Naturally, largely due to a massive, unbelievably awful crime scene in what was a worst worse-case scenario, there was a shit-ton of misinformation doled out across all corners of the media online and on television and though I have yet to plunge into the darker, conspiratorial sides of this (it was a shadowy government conspiracy to set up Obama's looming gun collection policy!) I have seen a whole lot of unbelievable bullshit from made up stories about the survivors and some of the victims to bizarre quotes and internet memes said to be attributed to celebrities like Morgan Freeman. Not really that surprising and when things get weird then things get weird. And it truly was weird and it remains weird and really times are just fucking weird. People are weird, civilization is weird, America is weird, the world is weird and I, nor do most people truly, actually understand it anymore. Never did.
What's more is that it took me about 6.7 second to discover that there was a massacre in Connecticut to finding a comment on every article about said tragedy from some crazy, gun nut proclaiming guns are not the problem followed shortly by a "liberal gun control nut's" response that something needs to change. Thus angry, political, flame wars erupted everywhere and carried on and on all weekend long. All of Facebook and Twitter became active pro-gun/anti-gun arguments juxtaposed with mourning and shock. It was painful and surreal and I did my best to tune it out after a while. It was just too much and it was too ugly. All the hateful comments, aggressive justifications and good, old fashioned ignorance. So many people needed to tell the rest of us how they felt, about the massacre, about their stance on guns, mental health, even their media watching (or not watching) habits. It was a time you'd think would draw us closer together generally and instead it seemed to highlight, in stark relief, how far apart we remain. It demonstrated just how worried gun people are that the rest of us don't understand them, the second amendment, or that guns are things and the crazy people are the real problem. While the rest of us think "something" ought to be done about guns, mental health, all of it...Above all something needs to change.
I think President Obama really hit on the head quite well in his speech broadcast Sunday night, December 16:
Though it has to be mentioned that even that speech was met with fire for daring to exist and temporarily preempting a football game, behold this Deadspin article highlighting the awful, racially fueled hatred put out there on Twitter when his speech aired.
Take that nigger off the tv, we wanna watch football! @Hester52 @Ty_CoolerThanUUnreal. Un-fucking-real. How can such a self-indulged nation of narcissist sociopaths such as ourselves ever come back from this cliff? Sometimes I am amazed we, as a nation of people, have even made it this far. Now, it's true that sort of thinking isn't everybody and there are surely good people for every racist scumbag who hate Obama. And we know there's A LOT of people who hate Obama but on this weekend?
Eh, whatever, allow me to digress back to my original, loosely stated thesis here, something has to change. I am not sure what that something, or probably somethings, really need to be as I am not really anti-gun and as many, many people have pointed out ad nauseum all the gun laws in the world would likely have not stopped this from happening (save a complete and total gun ban that was a) effective and b) happened years and years ago so that there just weren't any guns to get nor crazy gun nuts to obsess over them) though that is not an adequate excuse to not put in place some sort of stricter gun safety regulation. Then there's better mental health treatment/access which is needed though I do not possess the expertise to say how that would work. This whole argument, even while just typing it out here, just feels a lot like a snake eating it's own tail and I don't have answers. Just questions, and the need for a discussion that I know I can't have because either side is unable to do so because they already know that THEY'RE RIGHT AND FUCK YOU! Something I fully expect to see if Hamster Running on the Sever Wheel decides to contribute his two cents.
Of all the articles, memes, prayers, pictures, and "facts about guns" articles that have over run my internet cup this weekend there have been two that have really caught my eye. One, by a Gawker author I have read for years and who is not usually known for writing anything along these lines, Drew Magary. I usually read Drew for a lot of dick and poop jokes related to football so it took me by surprise that he came up with such an insightful article. Insightful in that it asks questions that you just don't see much when discussing guns.
One of the amazing things about the gun control debate in America is the remarkable success with which gun manufacturers—Sig Sauer, Glock, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, The Freedom Group (yes, it's called the fucking Freedom Group)—have been able to avoid the conversation altogether. When you think of Glock, you think of a gun, and not of the company behind it. That needs to change. We've shit on cigarette companies for lying about cigarettes. We've shit on Roger Goodell and the NFL for underplaying head injuries. We're even making inroads against the sneaky bastards at BIG SUGAR for making us all hopeless fatasses. But here is an industry—firearms manufacturing—that makes products whose deadliness is disputed by NO ONE, not even the people who treasure those products. And yet the executives and shadowy international holding company execs—whose job is to flood the world with as many of these weapons as possible—skate by cloaked in blessed anonymity. Wanna know why nothing ever gets done about gun laws here in the US? This is why.
And that's true! The gun companies have little to nothing to say ever about any of this and no one ever asks. Not that it would make a whole lot of difference right now as it relates to all these dead bodies and in the end there's simply the notion that their guns didn't kill people, people kill people (a lot of them, with guns!). He goes on:
Gun manufacturers have successfully managed to shift virtually all blame for lax gun laws in America onto their lobbyists and their customers. It's no coincidence that companies like Sig Sauer, Freedom Group and Glock (which also made one of the weapons used in the killings) are privately held. They strive for minimum transparency, and they have achieved it. The NRA, bless its heart, is a front—a perfect little whipping boy designed to weather all of your abuse so that Ron Cohen (CEO of Sig Sauer) can drive to and from his office without a reporter shoving a microphone in front of his stupid fucking face. They have taken phrases like "Gun control" and "the Second Amendment" and crafted them into permanent, bulletproof diversions. They've done such a good job of shielding themselves that Sig Sauer doesn't even feel compelled to issue a public statement when one of its weapons is used in a mass tragedy. They don't have to express their regrets or spew some bullshit about being dedicated to making sure guns are used safely. Higher profile companies have to send out public apologies when they send out a bad tweet. Big Gun does nothing and doesn't have to. Isn't that remarkable?
