I’ve waited a bit to weigh in on this, but I think it’s time.
The two most important things to understand are that gun control would reduce harm significantly, and that gun control is a palliative for a sick culture. The US does have more guns than anyone else, but countries like Finland have a pile of guns and people don’t kill nearly as many innocents with them. Likewise every military age male in Switzerland has an assault rifle, and they don’t have killing sprees.
The first point first, China has people who go on sprees with knives. In fact there was one just recently in a school, 23 students were injured. That’s sad, but not one of them died. Not one. Guns make violence far, far more deadly. Reducing gun availability won’t stop attacks. It will reduce how deadly they are.
The key points of leverage on harm reduction are reducing clip sizes, getting rid of automatics and semi-automatics and radically restricting ammunition purchases. Likewise soft-target ammunition – bullets intended to fragment, and hollow point ammunition need to go away. These bullets have no purpose but to kill civilians. You don’t use them against military or paramilitary targets because they suck against body armor. As such they have no place, even if you believe in a 2nd Amendment “fight the government” argument. If you’re fighting the government, you’ll want ammo that can pierce body armor.
The second point is that America has far more of these attacks than anyone else. This is because America:
1) is under economic pressure. The more people who are in economic trouble, the more attacks.
2) has jobs which are intensely unpleasant, with the asshole boss being the norm. Don’t tell me otherwise.
3) has a startling rise in diagnosed mental illness, and a startling rise in the use of psychoactive medications whose effects we don’t really understand. In particular, there has been a massive increase in the drugging of young children (males are who we care about in this context) with amphetamines and dextro-Amphetamines, officially starting as young as 3 years old, and unofficially, earlier. Long term use of amphetamines is associated with psychotic breaks and violence, this is not in question, we have a TON of historical evidence. You cannot keep people constantly on amphetamines and not expect these sort of eruptions.
4) The increase in mental illness and medication is in large part because life in America is extraordinarily unpleasant. You live in a militarized surveillance society with no guaranteed health care and with a job market that doesn’t provide enough jobs for those who need it, allowing bosses to treat those who do have jobs like shit, and executives to take virtually all productivity gains for themselves. The economic model is to pile debt on consumers to create rental streams, but constant debt payments put people under major psychological pressure, all the time.
5) People are suffering an epidemic of chronic physical diseases on top of this.
You cannot have a pressure cooker society which is also militarized and swimming in guns. You simply cannot.
First step, enact gun control. Second step, stop treating your fellow Americans like shit and stop medicating young children (and everyone else) with record amounts of psychoactive chemicals. There are only two possibilities: either that many Americans really are mentally ill, or they aren’t. In either case, the solution isn’t to medicate them. It is to figure out what about your society is making them ill.
Actually, the truth will be somewhere between. More people are mentally ill because of your society, but not as many as are medicated. People have to be medicated to function in American society because it requires unpleasant and unnatural behaviour, virtually all the time. School and work both require people to act in ways that normal, healthy, unmedicated individuals find hard to sustain. Add to that the fact that social ties have, over the last 60 years, absolutely collapsed, leaving most people with almost no friend or close family, and people need to drug themselves to get through their day. They are sicks, scared and lonely. And at the very edges of this, the occasional person cracks, goes ballistic and kills a lot of people.
Celsius 233
Well Ian, here’s something I posted on a site I frequent here in Thailand;
Growing up with guns and learning to shoot from the age of 6; I know a thing or two about guns and people.
I went to Camp Mehan, a YMCA camp at Spirit Lake at the foot of Mt. St. Helen’s; I was 12 years old and took my .22 rifle. We did formal target practice and went unsupervised into the forest with our rifles. Never a problem. Never personally had an incident or any problem with another person.
In all my years of active competition and informal target practice I never threatened or was threatened, by any other human being, regarding firearms. Many years of fond and fantastic memories around recreational and formal shooting sports.
I think it’s now time to recognize that guns are now a problem; because American society has changed; American society is severely mentally ill, bordering on psychotic.
Changing the laws will be futile; it must be remembered; there are more than 300,000,000 firearms in U.S. homes…everywhere across the country. These guns are constantly changing hands privately; without any regulation. Registration is ridiculous on it’s face; myself and most people I knew had at least one gun that couldn’t be traced to us because we bought it privately, bypassing normal records and checks; all legally. Confiscation is likewise futile; because one has to know who owns what, to confiscate the gun.
Ammunition? I never bought factory ammo because at my level of competition hand-loading was the only competitive option; hand-loads being super precise for accuracy. So, most “gun nuts” I knew were stocked to the rafters with components; powder, primers, shells, and bullets.
For a mere $500 USD one can buy a precision loading machine (hand operated) that will put out 600-1000 rds./hour.
High cap magazines are stocked by the 10’s of thousands; people buy 10-20 popular assault type rifles for $300 USD each and hold them until they can be sold for $1,000 – $2,000 or more each; I know this, I saw this, I lived this.
Fix the fucking society; take care of your people; fix your broken down educational system and find a way to deal with religious fanaticism. Start taking care of your mentally ill.
Start taking care of American infrastructure; not to be redundant, but that includes your precious citizens.
This was a few days ago; probably needs some tuning, but it seemed relevant at the time.
I’m frankly at my wit’s end on the whole U.S. pathology thing…
Strangefate
Brutal assessment but hard to argue. There have been many time periods, most really, where life for the average person was extraordinarily unpleasant but we have perhaps created one today uniquely devoid of even the normal pleasures. Throughout history, no how matter how terrible living conditions or leadership, close family and community was pretty much a given, with all the support structure that entails. People can withstand a lot if they have a sympathetic ear, someone who will listen to their gripes and miseries, and if they have a part in a social unit that makes them feel significant. Many people — particularly these loners who go on shooting sprees — only have their jobs, where it is made abundantly clear that they and their work have no real value, and that they could be replaced at any time. While working the fields in the past was no picnic, there was at least a real sense that the work was necessary and every hand actually needed. Modern society truly fosters a sense that you, as the individual, are utterly superfluous and nobody really wants you or your work. You’re tolerated at best, a kind of parasite, a word the hardcore right loves to invoke.
Also unmentioned but perhaps significant is the role likely played by our entertainment, which is ubiquitous in modern America. Discussing movies and TV and video games is pretty much all we do socially anymore and much of that entertainment probably contributes to feelings of low self-esteem. We are inundated with shows full of rich beautiful people in exciting relationships with other rich beautiful people living intensely meaningful lives with real accomplishments. Whether that’s getting the bad guy or the pretty girl or the wealthy handsome heir…our entertainment is constantly showing us examples of life to which our own miserable existences can not measure up. Men watch movies full of bad ass tough guys who take no shit and gun down their enemies in a hail of bullets, while in real life most men routinely eat shit from bosses, wives, kids, and whoever else, never feeling remotely close to the ideal of manhood they’re shown. Likewise women are fed fairy tales where good girls are always supposed to net the perfect husband, children, and beautiful home/riches by the final reel. Plus there’s all these reality shows that are just open celebrations of beauty and wealth, essentially carrying that message that if you’re attractive and/or rich you can do whatever you want and treat anyone however you wish, and still be a role model. The unstated subtext being that if you’re poor or physically unattractive you really are beneath consideration, completely without value in modern America. Doesn’t matter if you’re moral, smart, virtuous, kind, a hard worker, whatever. If you’re not rich and/or beautiful, you’re a waste.
How can people live in the inhumane depressing belittling world they currently live in, while simultaneously having hours of power fantasy bullshit shoveled into their heads daily, and not go insane?
Troy
“You can keep people constantly on amphetamines and not expect these sort of eruptions.”
Did you mean, You can’t
Anyhow, I find it fascinating how the USA venerates violence. It celebrates its wars, continually trying to relive the history of WW2 and continually reenacting the USA civil war, and turning its current wars into cable news entertainment. There’s wars in the USA, too, everywhere. A war on drugs, a war on crime, a war on terrorism. You name it, it’s got a war going on against it, in the USA. With so much war going on, one could even think of these children victims as collateral damage from enemy fire in one of the USA’s internal wars: was it the war on mental health? or the war for the 2nd amendment?
