Contributors

Saturday, December 14, 2013

It's Cool Now

A year after the Sandy Hook massacre and we haven't progressed at all. In fact, we've gone backwards in some ways. School shootings happen about once a month now and I have to wonder just how much of this is the media's fault. Every time there is a shooting, it's instantaneous, wall to wall coverage as we saw yesterday with yet another shooting in Colorado. If there was less coverage, or none at all, would there be less school shootings?

Somewhere along the way in these last two decades, it became alright to walk into a school with a gun and start shooting. Heck, it's cool, right? Because it's on TV and everyone gets excited about it. For those mentally ill individuals, this is their chance to have people finally attention to them. And they think it's socially acceptable because of the regularity with which it happens. Worse, people seem to be OK with it and that is just terribly disturbing. The only good thing (if you can call it good) that has come out of Newtown is the gun community has shown what truly ugly people they are. Their response to this tragedy was so profoundly disgusting that, in many ways, they are going to deeply regret their words and actions. As I have stated previously, it's only a matter of time.

The Christian Science Monitor has a series of articles up that are very worthwhile reading. In addition to political analysis, they offer some great perspectives on where we are culturally that need attention. Here's an example...

• One in three people in the US knows someone who has been shot.

• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day, and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room. 

• Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun. 

• The US firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population. 

• Although guns can and have been used successfully in self-defense in the home, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to injure or kill in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

For our country as great as ours, this is simply piss poor. And it obviously goes way beyond guns. Why are we such violent culture? It's not simply one reason and I think once we get a handle on the complexities of this answer, we can define the various reasons and implement solutions.

I think we should start with why it's cool now to shoot up schools.

2 comments:

GuardDuck said...

From your own link:

"The result in New York City, at least, is that some gun owners are getting letters from authorities demanding that they turn in their weapons."

So can you finally admit you been wrong every time you said registration doesn't lead to confiscation and that nobody's coming to take anyone's guns?

Larry said...

Believe it or not, Tom Maguire discovers some people even dumber than Markadelphia when it comes to guns.