It kind of is. I also particularly gel with the whole NRA is the front concept because anyone who has ever tried to talk about guns with anyone involved with the NRA knows that you will get no where and you are going to hear a whole hell of a lot of talking points about the protection of families and the rights of armed bears. Drew goes on to discuss the need to get the CEOs of these gun companies on TV, in front of grand juries, or congressional hearings and essentially compares the idea to the way the proverbial they took on the tobacco industry. Who knows if that would provide for this undefined change, or rather help us to define what exact kind change is needed, but it certainly is worth the reflection.
The other article making the rounds, I think, quite succinctly identifies the mental health aspects of these single shooter nightmares we seem to keep having. Not in discussing one of our infamous killers so much as worrying about the son that could become one in "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother," is well worth a read. Again, no answers here but it sure highlights some important questions.
I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.How does one solve this problem exactly? The article goes on to discuss dificulites of getting the kind of mental health "Michael" needs particularly at this stage since he does not yet have a criminal record, or isn't old enough. What will that mom do? What can they do with "Michael?" Institutionalize him? Drug him? what can be done? Tragic, frightening and tragic. This is coming from a non-parent so I can only barely, peripherally begin to understand what this specific situation, let alone the rampage last Friday, means to anyone who is a parent.
A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan -- they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.
That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.
A lot of pro-gun types I see around the internet seem to think the answer to all of this is more guns! Arm that mom and if 13 year old "Michael" attacks, put him down.These same folks are also advocating for guns in the classroom. If only teachers were armed then a crazy comes in the class and bada-bing, bada-bang the highly trained teacher will be able to dispatch the bad guy with a well placed round right between the eyes, custodial staff come by for a quick clean up and we can move forward with our lessons! No harm, no foul! I am not going to link where I got this next bit from but I think these quotes kind of sum up nicely where some of these people are coming from:
Thieves don’t care about laws against theft, and rapists don’t care about laws against rape. The same is true about drinking and driving.So, people is people and there is no solution but kill 'em dead! This almost advocates just abolishing laws altogether since apparently people will just break the laws anyway. So, why bother, right? A bunch of gun bans will get ignored by criminals and those of us who are law abiding have no means to defend ourselves. Therefore, everyone should get a Bushmaster AR-15 anything less may as well be a pea shooter. Also, the unstoppable law breaker could just as easily kill their victims with knives, bats, cars, bricks, power tools so then shouldn't we dismiss any nuance and just ban everything that potentially can kill people if applied correctly? So, it's either the complete ban of weapons or everyone should have every weapon. As is usually the case with these folks it is only one way or another, black or white and there is never, ever any form of middle ground or compromise. Just a lot of false equivalence and passionately applied rage.
Laws won’t stop people intent on doing harm.
So what do the law-abiding citizens do? They arm themselves just like they would in war. There are terror insurgents in the United States hell-bent on destroying others. That’s a fact.
This person goes on:
Schools should immediately develop a program where every teacher is trained in how to handle a firearm. All teachers must comply to get hired. If Israel can do it, why not America? Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America wrote the following in 2008: “In the mid-seventies, a terrorist attacked an Israeli school bus, murdering over 30 children. . . . A majority of Israelis . . . found a compelling reason for putting guns in schools — terrorists would get guns whether Jews were armed or not. As a result, schools in border areas, and school buses, were manned with gun-toting teachers or others assigned to be at the ready.”No reasoning with the unreasonable. Let's just convert our schools to rootin' tootin' saloons in the old west! A lot of schools apparently are considering arming teachers or at least having armed security patrolling the halls. Every school in America has re-evaluated their lock-down plans and official plans to deal with a shooter on campus. Every parent in America was nervous about bringing their children to school today because no one can say with any certainty that won't happen again. That this unthinkable nightmare will now become some sort of status quo that we will all need to deal with today. "Oh look, that pre-school down the street got shot up again!" In the end, it's plain and simple that everyone is afraid and the great American culture of fear continues.
Signs should be posted around the school that read:
“The teachers and administrators of this school are armed and trained in deadly force. Anybody attempting to enter the school intending to do harm will be shot on sight.”
Who knows where this will go, probably no where, as the Christmas is coming and, despite the absolute horror of 20 (TWENTY!) little kids being murdered in a classroom, this too will fade away as the next big media orgy rolls out, and the next one, and the one after that. Diane Fienstein says she will be putting forward that assault weapons ban next month, the same one from the 1990's which surely caused America's NRA members' pulses to rise precipitously. Surely that will quietly get torpedoed away as usual, but you never know, even some conservative politicians, even a few with the wondrous NRA A grade, are coming forward today and saying maybe they need some practical gun control on the books. Who knows if that will stick or if it would make a lick of difference towards much of anything.
I leave you with a brilliant Tom Tomorrow comic from today that is actually a modified version of one he did for one of our previous, recent massacres:
No comments:
Post a Comment