I also pale how the USA worships its military. Soldiers, and officers especially, are held in the same sort of esteem people do priests and Hollywood stars, but there’s to be no criticisms of the military, cause then you become one of the enemy, aiding the USA’s many enemies, who for some reason just keep growing in number, daily.
par4
First step is to enact gun control???? After that litany of societal ills that have been created by this totally corrupt corporate state? I don’t think so.
someofparts
from Joe Bageant –
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/12/i-dont-understa.html
“I believe the gun ownership debate detracts from the real issue of America’s interior psychic violence, which manifests itself in so many escalating ways these days. Said violence is very deeply ingrained. Every day I watch a hundred little social and interpersonal brutalities and attitudinal cruelties, which seem to go unnoticed by the public at large (though not unfelt,I am sure). And they seem to be growing. “
Lisa Simeone
I would add, Ian, that this country is steeped in violence. From its beginnings to its present. We glorify violence, we lionize it, we export it. We blow the brains out of people at home and abroad and then have the nerve to ask “why?”
(And where are Obama’s tears over the children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia that his drones are killing?)
Re the Switzerland thing, people always tout that. But Switzerland has a problem with domestic violence. It’s not little kids in school getting shot, it’s girlfriends and wives.
Lisa Simeone
And god forbid if even one of these near-constant shooters had a “Muslim-sounding” or “Arab-sounding” name. We’d never hear the end of it. Muslims would be even more persecuted, more entrapped in phony “terrorist” plots than they already are. Instead, we have an endless supply of “all-American” Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who can easily get their hands on lethal weapons. 30,000 killed and injured in shootings EVERY YEAR in this country; how many 9/11s is that? But nah, that’s not terrorism. Only swarthy people with funny-sounding names can be terrorists.
This country has chosen its priorities. And they’re horrifyingly out there for all to see.
Petro
I was hanging back, too – you lasted a couple of days longer than I did.
Once again, Ian, you’ve seen with a clear eye and written with a firm hand. All spot on.
Strangely Enough
Gun control will never work. Given the current number of firearms, it’s unrealistic. Given the political reality that the 2nd Amendment seems to be the only one the government acknowleges, it’s a non-starter. We can’t even acknowlege the destabilising effect that our collective gun fetish, coupled with drug prohibition, is producing in Mexico.
This killing spree will be just like all the others- forgotten by the time of the next.
Cloud
While working the fields in the past was no picnic, there was at least a real sense that the work was necessary and every hand actually needed. Modern society truly fosters a sense that you, as the individual, are utterly superfluous and nobody really wants you or your work. You’re tolerated at best, a kind of parasite, a word the hardcore right loves to invoke.
quoted for truth
Also, I believe automobile culture is inevitably alienating, plain and simple. First, outside of major metropoles, not having an automobile makes you socially a non-person. Second, the energy/time/money overhead is ridiculously enormous — both for the political economy and for the individual. Third, driving as a mode of transport physically isolates you from other travelers and is nerve-wracking.
Cloud
Not to mention television. I believe it no coincidence that politically, the downward arc began circa 1980, that is, roughly 25 years after television became widespread.
Sean Paul Kelley
“No, no, no, You are wrong! I am going to put my fingers in my ears because I have taken anti-depressants and they saved my life! And my child takes adderrall because I just cannot handle him, he has too much energy!”
I cannot tell you how many times I have seen that comment in comment threads at The Agonist and as replies to my tweets. Of course, you are mostly correct Ian in your diagnoses, but Americans don’t want to hear it. Not a darn thing will change in America until the fear of change is less than the fear of going along with the status quo is too much to bear. It’s that simple.
Sean Paul Kelley
When America doesn’t have a war in which to export its violence the violence comes home. With Iraq over and Afghanistan nearing the end it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
The Dude
Good essay. I’d just like to add another point. The suburbanification of America, in which the majority of the people live in soul deadening, far flung communities where they rarely get to know their neighbors and spend half their time when not working isolated within an automobile, certainly has to be a factor. In America, you are actively encouraged to live your whole life essentially alone save for your family and use mass media and entertainment to replace real social interaction. And if your family is horribly dysfunctional, as Adam Lanza’s appears to have been, the conditions are even more ripe to turen you into a monster.
Everythings Jake
Ian,
Editorial Note – Maybe the last sentence of 3) is meant to read “You canNOT keep people constantly…”
This is a good companion piece with Default to Kindness, but then virtually all of your pieces pair well with that one.
This event sent me back to MLK’s 1967 speech at the Riverside Church, which is essentially also a plea for kindess grounded in the understanding that what you send out into the world will inevitably come back to haunt you.
Everythings Jake
@ Lisa Simeone
I dont’ think Obama or the powers that be he serves care any more for the dead children in Newton than they do for those they have murdered abroad. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Gabby Giffords to Aurora and all the tragedies inbetween…Randolph Bourne might better have said “Violence is the health of the State.”
I’ve come to think more and more that Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” is one of, if not the most revelatory critiques of the real state of human relations.
Dan Lynch
I am a big fan of Ian’s essays, but have to strongly disagree with Ian on this subject.
Re: expanding bullets. These are necessary for hunting and desireable for self-defense. In fact, many states ban the use of non-expanding bullets for hunting.
Re: gun control reducing harm. There is simply no data to back that up. Murder rates correlate to culture, to race, to unemployment, to economic inequality, and to the black market for drugs, not to gun laws or gun ownership.
Re: America’s sick culture. Agree with Ian there, except he ignores the elephants in the living room — American’s recent history of slavery and genocide. The states with the highest murder rates are the former slave owning states. High murder rates also correlate to northern cities with large black populations. On the other hand, lily-white states with no history of slavery, like Idaho and North Dakota, have murder rates that are the envy of Manitoba.
IMHO I believe that slavery has had a huge impact on American culture that lingers to this day. For example, African-Americans are more likely to spank their children than white Americans. Southerners of all races spank more than northerners. And we know that children who experience violence are more likely to be violent when they grow up.
There is also significant violence (and suicide) associated with our Native American population, and I’ve heard the same is true in Canada ? Again, this is a cultural legacy of the way these people have been treated, and to some extent still are treated.
If there were a way to legislate culture, then I would pass a law repealing America’s cultural legacy of slavery and genocide. Also, it might help if the guy in the White House stopped bragging about his kill list.
However, since there are no easy fixes for social and personal problems, I’d turn my attention instead to economic and legal fixes:
— eliminate unemployment and poverty with a job guarantee program, since murder rates correlate to unemployment and income inequality
— raise the minimum wage substantially for the same reason
— free public health care, free public mental health care, and free public universities for qualified students, for the same reason
— decriminalize drugs since much violent crime is related to the black market for drugs
— outlaw physical punishment of children, both at home and in the school, since violence to children leads to violence as adults
— require satisfactory completion of universal service in a Swiss-style militia as a prerequisite for purchasing or owning a firearm. This would ensure that all gun owners have received basic firearms training and were at least sane enough to function in the service. This probably would have weeded out James Holmes and Adam Lanza.
— mandatory attendence of PUBLIC schools for all American children. No more church schools, segregation academies, or charter schools. Because public schools bond communities together and social cohesiveness correlates to low murder rates.
— change the laws to make it easier to have mentally disturbed people committed to an institution.
My proposals are in keeping with Ian’s suggestion that “when it doubt, use kindness.” My proposals hurt no one. They help the people who need help the most. They don’t take away anyone’s rights or anyone’s guns (except for the mentally ill). They’re consistent with the 2nd amendment. It’s similar to what has proven to work well in Switzerland.
The Tragically Flip
Ian’s about right. I would caution that Switzerland’s gun-in-every-pot situation has to be tempered by the understanding that:
1) You have to go through basic training (including the Swiss military’s psychological screening) before you’re issued your home assault weapon
2) You’re only allowed to travel with that weapon between your home and duty station, or between home and a licensed range
3) You don’t get any ammunition whatsoever for that weapon, and can only get it at licensed ranges, where it has to be used on site.
4) By virtue of being issued by the state, each weapon is of course registered to each owner and any weapon stolen would be reported, and obviously can’t be sold on or loaned out eg. if your kid is caught hunting with it or something you’re in serious legal trouble.
5) The Swiss strongly regulate private handguns in a way that the NRA would lose their minds over if suggested in America.
I think the bullet control part is key, but also the fact that Swiss reservists still have to pass a basic psychological screening.
In general, I agree with Ian’s basic thrust which is that it probably is possible to have a society with lot of guns around, but not too much more gun violence, but other things have to be much better than America has them, and since those things are shit, guns exacerbate the results of those shitty problems to be much much worse.
