teachers and princiPALS out there.
In fact, the dad of a third grader down the hall was killed in a shootout between two lowlifes earlier this year. He was shot in the head as he drove his parents to the airport. He slumped over the wheel in front of his whole family and the car came to a stop near one of 'our' neighborhood grocery stores.
By chance, I volunteered in the classroom the next day and watched J's teacher lead the kids through a meeting about what had happened to their friend's dad. I was so proud of that lady and all the adults in the school for making it to work and just struggling to give the kids another day of good patterns in their lives.
I've been pretty cold and fatalistic about Newton, while hoping the public outrage will actually force a change. And maybe hoping, or in my way trying to advance the desire, that if this issue can be changed, if this political lobby can be overcome, maybe others can too.
The video of that teacher that barricaded the kids in the closet and wanted them to know they were loved before they died. The pictures of the faces of the parents. That's what connects to my emotions and spills over.
Of course I don't want her to see that now.
it feels like an ur-tragedy, something that will go down in the history books as both representing a cultural moment and perhaps even a profound and abrupt break from that way of being, culturally. Whether we break for the better (banning guns) or for the worse (arming teachers) remains to be seen.
I keep thinking about this book about representations of Evil throughout history and how this tragedy would be a perfect case study for the modern era. The way people used to think of evil as coming from God / being unavoidable and largely not a moral issue (like, a giant earthquake was called an "evil"), then later it became a word associated with individual human monstrosity (Hitler). Now I wonder if "evil" is coming to be felt as emanating from culture itself. "America's violent soul," etc. I certainly don't think of the shooter as "evil," and am disturbed whenever I hear this kind of rhetoric.
Regardless, I am upset on a more profound plane than I usually am by this sort of thing, and while part of me is crying, the other, more academic part of me is really interested in how different "this one" feels. Wondering what will come of it, feeling like surely something must, yet not really seeing how anything could.
Yes. That's interesting, right? This shooter seems sick, not evil.
But to let sick people equip themselves with deadly force - or really, to amass highly profitable businesses that shape public policy such that sick people will have no impediment to equipping themselves with deadly force - somewhere in that loop somebody is gaining their wealth, comfort and status from a cunning play of blood, destruction and horror.
You're right, the more I think about it, the less this incident seems to contain evil. Instead the evil seems to spread into the surroundings and throughout the social structure, filling every space where suffering could be lessened but because of indifference or callous incentive it is not.
Maybe I give us too much agency. Maybe there just isn't anything we can do. Maybe only the malevolent get to shape the world and everybody else just shuffles through it, stumbling over the weak and fallen.
By the way, the PTA email-list is now percolating with comments of anxious parents wondering why so many of J's school doors are unlocked and why there is no one on staff patrolling the hallways.
I'm thinking, "But this school has been here, mostly unlocked, since 1909..."
I really don't want to see them take one dime away from teaching so they can pay a security guard to stand like a scarecrow at the entrance all day.
I really hate giving in to fear. It's been the wrong move at every scale I've observed throughout my life.
I have been shocked but not surprised by how many people on Facebook are furious about even the implication that guns are the problem. My cousin posted something about how he's afraid for his children and he doesn't understand why AK-47s are available at Wal-Mart and is getting slammed by comments from people accusing him of "being afraid of what he doesn't understand." His response was "hell yes I'm afraid of an AK-47, isn't that the point?" I feel that everyone posting those comments is implicitly telling my cousin that his children's safety is less important than their right to own machine guns. Every vocal gun lover in the wake of this tragedy is telling us that 20 little children getting their skulls blown apart is but a small price to pay for Americans' right to practice a largely pointless hobby. It's unbelievable to me.
"Maybe only the malevolent get to shape the world and everybody else just shuffles through it, stumbling over the weak and fallen."
I don't know. It does seem to be this way, thus far, at least in the West. However, other countries seem able to contend with common sense better than we do. In Australia there was a school shooting, so they tightened gun laws, and there hasn't been one since. Nobody has guns in England; nobody is murdered by guns in England. Other populaces seem more able to intellectually contend with the sacrifices Civilization requires. Remember how after 9/11 our government randomly invaded an unrelated country and it led to the deaths of like half a million innocent people? Meanwhile remember how right after that, there was that train bombing in Spain, and in response the Spanish people voted out their xenophobic right wing government and brought in some progressives? No war, no senseless death, and, it should be pointed out, no more train bombings. But in America we would see this as "giving in" to what the terrorists want. Instead of saying "Wow, it IS pretty fucked up, what we're doing to the middle east--man, I'd be pissed too if I lived over there, maybe we should stop unilaterally supporting Israel and stuff" we just scream ever-louder about OUR WAY OF LIFE, as though anything is actually threatening that aside from OUR OWN ACTIONS (mowing each other down with assault rifles).
Also it really has to be said that Thomas Jefferson fucked us royally with that stupid Second Amendment. If the Founding Fathers could see what would become of it they would have fallen over each other trying to scribble it out. It's embarrassing then, on that level too, how the people most loudly crowing about the constitution are those who haven't read it, don't understand it, and don't appreciate its higher goals. It incenses me to hear anti-intellectual gun nuts who can barely talk claim Thomas Jefferson as an ideological forefather. HE WAS NOT, HOW DARE YOU.
