School Shooting Thoughts

[cahwyguy]

First and foremost, my deepest condolences to the families that lost loved ones in today’s tragedies. To put it succinctly,

1. #insert shock horror and emotional statements of distress and expressions of condolences.
2. Every parent is going to hug their child a little tighter tonight, and be grateful they arrived home from school safely.

In response to today’s events, the media-sphere and the Internet-sphere has been flooded with calls for gun control. Now I’m not a gun advocate. I do, however, believe that most gun restrictions don’t appear to stop violence — they are like antivirus mechanisms stopping the low hanging fruitcases. Yes, we need sensible gun restrictions — no one needs an Uzi or automatic weapons. But these restrictions aren’t the ultimate answer. We need to treat the ultimate cause of the problem, not the symptoms.

Basically, by the time one of these crazies goes out to get the gun, it is too late. We have seen that no matter what the controls in place, those determined to do something will find a way around the problem. Perhaps if we control anything, we might control ammunition, but even that is problematic. Ammunition is not required; there was violence at a school in China using knives. What is the answer?

First, we need violence control. Bluntly, our society has become desensitized to violence through violent videogames, movies, and TV. Today’s young adults grew up believing that you can kill something and they aren’t really dead. I’m not talking about cartoons — we know cartoons aren’t real. I’m talking about the excessively violent and bloody TV shows (look at the violence in any episode of NCIS as an example), the movies, and the shoot-em-up videogames. Even war violence is often at a distance. We’ve desensitized people to the horror, and this lowers the mental roadblock to such horrible actions. (I could quote George Carlin about replacing “kill” with “fuck”, but then I realized that an equal depiction of sex would likely desensitize people to sexual violence. Showing sex as part of a loving situation is one thing; showing nudity and casual sex between consenting adults is also fine… however, given our society, that would rapidly degenerate).

Second, we need to restore the mental safety net. People doing crimes like this are mentally ill (by definition, this is not a sane act). We have so decimated our proactive mental health systems that might detect and prevent this due to budget cutting and greater concern for acquiring wealth than taking care of people as to make these actions inevitable. We must start regular screening for mental health problems at low or no cost, provide mental health coverage as part of medical plans. We must also educate people on the warning signs that these deranged individuals exhibit, so we can get them in treatment before they do anything.

Lastly, we must control the media. As part of this, we need to recognize the amplifying effect of the Internet, which takes any kooky possibility and magnifies the voices, making things acceptable. It also makes weapons and techniques easily available. The Internet can be used for good, but that doesn’t mean it always is or that it has only had positive benefits. We must also recognize that the publicity and attention may be one of the goals of the crazy. I think about the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins“, which makes the point that deranged individual often do crazy things to make their mark on history. Did we need the level of coverage we had today?

Perhaps instead of taking things away and adding restrictions in response to a tragedy like this, we think more about how our society is indicating what is socially acceptable. We continually emphasize violence against others as being positive and entertaining solutions to problems, and rejecting any opportunity to love and care about others. Perhaps positive actions — deemphasizing violence and identifying and treating those with mental health problems early — could be much more beneficial to society as a whole.

 

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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