The Tragically Flip
Dan Lynch:
“Re: gun control reducing harm. There is simply no data to back that up. ”
Uh, yeah, there is:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-ownership-and-use/index.html
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html
Canada also did the attempted-genocide thing on our first nations peoples, and Germany has plenty of recent experience with genocide – the “violent culture” is an explanation that doesn’t really explain things. Anyway, even if you posit a “violent culture” or somehow convince yourself that Americans have some kind of genetic mutation which makes them more violent, the more guns are around the more those latent problems will result in gun deaths. A violent culture that only has access to knives will see plenty of stabbings, but no one ever dies in a “drive by stabbing” or gets hit by a “stray” knife intended for someone else. If you’re cleaning your knife and make a mistake, you might cut yourself and need a trip to the ER for stitches. If you’re cleaning your gun and it goes off unintentionally, someone may be going to the morgue.
Ian Welsh
I grew up with guns too. Got my first .22 bolt action at age 10 or so. You have to start draining the swamp. Guns for hunting I’d leave available, guns whose only real purpose is killing people I wouldn’t. And I would restrict ammo. It’s really hard to make your own smokeless ammo from scratch.
Simply put: people in the country and wilderness have legitimate reasons to have guns. People in the cities only have them to kill people. The few exceptions can be dealt with (target shooters can leave their guns at their target shooting club, for example.)
I live right downtown in Canada’s largest city. I don’t own a gun. If I lived in the countryside I’d have at least 2, maybe 3, possibly 4. (A shotgun, a .30-06, and depending on the part of the type of country I’m in either a .22 or a revolver for dealing with large aggressive animals.) Guns, as I was brought up with them, are just tools. Very dangerous tools, to be treated with great care, but tools. Frankly chainsaws scare me more, because if you care for and use a gun properly it won’t kill anyone you don’t want it to. You can do everything right with a goddamn chainsaw and the bloody thing will still maim or kill you.
One of my uncles had 11 guns and a hunting crossbow. Up on the walls, ammo was certainly findable. It was never a problem. But I was brought up with the right skills and attitudes towards guns.
jcapan
I’m reminded of Jared Diamond’s key question: “which of our traditional core values can we retain, and which ones instead no longer serve us well in today’s world?” The American gun cult dates to the 19th century—at some pt. perhaps we’ll consider whether it’s a sensible value in the 21st century.
In addition, he says something that all of us know full well about “situations in which a society fails to try to solve perceived problems because the maintenance of the problem is good for some people.” e.g. our drug wars, incarceration-state, and a society where men wearing sidearms is still perceived as anything less than batshit lunacy.
Full-on agree with Ian’s points about our mental health/soma-distribution industry. But no amt. of narcotics, legal or otherwise and no amt. of media/sports/porn is going to keep the lid on the pressure cooker for long. As he said, these are palliatives only until things get bad enough.
Finally, fuck Obama’s tears and fuck the vast majority of legislators on both sides of the aisle. They’re either taking checks from the NRA or shit-scared-spineless to confront them/theirs b/c of threats to their narrow slice of power. Fuck tears and the maudlin media circle jerk, complete with theme music. Show me the outrage and action and selfless commitment to a better society.
Celsius 233
This is a hard nut to swallow for us responsible citizens; but we have indeed come to the end of an era in America.
Given our government has been taken over by the oligarchs; which has resulted in a movement away from a caring, compassionate government to one of mean spiritedness and winner take all mentality.
So we’re left with a wasteland to make our way by hook or crook; every person for themselves.
The last vestiges of kindness are the outpouring of senseless emotions on people we don’t know, but it’s all that’s left to the citizens; a false sense of empathy for acts so horrible we don’t know what else to do.
Powerlessness shown by violence at maximum, by sick people with no other perceived outlet; an impotent response that kills; the self and many others.
As I write this, Obama and Boehner are stripping resources from programs that will hurt the poor, disabled, and retired (me included) while taking extraordinary measures to protect the wealthy and entitled.
The violence perpetrated by the government on it’s citizens is surely at the bottom of their twisted society. I’m fed up and beyond disgusted. RIP America; ha!.
Leo
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html
From the Prime Minister (Conservative) who enacted Gun control laws here in Australia.
There are still guns around (i live near a gun shop) and i’ve heard stories from police about finding trunks full of them, however it has controlled the problem (not that we really had anything approaching America’s)
Lisa Simeone
Again with the Swiss. I repeat: Switzerland still has a big problem with domestic violence; it’s not little kids getting shot up, it’s wives and girlfriends.
As for forcing everyone to go to public school, read Crispin Sartwell on the “carceral” nature of schools and the rage that induces in a lot of kids, particularly young males.
But since we’ll never get meaningful gun control in this country (meaning not piecemeal and not toothless), why stop at guns? As an anarchist friend said to me the other day, “I don’t think the state should have any weapons individuals can’t also have.” Well, okay then — a chicken in every pot and a nuke in every garage! Grenades make great stocking stuffers. Go USA!
BDBlue
I don’t think America’s gun culture goes back to the 19th century. I think it’s a relatively recent invention. People had guns and used guns – they’re tools as Ian pointed out – but modern gun culture is basically an invention, IMO. A combination of Madison Avenue and political operatives combining to “sell” America on its gun culture for corporate/political reasons. It’s mostly false, but then so is much of America’s “culture” these days.
Celsius 233
@ BDBlue ;
…but modern gun culture is basically an invention, IMO. A combination of Madison Avenue and political operatives combining to “sell” America on its gun culture for corporate/political reasons. It’s mostly false, but then so is much of America’s “culture” these days.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What a great observation. Having been involved with firearms for a good deal of my life; I agree. It always struck me as odd. I steered clear of the extremists; just too far out there for my comfort levels.
Lisa Simeone
BDBlue, very good point. Thank you; I’m going to use it.
In other news, unintended consequences? “Police: Laurel High student was ‘credible threat'”
http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/howard/publications/laurel-leader/ph-ll-laurel-high-student-credible-threat-20121218,0,5718493.story
Was this kid a credible threat? Or just a misfit? Did he really have “charts and diagrams” in his locker that hinted at a massacre? Or did he just like to draw?
This is the brave new world we’re now living in. Not only Janet Napolitano’s exhortation “If You See Something, Say Something” plastered all over the place (thank you, American taxpayers), not only neighbor spying upon neighbor, but children on the look-out for “aberrant” behavior.
Hey, maybe the kid was a threat. I don’t know. I just know that I can see this thing spiraling into hysteria, as the whole “terrorism” thing has, with people singling out other people who are different.
Badtux
While in 100% agreement with the general gist of your argument — we have a brutal society that has turned the boot crushing the face of the average worker into a fetish, even — it doesn’t help to get fundamental facts wrong about assault weapons that shoot military-type .223 ammunition. These are plinker guns, fundamentally. They shoot .223 not because it is more deadly than the .30-06 ammunition used by typical hunting rifles and older military rifles, but because it is *less* deadly. Wounded enemy soldiers use more of the enemy’s resources than dead ones do. Furthermore, the smaller round size allows a higher terminal velocity (due to less frontal area / better aerodynamics) which in turn helps with penetration through body armor, and it’s typical that they will go all the way through an unarmored body rather than fragmenting internally. Of course, if you put a half dozen or more holes into a 50 pound 6 year old, you’re talking about a dead kid anyhow. But from a deadliness perspective, a typical .30-06 hunting rifle will do with a single shot what the Bushmaster used in this shooting needed a half dozen rounds to accomplish. And yes, you would want to use an expanding bullet in that .30-06 because you only get one shot at a deer typically and that bullet has to kill the deer rather rapidly or you’re not going to be able to track it down.
But of course a typical .30-06 hunting rifle is not a scary black penis substitute, so in a sense the fact that rifles of this type are sold to the general public and actually *sell* despite their uselessness for anything except plinking at rabbits and squirrels — they’re not even useful for self defense, a shotgun is far more deadly in any reasonable self-defense scenario — is yet another symptom of the sickness of American society. People who buy this kind of weapon are buying it to make themselves feel more “manly” despite the dehumanizing humiliation that happens to them every day, not for any practical purpose.
someofparts
Why don’t we just arm women?
I could probably create a lot of material for a few comics and some right-wing blogs with that idea alone.
Yes, I know. Not a reality-based topic, even for mere speculation.
Still, I wonder what the fallout would be? Sharp drop in domestic violence probably. Also keep guns out of the hands of mass murderers.
Maybe there’s a quick SiFi story in there somewhere.