I guess it could be part of their brilliant media strategy to barrage the public with horror, but....
In desperation, I flicked the dial to the next talk radio station... a Fox News channel!
You might/might not be surprised that they didn't dwell on this subject.
When they did bring it up, of course the phrase is "gun rights."
Fox station was decidedly dumber and meaner. Less syllables per word, less emotional/intellectual nuance in their voices, victim blaming.
Dumb... An Uh-merican value!
LOL
Here's something. We read Malcolm X in my class and near the end of the book he's just constantly traveling because he's a super hot speaker and everyone wants him to come talk to them. He speaks at Harvard, he speaks on all the high-profile talk shows, etc. He's saying things like "white people are devils" and debating sociology professors from the Ivy Leagues and talking about Africa and slavery and capitalism and how it's crucial for the white man to keep the black man inferior so that he can constitute his sense of superiority via comparison. It's intense stuff! And my students were just so consistently surprised and baffled: "Why was he allowed to speak at Harvard? Why do people want him to come on their talk shows?" And I had to explain that over the past several decades, the enjoyment of nuanced debate and critical thinking in our country has plummeted. In the 60s, people were interested in crazy political debates and watching Susan Sontag eviscerate misogynists on national television. Like, whether or not you "agreed" with Malcolm X, it was like, now here's an exciting thinker with some really wild ideas, lets see what he's got to say, and then lets engage him in pretty high-level debate so that we may all be invigorated!" Whereas now we are so concerned with making everything as bland as possible--every network, every paper, trying to please corporate interests and/or the widest swath of people possible, which leads to nothingness, nobody saying anything real. My students were really bummed out by this.
Jeffery Toobin in The New Yorker ~ Also @YT, yes. I had this in my rant for a minute too: "Remember how after 9/11 our government randomly invaded an unrelated country and it led to the deaths of like half a million innocent people?" Thanks for tagging that base.
Remember too, about 2005 or so, how many good Americans were indignant about how the Iraqis seemed so "ungrateful"?
Except for, you know, remembering what was going on in the heads of Our Founding Fathers. That's when we get all Leto Atreides II.
Also: Remembering what was going on in the heads of prehistoric man. ME CAVE MAN! ME STRONG HUNTER AND DEFENDER OF PROPERTY!
We can also remember the thoughts of the characters in the Bible real good.
We also remember what life was like in the 50s specifically according to television shows from that era
this is similar to how people get so uppity about being "natural" only when it comes to shit they don't want to think about. "But eating meat is NATURAL, so it's important I keep eating meat!" Just like using your cell phone and the internet and taking antibiotics and capitalism and VCRs and going 80 mph on the goddamn freeway, all highly unnatural, but all shit people enjoy, so it's okay
Selective application of supposed value systems
ME MAN, ME STRONGER THAN WOMAN, THAT WHY WOMAN EARN .67 CENTS FOR EVERY DOLLAR MAN EARN
http://kotaku.com/5970039/after-sandy-hook-and-virginia-tech-im-done-with-violent-video-games
"...The discussion in the gaming community does need to start acknowledging that games are a unique form of engagement, and seriously question whether or not the 'best' it can do are murder simulators. Really? With all the creativity in the world, we can't come up with something more fun than increasingly complicated and creative ways of killing people onscreen?"
Reality: SO. MANY. people in this country need intense, round-the-clock, LIFE-LONG help/supervision in order to even minimally function in the world without causing harm to themselves and others, and we currently have no (economic) way to make this happen. In other countries and in other times, I think families and "villages" largely took on this responsibility. Now we have the prison system.
The Supreme Court has only dealt with the 2nd amendment, recently, and 5-4. I went to school near Webster and have friends that live there. Let's get this radical fringe gun 'rights' s* the f* fixed.
My proposal, make the NRA, dealers & manufacturers of bullets & weapons legally responsible and check in every day in-person responsible for people attracted to guns.
Now the rhetoric will be about training firemen to be more cautious when responding to fires, obviously great for all concerned
Why are people allowed to carry guns into Denny's? Why can't congress pass the measly-est gun control bill?
Chris led a great life, and had a million friends. I wasn't close to him but enjoyed our chats when I ran into him around Denver. He was ridiculously positive about human nature, despite being one of those people who just had weird bad stuff happen to him all the time. One of his last FB posts- presumably in response to the Boston Marathon bombs- sums him up well:
"Bad things are gonna happen. I know this from what I know about the history of our world. Truth is they have always happened and I surmise they will keep happening. Which SUCKS because deep inside everyone knows how all of this is gonna end. Love wins. Love will always win. Remember the everyday heroes who only know to help. Forgive those who do harm. They are adrift and will know love soon enough. Rejoice in the good that happens whenever, wherever and see the worst as only a means to that end. Now go do some good. It comes back, ya know."
RIP, Haney.
"By all accounts, he was a gentle, inspiring soul who strived to be relentlessly positive in the face of adversity."
RIP.
america