Some anthropologist described a community where men do all the administrative work but only women can own property. The thinking was that it divided powers neatly to arrange things that way. Guess that’s where I got the idea for only arming the she-bears.
Rob Grigjanis
@someofparts
Kasandra Perkins and Nancy Lanza owned guns.
ks
Ian’s “simply put” point about rural vs urban gun use and control is common sense but unfortunately the craziness has taken over. The only thing I would add to BDBlue’s excellent point about the marketing of the modern gun culture is that it’s a subset of the overall marketing of the culture of fear.
Hi Lisa,
I’m not sure I understand your point about the Swiss. They have a problem with domestic violence and they have an effective gun control program. I don’t think there’s a connection or correlation between the two. I did a very brief search and came up with the following:
“Tackling abuse
Rise in domestic violence deaths
National
Oct 13, 2012 – 14:29
Over the past year, 35 people have died in Switzerland as the result of domestic violence. The figure has risen steadily since 2009. Per head of population, the rate is higher than in France, where there were 160 fatalities in 2010.
4,471 cases of violence were investigated in Switzerland in 2011. In canton Thurgau alone, police were called out 720 times. This reflects a global problem. In the 27 European states, it’s estimated that one to two women are victimised daily.
(SF/swissinfo.ch)”
So there were 35 deaths which may or may not have been gun related and that sad figure has risen since 2009 but I’m assuming the Swiss gun regs have been in place long before then.
David Kowalski
One rather important point is that guns are important political tools for supporting the Republican Party. Guns, just as much as cheating in Florida, won W the Presidency in 2000 as the NRA campaign in Ohio and West Virginia was viewed as decisive in those two states. “Guns, God, and gays” are quoted as the key to discontented whites in that order for a reason.
The Newtown massacre is different in large part not because the victims were children but because the victims were “upper middle class”, really the lower end of the upper class and the lowest strata that Obama would pay any attention to.
The local culture does seem to have an impact on how violent a society is and how many people own guns. Hispanics are less likely to own guns than white non-Hispanics so gun ownership in Texas, New Mexico or Arizona is lower than in Wyoming, Oklahoma or Utah. Guns were certainly glorified on TV when I was a kid with Saturday westerns being a staple and other westerns on TV at night. The odd thing about shooting in those shows is that it was either extremely good or extremely ineffective. A good guy shooter like the Lone Ranger would aim to wound the villains rather than to kill them. On the other hand, mass killings of native Americans or by native Americans were common on some shows.
The fact, rather than the myth, of the matter, is that in the Old West gun duels were rare but fist fights and knife fights were common. Cowboys didn’t look like the early Clint Eastwood but were short, lithe and many were black.
The police and war shows have replaced the western as examples of violence. The lone gunman protecting himself against the hordes of the violent state or nasty neighbors/criminals also became a common theme in movies starting probably in the 1970s. Think of Rambo, the Death Wish movies and various dystopia movies like Escape From New York or Air Force One. I remember hearing the crowd in a movie theater cheer as the criminals were gunned down in the original Death Wish.
So guns are portrayed both culturally and politically as the weapon for the oppressed and the loner. Guns are sexy and a way for the killer to get the girl, see all the many James Bond movies.
When I was growing up, very few of the people I knew had guns. The one exception was an uncle who was a country doctor. His home had signs all around saying “No Hunting” and he shot at targets and clay pigeons. He actually had a neighboring farmer plant corn on his land to feed the deer and fed birds. He bottle fed a baby deer until it was capable of living on its own. All in all, Uncle Stan was one of the less violent people I knew.
The guns were mounted or in a cabinet and the ammunition was pretty readily available but a shotgun for target shooting or even for hunting was hardly the equivalent of the Bushmaster.
With that, I tend to think that a shotgun or target shooting is fine but the assault weapons are ridiculous.
You are on target that the issue is not just schools or mental illness but societal cruelty and the lack of societal bonds.
Adam Lanza is frequently cited as having Asperger’s. The Obama Administration had originally proposed eliminating Asperger’s status for special school treatment or disability because “there is no intellectual deficit.” A far broader view of society than saving a few dollars or mental acuity needs to be adopted. Social skills can be taught and are being taught in some city’s school systems (New York City, for one, has a contract to teach social skills to high school students with Asperger’s). Home schooling is certainly not the answer nor is reliance on prescriptions to “calm down” children, teen-agers and adults.
Thanks for your thoughtful contributions.
Jonathan
“There have been many time periods, most really, where life for the average person was extraordinarily unpleasant but we have perhaps created one today uniquely devoid of even the normal pleasures. Throughout history, no how matter how terrible living conditions or leadership, close family and community was pretty much a given, with all the support structure that entails. People can withstand a lot if they have a sympathetic ear, someone who will listen to their gripes and miseries, and if they have a part in a social unit that makes them feel significant. Many people — particularly these loners who go on shooting sprees — only have their jobs, where it is made abundantly clear that they and their work have no real value, and that they could be replaced at any time. While working the fields in the past was no picnic, there was at least a real sense that the work was necessary and every hand actually needed. Modern society truly fosters a sense that you, as the individual, are utterly superfluous and nobody really wants you or your work. You’re tolerated at best, a kind of parasite, a word the hardcore right loves to invoke.”
beautifully said – of all the things that have gone viral just recently, i really wish this comment would’ve been among them
jcapan
BD, of course, our gun culture has evolved into its current (lunatic) phase only recently, but I stand by the contention that it began in the 19th century. Have you ever read how the Colt 45 was marketed? Or seen some of the ads? Fascinating stuff and evocative of our current sickness.
Barbara M. Tucker in her book Industrializing Antebellum America wrote that Colt’s marketing techniques “transformed the firearm from a utilitarian object into a central symbol of American identity. Tucker added that Colt tied his revolvers to American patriotism, freedom and individualism while asserting America’s technological supremacy over Europe’s.”
And from a review of a fascinating book I had to read in grad school, Michael Bellesiles Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture”:
nobody
“The first point first, China has people who go on sprees with knives. In fact there was one just recently in a school, 23 students were injured. That’s sad, but not one of them died. Not one. Guns make violence far, far more deadly.”
I’m not disagreeing with the general claim that guns make violence more deadly, but the way you present this distorts the total picture. In one of the school attacks in China 8 were killed; in another 9. Since 2010 there’ve been more than twenty deaths in knife attacks at schools in China.
And there have been many attacks with guns where the total deaths were zero, one, or two. In one stretch from the following list of school and mass shootings there were 8 attacks over a span of nearly a year and a half in which there were a total 16 deaths:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
And sometimes there are some instances with different sorts of weapons that produce death tolls with numbers comparable to the event that prompted this posting:
“[A] drunken gurkha soldier hacked 22 wedding guests to death with a machete in the mountain town on Nainital.”
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=529YAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EPgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1389,1304611&dq=
nobody
@Dan Lynch:
The cultural patterns go back beyond slavery:
“In 1982, the murder rate in the nation as a whole was 9.1 per 100,000. This level of violence was four times higher than most western countries. But within the United States, the homicide rate differed very much from one region to another. The northern tier, from New England across the northern plains to the Pacific northwest, tended as always to have the lowest rates of homicide: 3.8 in Massachusetts, 2.1 in Maine, 3.1 in Wisconsin, 2.3 in Minnesota, 0.9 in North Dakota, 4.4 in the state of Washington. The middle states, on the other hand, had murder rates that were moderately higher, but below the national average: 5.7 in Pennsylvania, 7.2 in the middle west, 5.7 in Kansas, 6.0 in Colorado. The south Atlantic states averaged 10.9 murders per 100,000 in 1982. The southern highlands and the southwestern states had extremely high murder rates—14.7 in the west central states, and 16.1 in Texas. Homicide rates were also high in northern cities with large populations of southern immigrants, both black and white. But southern neighborhoods occupied by migrants from the north tended to have low homicide rates. These patterns are highly complex; many ethnic and material factors clearly have an impact. But in ecological terms, homicide rates throughout the United States correlate more closely with cultural regions of origin than with urbanization, poverty, or any material factor.”
[…]
“Some scholars offer a materialist explantation: the comparative wealth of New England against the poverty of the southern highlands. But many a hardscrabble Yankee hill town is poor and orderly, and more than a few southwestern communities are rich and violent.
“Others argue that southern violence is mainly a legacy of ethnic or racial diversity. But some of the most violent communities in the southern highlands have no black residents at all, and are in ethnic terms among the most homogenous in the nation. At the same time, many New England communities are ethnically diverse and yet comparatively peaceful.
[…]
“The laws of New England are actively supported by other institutions. For more than three centuries, town schools have taught children not to use violence to solve their social problems. Town meetings strongly condemn internal violence. Town elites teach others by example that violence is not an acceptable form of social behavior in New England. In short, violence ‘isn’t done’ in the prescriptive sense. And when it is done, the regional culture of New England has little tolerance for violent acts, and punishes them severely.
“All of these tendencies run in reverse throughout the old southwest and southern highlands. The principle of lex talionis is still part of Texas law, which allows a husband to kill his wife’s lover in flagrante delictu. Texas places comparatively few restraints on the ownership of firearms. Texas schools and schoolbooks glorify violence in a way that those of Massachusetts do not. Texas elites still live by the rule of retaliation, and murder one another often enough to set an example. Texas is entertained by displays of violence; Massachusetts is not amused. In short, violence simply IS done in Texas and the southern highlands, and always has been done in this culture—SINCE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR AND SLAVERY AND EVEN THE FRONTIER—JUST AS IT HAD BEEN DONE IN THE BORDERLANDS OF NORTH BRITAIN BEFORE EMIGRATION.” [emphasis mine]
(pp. 889-90)
http://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-Cultural/dp/0195069056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355527994&sr=8-1&keywords=albion%27s+seed
nobody
@jcapan,
The Bellesiles book was scandalous:
“As criticism grew and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles’s integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. Bellesiles failed to provide investigators with his research notes, claiming the notes were destroyed in a flood.
“The scholarly investigation confirmed that Bellesiles’s work had serious flaws, calling into question both its quality and veracity. The external report on Bellesiles concluded that ‘every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed’ and called his statements in self-defense ‘prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory.’ It concluded that ‘his scholarly integrity is seriously in question.’
“Bellesiles disputed these findings, claiming to have followed all scholarly standards and to have corrected all errors of fact known to him. Nevertheless, with his ‘reputation in tatters,’ Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year’s end.
“In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming America’s Bancroft Prize, the first such action in the history of the prize. Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of Arming America, did not renew Bellesiles’s contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library had granted Bellesiles… Historians who initially admired Arming America ceased to defend Bellesiles.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America#Emory_investigation_and_resignation
jcapan
JFC, Nobody, that was indeed scandalous. Thanks for bringing it to my attn. I’d already finished school by then. How shameful and unfortunate, as I’d say he had more than enough evidence to make a compelling case.
ks
@nobody,
How does that “distort the total picture”? So, since 2010 there were less deaths from knife attacks in schools in China than the one incident in Newtown. Also, your one “comparable example” with the drunken gurka solider is from 1950!? India. C’mon now, you’re reaching.
S Brennan
I was surprised to see a significant majority of Republicans favored reducing violence in the media while a significant majority of Democrats did not.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159422/stop-shootings-americans-focus-police-mental-health.aspx
The oddity is compounded by the fact that countries with strong social safety nets [in my youth, a Democratic value] control the level of violence shown in the media, whereas countries with a right wing bent do not.
dugs
Thanks for your post, Ian. I HOPE it’s possible to maintain gun ownership in this country and do something about all the killing, but it’s asking for a miracle, there are so many guns and hi-capacity magazines out there already. I’d also like to know (and see it tracked in a way that it isn’t now) the ACTUAL cost of concealed carry, if any, in terms of accidental shootings (people hurt or killed accidentally, shooter inadvertently shooting self, etc.), wrongful death/injury lawsuits filed, number of times a gun was really, actually used to thwart a crime (the stated rationale for concealed-carry), etc. (The NRA seems to have successfully lobbied congress to keep data from being collected on this sort of stuff.) I’d also like to see a gang of psychologists take a closer look at the mental makeup of the real die-hard gun rights people; BDBlue’s point about modern gun culture being a recent invention is true, especially the current militant, self-intoxicated, chip-on-the-shoulder “gun rights” evangelism that’s taken off in recent years; I don’t remember reading anything remotely that crackpotty in gun magazines when I was growing up in the 50s. These folks have tried to normalize the widespread upsurge in SWAT weaponry; 9/11 and Iraq certainly had something to do with it to (glorifying and idealizing soldiers and cops all geared up with nasty-looking space rifles, which every local PD is now bankrupting its taxpayers to equip themselves with).
Also, Norquist has some Sandy Hook blood on his hands too; anti-tax fervor keeps community health resources chronically under-funded, making it easy for people to slip through the cracks; funny how a lot of the right-wing crackpots who fomented about taxes are now suddenly interested in improving the nation’s mental health, isn’t it!
I’m encouraged, though, at how much public pressure there appears to be for some kind of gun control. Hope we don’t blow it.
Formerly T-Bear
Oh nooes, it’s da Bear and minority report time.
The terms culture and society are too misleading, although cult has the flavour it isn’t quite broad enough to encompass what conditions in the U.S. entail. The U.S. is a population, the most of which has not matured beyond the social development one finds in junior high school, and never will mature beyond that level regardless of the passing calendar. This is the signal failure of the educational system in not providing significantly mature rôle models to be imitated. The herd instinct at that time overwhelms such identification with adulthood. This is where the centre of gravity of development is found now; the future direction appears to decrease, but that has been the word for generations immemorial.
When the professional students are unable to understand the complexity of either mental development or dysfunction, the clamour of uneducated public claims to knowledge about the condition are something to behold; the baying of a pack of hunting hounds fails to convey the herd ignorance on display, hunting hounds are not so ignorant. What is totally sad, is that those afflicted with either mental condition are held responsible for someone else’s act that has no bearing upon their discomfort; and furthermore the victims of these mental conditions are cut off from the ability and communication necessary to defend themselves. Confounding the developmental disorder with derangement is a facile exercise that prevents understanding of derangement which is again different from mental illness. Most of the perceptions by the herd of ignorance have no basis in fact. Their blame on anger, fear or rage ignorantly overlooks that each of these exists as a natural vehicle for self protection. An adult would inquire as to what went amiss with the natural controls in place which limits these reactions, but then that is a discussion for another day with more enlightenment and less heat.
On killing sprees, I tend to follow Niccolò Machiavelli’s observations in his “Discourses on Livy”, that those attempting to subvert the Republic for their own power or profit to the detriment of the Republic’s citizens should face such reward. As most of the leadership of the U.S. republic is so endangered as well as those who’ve purchased their integrity, only time will tell if correction or corruption will prevail. Either way, the destiny of the U.S. Republic is to disappear from the pages of history, the question is in what manner.
Lisa Simeone
Picking up from dugs’ comment about accurate statistics being impossible to come by, indeed they are. Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center explains:
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/20/167694808/assault-style-weapons-in-the-civilian-market
Jeff W
Mark Ames, in his piece “From ‘Operation Wetback’ to Newtown: Tracing the Hick Fascism of the NRA,” describes how it happened—and it’s hardly by accident.
The next-to-last two paragraphs:
Bernard
that guns nuts are allowed to win over the entire rest of those in that same society, these individuals and their rights to have guns vs the right of society and it’s members. that we should have ther right to limit the amount of violence these members bring into society. a society full of guns or a society with unquestioned and easily attainable means of murder
yes i know, quite socialistic. i just automatically thought society was a collection of its’ members, thought American thought is usually perverse when it comes to society and individualism.
as shown by the “unquestioned” debate that guns are accepted, using the pushed interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. the NRA and other gun nuts know how to market their “way”, which is typical of those in the Elites in America. the Marketing and selling of their “policy.” of the Way America is supposed to be, according to the NRA, for example.
and with the popularity of the Neoliberal push back against the 60’s radicalism from the left, America became the Right’s perfect laboratory for the Rigth’s insane and corrupting “concepts” of individuality in America.
as Thatcher said “Society doesn’t exist” and Reagan, his Holiness, assured the destruction of the American Society with the adoption and glorification of the Selling of all aspects of American life. Guns being one of the “paths” to individualism vs the “Horror” of Government/aka Social membership in the American Way. Hollywood and the Right worked really well in selling the Destruction via the Culture Wars. Said Culture Wars used to further focus and drove home the Right’s beliefs causing the rampant unraveling of the Social construct that survived up till the 60’s.
and so now we see the particulars of “anti-social” as in anti society, highlighting the individual’s right to kill and maim with Guns. in China i gather limiting destructive “tools” forces other means of “Destruction” for those who have an animus against the horrors of Society. i gather knives are the Chinese way to commit mayhem vs. the latest American tool of killing.
yes we have achieved the Right wing’s goal of a society which exists in name only, tattered into bits and pieces. a society where the members are not allowed to live in peace/ and forced to be subject to the whims of its’ crazy members, some of which happen to be armed to the teeth with the latest “tool” of mass killing. just like the “tools” the American Military uses against the “other” those black and brown skinned people who are sitting above the “OIL” we need to make our dysfunctional system crank further sick GUN nuts.
oh yes we have succeded like the Roman Empire, for sure. our path in history will have endless footnotes showing how our desire for individual “Rights” will consist of a list of mass exterminations like Sandy Hook, Columbine, Tucson, Aurora, and so forth and so forth.
like i have to submit my life to live among the Gun Nuts because they thinnk/believe their Right to Arms aka the 2nd Amendment means that defending themselves from that EVIL Government is worth the death and destruction of those who choose not to have or believe in Guns.
those who believe taht Guns will stop the Big EVIL Government are obviously living in a fantasy land. that these submachine guns and other “tools” of mass murder will EVER stop the FEDS. the FEDS alongs with the Defense Department, FBI, Homeland Security and various armed Police Departments, a mass of lethal power that can stop anybody who dared be stupid enough to challenged the Government in a “Gun” Battle.
that kind of thinking alone show how pedantic such behavior is. Such behavior that exposes the rest of us to the whimsy of such loose “Gun” nuts. Being crazy is one thing , but being crazy with all these “efficient tools” for killing HUMANS’ is what we are all now subjected to for such puerile immaturity.
Guns, and how to kill, our American Society, and all those who live in said society. Thank you John Wayne. for the American Way.
Glen
Good post, I also see both the gun culture and the gun carnage as symptoms of a larger cultural sickness. Obviously, more effective gun safety is required, but attacking the root causes would a more sound means of solving the problem.
Like the other problems afflicting America, I don’t expect any progress to be made in my life time.
MEME401SUN
Subsequent developments seem to have led Ames to reevaluate his stance somewhat:
Zrusilla
This is specifically a problem of *male* violence. 61 of the 62 deadliest mass murderers are male, and men killing with guns is continuing apace even after Newtown. While you don’t mention male violence per se, you do offer one clue (drugging boys and men) as to what might be going on, which is more than other outlets are giving us.
Celsius 233
@ Formerly T-Bear
December 21, 2012
Oh nooes, it’s da Bear and minority report time. 😉
… The U.S. is a population, the most of which has not matured beyond the social development one finds in junior high school, and never will mature beyond that level regardless of the passing calendar…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wondered when/if you’d show up; great post! My c&p from your post is something I’ve been saying for more than 40 years and it’s a great observation of an axiomatic truism, IMO.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Formerly T-Bear
On killing sprees, I tend to follow Niccolò Machiavelli’s observations in his “Discourses on Livy”, that those attempting to subvert the Republic for their own power or profit to the detriment of the Republic’s citizens should face such reward. As most of the leadership of the U.S. republic is so endangered as well as those who’ve purchased their integrity, only time will tell if correction or corruption will prevail. Either way, the destiny of the U.S. Republic is to disappear from the pages of history, the question is in what manner.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seems about right to me; especially your closing sentence. Happy Solstice and NY…
Ian Welsh
Almost all violence in all places at all times is committed by men. It isn’t just a case of killing sprees. That’s why I said it is in this context the long term (and early) drugging of boys and men that concerns us.
Formerly T-Bear
@ Ian Welsh
Dec. 22, 2012
Your observation re violence. Probably a good thing too, doG only knows what would survive if the women became the predominant perpetrators of violence, doubt if anything of civilization would survive such an episode. Whereas men are habituated in sizing up the opposition in confrontations and acting accordingly, myths and legends preserve the stories of the Amazing Amazons where the female warrior dominated without constraints. Possibly some wisdom contained and transmitted in those stories that assured their trans-cultural retention. [/antithesis]
Any general drugging of populations is ill-advised, see what nicotine does, and alcohol for that matter.
Petro
Formerly T-Bear:
You know, you’re generally an informative and intelligent contributor these threads, so I was inclined to ignore your ode to hierarchy and authority (“This is the signal failure of the educational system in not providing significantly mature rôle models to be imitated.”)
But then you had to follow up with an incredibly patronizing post that seems, to me, to be making the facile claim that somehow men have a more measured wisdom when it comes to the execution of violence.
Other than pointing it out, I have nothing more to say about this.
rubin10101
Shuffling single file down a timeline (from a simpler time past, on towards yet simpler days to come), there exists a procession of poor solitary fools who, for whatever reason, failed to seize the opportunity to be someone, and who were not so lucky (as I was) in finding someone willing to circle the drain with them, and who are each one mulling over various plans and schemes that essentially boil down to: devising and bringing into fruition a dynamic final act that brings a decisive Meaning & Purpose to a narrative that seemed to be sorely lacking. Somewhere down the queue past the halfway point, a somewhat more observant tool notes the glaring failures of those passing before him, and resolves to make his statement, not an outwardly meaningless self-referential horror, but rather one that resonates with a more.. universal meaning.
Finding some satisfaction in the unlikely resurgence of his ambition, he spends his resources frugally, knowing he will need a well-tailored suit as well as the thick stack of tickets it will take to grease the numerous (dry- NOT sweaty) palms that hold the key to the back rooms, the real after-after party. Not humans, he admonishes himself, just masques….
Later, in an entirely bizarre bout of.. magnanimity?.. the prodigal allows himself the quietest of cackles, this extended epilogue, he SWEARS he never saw it coming.
kenmeer livermaile
Two points:
a) if the Chinese knife-wielder had used a sharp katani, most of the people he attacked would be dead. You sort of jumped into a false dichotomy there.
b) whether or not American society is now more or less psychotic than other times in history is moot. We’re better in some ways, worse than others. I think the fat boys who enjoy profits selling, deploying, and using weapons on whomever, want us to feel that we as a people are now too crazy and amoral to handle the responsibility of owning devices that are ubiquitous.
c) until we resolve questions about the 2nd Amendment with as much public engagement as was used to resolve questions about the availability of alcohol as happened between the start of the temperance movement and ended with the repeal of the 18th amendment, this nation will make no significant progress in reaching a balanced and healthier position on this issue.
kenmeer livermaile
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html#ixzz2Fq7UQ4yc
Ian Welsh
One of my best friends is a Kenjutsu master. No, I’m not wrong.
Also, sorry, guns beat Katanas.
Formerly T-Bear
@ Petro PERMALINK
December 22, 2012
Formerly T-Bear:
Ian Welsh: THESIS
Formerly T-Bear: ANTITHESIS
Petro: FOLD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Never mind that:
* Humans are large dangerous animals
* Human male aggression has relationship to mating display, social dominance
* Human female aggression triggered by perceived existential threat
* That actual information on aggression between male and female is not available
* Use of weapons reduces or (in the case of guns) eliminates direct danger to the aggressor
* Human males learn limits to which their aggression can be taken
* Human females seldom are faced with limits their aggression can be taken
So much for possible synthesis. Discussion is so much more interesting when it is not being shut down by the politically correct. And as Petro states:
Celsius 233
@ Formerly T-Bear;
I’m going to ask Ian to forward my e-mail address to you; I’m okay with that; you?
Celsius 233
@ Formerly T-Bear;
Very interesting post; your posts interest me no end as usual. Cheers.
illuminati
Good article. I think you hit the mental health issue well.
There are a couple other issues to address IMO.
Hollywood and the violence/pervertedness pushed through TV, movies, and music videos. This is huge and people need to understand hollywood to understand why family/society is disintegrating.
I think there is a little more to the second ammendment issue as well. I see it as patriots being able to defend against a government gone haywire. Something better than throwing rocks.
To argue that we already have a police state and need armor piercing bullets doesn’t cover the concept that thera are not good enough robots to operate the drones yet. Which means, truth should help cure those patriots the leadership trys to manipulate into a holocaust.
YY
America looks to guns as a solution for the wrong problems. It needs to come to terms with the basic notion that guns are source of pleasure in a recreational sense and not tools to cope with political, psychological, emotional, and personal security/safety issues. As a recreational item it can be controlled in both its commercial exploitation and acceptable usage. Because it is tied to political/emotional issues it is difficult to control by law and regulation because the very regulation becomes an emotional and threatening issue . (as well a truly bogus constitutional issue) A break needs to be made to accept the physics and mechanics of the device to draw the parameters of controlled usage and ownership. Once the hurdle of looking at it as a tool of necessity for survival is overcome and instead it is understood and agreed that in civilian use it is a lethal toy, it should become easier to regulate proliferation with a view towards safety.
A step forward may be to review the justification of self defense usage.
Ian Welsh
To be sure there is a cultural component, but I can tell you that Canadians consume the same media as Americans and don’t kill nearly as many people.
Formerly T-Bear
@ Celsius 233
Reference forwarding, sure if that is OK with Ian, he can forward mine to you as well if that is easier. Thanks for the always kind remarks as well, much appreciated even if not responded to (it’s Ian’s bandwidth afterall)
Christian
RE: Mental Illness. Too much glutamate and tryptophan in the food.
Celsius 233
@ Christian PERMALINK
December 23, 2012
RE: Mental Illness. Too much glutamate and tryptophan in the food.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OMG’s, it goes so much deeper than that. Edibles are the last thing that represents what’s going on today.
Can you be serious? Or just taking the jape?
Hope you feel better in the morning…
Lisa Simeone
What a crock of shit.
Formerly T-Bear
and so is your opinion Lisa
Christian
@ cesium 233 it is not the last thing…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1350512
Petro
@T-Bear: The shovel you have selected for melee is even less provocative than the firearms we males customarily wield in our quest for wisdom. You keep on digging if you like, but my copy of gentlemen’s rules calls that a “fold”.
Joe
Bullshit. The problem is that US culture engenders a system of upside down eugenics, handsomely rewarding extreme psychopaths. The father of the shooter is a high level executive in the parasitic extraction industry known as finance and has passed more extreme mutations of his genes on to his sons. When they take guns from the common citizen they will be fair game and helpless against these psychopaths.
ks
Um…what? He passed a mutation of the evil “finance gene” onto his son who…apparently had no interest in finance whatsoever. Okay then. Also, how have the several hundred million guns we currently have in society protected us against the “finance psychopaths”? I’d say the evidence shows not at all.
lew
“The two most important things to understand are that gun control would reduce harm significantly, and that gun control is a palliative for a sick culture. ”
The first assertion is definitively untrue. Australia’s murder rate declined less than the US’s murder rate over the time since Australia rounded up all the guns. The US has sold about 100M guns during that time.
The 2nd assertion is too vague to evaluate.
In any case, whatever you say about the US and our ‘gun culture’, we have shown that there is a positive link between gun ownership and crime rates, as our rates of gun ownership have been increasing consistently at the same time that the crime statistics have been decreasing.
There are, I believe, no serious (evaluating big-picture, multiple dimensions simultaneously, focused on causes) statistical analysis that shows that gun control works anywhere. Here in the US, the highest crime rates are entirely associated with the most restrictive gun control laws, and laws such as the ban on assault weapons were uniformly evaluated as having no effect on crime rates.
Yes, a criminal having a gun increases the death rate in such incidents, but those incidents are very few, while the number of grandmothers using the power of the gun for self-defense deterring criminals as quite high, and always ignored in these pro-gun diatribes. That factor is more plausibly a cause of the declining crime rate as anything pro-control advocates propose.
In fact, gun-control advocates cause these massacres, as their attempt to provide ‘weapons-free safety zones’ merely draw a bulls-eye around those zones for the inevitable crazy with a weapon. The worst such massacres in the US have been accomplished with gasoline cans, not with guns, and how to build bombs from household chemicals is all over the internet, so there will never be a shortage of weapons for crazies.
So, this is propaganda, not analysis that helps the reader understand the complex reality we live within.
Petro
Ah, the old “common citizen” against “the other” gambit. Sorry, LaPierre has already impaled himself with that one.
(I like the rest of your metaphor, though. It’s a rich piece of rhetoric for holding forth in pub talk – not so much on the subject of firearms, but I could see using it in a different context.)
Ed
The virtual end (over the last few decades) of institutionalizing the chronically mental ill is also a factor in this country. Pscho-pharmaceuticals developed in the last few decades are effective but we depend on consistent self-medication. A social and medical structure that more aggressively finds and treats mental health problems should be one item to consider to lessen chances of mass killings.
lew
And, btw, the Hemenway references are completely bogus, decisively refuted by researchers such as Kleck, who I believe have far more awards from organizations composed of social science researchers.
It takes very little effort to find and evaluate the studies and methodology necessary to form your own opinion. Gun ownership rates do indeed correlate with murder rate, but the murder rates are also a cause of that. Concluding that gun control would help is not logical, as most of those murders occur in places with very strong anti-gun laws.
And Hemenway doesn’t evaluate the rate of defensive gun use, so that study is not relevant.
The honest researchers consistently come to different conclusions as compared to those funded by the CDC.
stephen benson
those with dissenting opinions are welcomed. all views need to be examined. for me it boils down to this:
i recently celebrated the birth of my fifth grandchild. he’s a beautiful boy who was born two days before the newtown tragedy. what i cannot escape is how in the world we can continue to allow the right of folks to own guns (leaving type and calibre open because it doesn’t matter in the end) to supercede the right of that wonderful little boy to live long enough to reach 2nd grade?
anyone who is not absolutely fed up with burying children (including all the kids being killed right now by drones, and all other forms of bullshit wars) is an asshole.
i would rather play with my grandchildren than every single gun i own. (and, for the record i own several)
good job again ian. it’s nice to see how you piss off all the right people.
wafranklin
No one ever seems to mention a totally toxic environment composed of millions of combinations which were not around prior to 1940 for us to live with and evolve with. And the effects of these alien compounds takes decades to kill people or drive them crazy.
I spent three tours in Vietnam drinking, eating and bathing in high, high concentrations Agent Orange. Both my sons have varieties of ADD, ADHD and dyslexia — none of this stuff was prevalent prior to 1945. I used run in the streets chasing the DDT spray trucks in the summer, in and out of the smoke. The effects of all these compounds combined are visiting us and the impacts will grow worse.
We now have all types of psychotropic drugs, most not tested rigorously and stenuously —
which are compounding daily. Good thing we will soon go extinct.
Celsius 233
Christian PERMALINK
December 23, 2012
@ cesium 233 it is not the last thing…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1350512
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
…mercy…
Celsius 233
Patterns; time will soften emotions and the stresses and strains of day-to-day life will overcome the moment and things will not basically change. At least in the form of gun laws.
It would seem the lax gun ownership laws are a paean to dull the effects of the slow but certain fascist movement in the U.S. It gives a false sense of security and entitlement to those who have no entitlement or genuine security at all…
CRLaRue
I lived and raised a family, a boy and a girl, in Japan. As the kids grew up we would visit the states. There is one thing that stood out on these trips. No public transportation! No cabs, no trains, no buses, No side walks, No bike routes.
Deborah Newell Tornello
I just posted this little photo–about the “well-regulated militia” language of the Second Amendment–on Twitter. Hopefully the link will work:
https://twitter.com/litbrit/status/283213364451221504/photo/1/large
David Kowalski
ks, “the evil finance gene” was not what was passed on to Adam Lanza. What was passed on was Asperger’s which is genetic and which is usually passed on through males. The huge majority of Aspies are, in fact male.
The relation of this to the evil finance gene is that Aspies are , by definition, of above average intelligence, are often good at math, and are good at recognizing patterns. Noted weaknesses in face-to-face contact can be a real problem in the corporate world.
Aspies often feel estranged but they are not particularly drawn to violence and are more often victims than perpetrators.
I served on the Board of a group for adults with Asperger’s. The attempt to withdraw Adam Lanza from personal contact was well meant but ill-informed. Until recently, Aspies were main-streamed, not home-schooled. Social skills can be taught and Adam Lanza and the children of Newtown, CT were not well served by cooping him up at home.
ks
David Kowalski,
Okay…you realize I was responding to somebody else who brought up the “finance gene” angle? Also, I’m genrally aware of Asperger’s but thanks for the information.
Uomo Senzanome
You say “there has been a massive increase in the drugging of young children (males are who we care about in this context) with amphetamines and dextro-Amphetamines, officially starting as young as 3 years old, and unofficially, earlier. Long term use of amphetamines is associated with psychotic breaks and violence, this is not in question, we have a TON of historical evidence. You cannot keep people constantly on amphetamines and not expect these sort of eruptions.”
Learn something about Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and the *paradoxical* drug reactions of ADHDers before spouting off like this. The psychosis and violence associated with “long-term use of amphetamines” is in cases where these drugs are ABUSED, taken in quantities sufficient to cause sleep deprivation (which will over time cause psychosis EVEN WITHOUT DRUGS). Millions of people take these drugs AS PRESCRIBED to good benefit without ever becoming psychotic or violent. I am sick and tired of good, appropriate medicine (and the decent, peaceful people who use it) being slandered by constant reference to the psychotic violence of DRUG ABUSERS.
Lisa Simeone
Saw the latest in upstate New York? Another goober with a grudge who got a gun. Set a fire, then shot and killed the firefighters who responded to it. Deliberate trap.
Well, why not. If 1st graders are fair game, why not firefighters. Rock on!
Lisa Simeone
Not just upstate New York, but your local Walmart, too. Gosh, I just love living in the Land of the Free!
Moreno Valley: Gun-wielding man triggers Wal-Mart evacuation
24 Dec 2012 (CA)
A gun-toting man in camouflage walked into a Moreno Valley Wal-Mart Monday, Dec. 24, triggering an evacuation and a search, according to officials. He entered the store, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, located in the 12700 block of Moreno Beach Drive, at 5:57 a.m. and walked to the back of the store and asked to speak to a manager, according to sheriff’s Deputy Joshua Morales. “Some eye witnesses are saying he was carrying an M16 assault rifle or maybe a shotgun,” he said. Carrying an M16 is illegal, according to Morales. The suspect fled through the store’s backdoor, Morales said, though whether he talked to a manager or what made the man flee is unknown.
http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/moreno-valley/moreno-valley-headlines-index/20121224-moreno-valley-gun-wielding-man-triggers-wal-mart-evacuation.ece
Flora Steele
I support those improvements. However, your points 1, 2, and 4 do not directly apply to killers such as Lanza, the Batman shooter, the Tucson shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, nor the Columbine shooter, nor Gill in Canada. All of them were student age, not in the job market. Lanza, the Tucson shooter, and Gill were living with parents who were comfortably fixed, Lanza’s especially; no deprivation has been mentioned in the Batman shooter’s past. Most of these bought expensive equipment legally. They may have been taking psych medications as outpatient, but they were all functioning well enough outwardly** to show no justification for pre-emptively locking them up, unfortunately. I haven’t looked into the background of others.*
*One counter-example I know of is the non-Amish milkman, 33, who shot a roomful of children in an Amish school.
**Unless someone checked their social media posts.
My approach would be, gun purchase legislation surgically focused on hampering the most dangerous profiles from easily obtaining the most dangerous guns. In most of the cases I cite, they had bought their own guns legally [or legally through a girlfriend] ).
Celsius 233
@ Flora Steele
December 24, 2012
… [or legally through a girlfriend] )…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s a straw-man purchase and it’s illegal.
Ian Welsh
Ah yes, the “we need this many drugs” person has showed up. Amphetamines are VASTLY overprescribed, generally on shoddy diagnoses. This many people do not need to be on them, and anyone who thinks otherwise is someone who has a reason to want themselves or others to be drugged, or a born authoritarian follower. I am well aware of their effect on people with ADHD. Shit just two days ago, one of my friends, a psychiatrist, told me that amongst adults (he doesn’t treat kids) the vast majority of people he sees who have been prescribed amphetamines before they get to him (generally by an idiot/permissive GP) do not meet the (his words) “already overpermissive DSM guidelines.” This is a guy who is on the front lines, has worked on street clinics and top end hospitals over his career.
They are given out to solve behavioural problem in children which were not considered something you medicated 15 years ago and which aren’t medicated in other countries with far less violence, to shut up adults who can’t hack their shitty lives or as “cognitive enhancers”, which is also very very common amongst professionals, in Silicon Valley, college students (especially at more elite colleges) and so on.
Many people are in school because the job market is shitty, and grad students are treated like absolute shit (anyone who know one is aware of this), while undergrads are very aware that for most of them there won’t be a good job when they graduate, plus probably are working part time while going to school. Also, you don’t live in isolation, if people around you are unhappy, they will treat you worse, your life is more miserable if other people are miserable, even strangers. This idea that people are an island is one of the pathologies of our age. If your society is sick and unhappy, you are for more likely to be sick and/or unhappy and the number of high end crackups goes up significantly.
Celsius 233
^ Ian, great post and correct on all counts.
Prozac, Zoloft, Valium, Ritalin, and myriad other false social constructs have replaced the most effective mental health procedures known to humans; shaman’s (for lack of a better term), family, community, and “genuine” friends.
Western societies (especially the U.S.) can hardly be termed civilizations; the downward spiral would seem to be the future.
The madness that is the U.S. just seems to be accelerating into oblivion.
Christian
Both shamanism and prescription drugs change brain chemistry. Let me make myself clear, MEDICAL SCIENCE IS NOT THE ANSWER, AND NEITHER IS SHAMANISM. They are both bandaids. Taking an antidepressant is no different from taking an antibacterial drug, they can both be prescribed incorrectly and too much. (The Catholic church is a good example of Christianity (shamanism) being over prescribed.)
And here are no “true social constructs” since social constructs are false to begin with. There are social constructs that lead to balance and some that lead to imbalance. Social constructs are created by our mood and our mood is determined by our brain chemistry and our brain chemistry is determined by the food we eat.
I agree that society is effed up, but arguing whether shamanism or antipsychotics is the better way is like arguing which antibiotic to give a man who is sleeping in his own feces. The shit we live in is the food we eat, and that food, loaded with tryptophan and glutamate as is making people insane. Food shapes our society, it is the root of our ills and addictions.
Petro
Concise and irrefutable.
Abroad
The people who protest at gun control live in some kind of ideal world where good guys who own guns can somehow always stop the bad guys. That’s a very unrealistic scenario. The answer is really to de-militarize, but if that cannot be done, at least some gun control is prudent! You can’t tell me that a few steps and regulation is worse than none. I live abroad now and feel much safer than i would in the US. A friend of mine brought up a good point–One guy tries a shoe bomb and we all take our shoes off at the airport…tens of thousands of Americans die every year from guns and there’s nothing we can do??
2nd amendment rights? a great marketing tool, but anyone who wants to live in the 21st century waving ambiguous 18th century language obscures the reality of a sick and violent society
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-17/gun-debate-must-avoid-crazy-second-amendment-claims.html
dugs
Personally, I think for a long time the American people have been getting a little uncomfortable with gun owners and the NRA basically dictating firearms policy for the rest of us, and the latest rash of shootings (not to mention Mr. Lapierre’s unhinged TV appearances) will fuel public pressure for…”something.”
My bottom line, even with all the arguably accurate suggestions about drugs, acculturated violence via video games, the role of Agent Orange and psychotropic medication (all of which ought to be investigated) is simply this: the Australian gun ban seems to have worked: no mass shootings since. It didn’t lower the gun homicide rate “much?” Hey, I’ll take that. Couple more people got to live out their lives un-shot? I’ll take that.
Don’t quote me Kleck and pretend he’s Moses or something; data on gun-related violence in America is so random and conclusions from it so tortured and tweaked that I think the current stats are useless (which is how the NRA wants it, by the way; it makes it easier to argue that guns are great!!!). It’s batshit insane that a society that allows so many guns to pile up doesn’t even bother to track, to a fine degree, the effects they have (as I said in a comment above, and again we have the NRA to thank for that).
But taking on deep-seated social and/or medical causes (or even getting people to agree on what they are) is a pretty long-term, low-yield thing; the fact remains, countries with tighter gun regulation and fewer guns than the US have less gun-related homicide. Personally, I think that’s where we start.
Thanks for the comment, Ian, and to everyone who contributed. I
soullite
Yeah, something will be done. Then the gun-control types will forget about it, but the gun owners won’t. And when the next election rolls around, the results will reflect that.
We’ve seen this movie before. It always ends the same way – progressives ‘winning’, getting kicked in the nuts, and then being forced to watch as the electorate turns against progressivism in general and not just gun-control specifically.
soullite
And the net result will of course be neoliberals getting what they want — an unarmed populace that hates actual liberalism with a passion.
tsisageya
No, Ian. The first thing I thought about was wondering what sort of torment and torture that boy went through at that school. We train them early, after all.
tsisageya
And then of course there are the United Motherfucking States of FUCKING AMERICA—Specialists in Terror and Genocide!
Speaking of killing sprees, that is.
tsisageya
Oops. Did I say that out loud. Sorry dude. My bad.
tsisageya
Me, personally? My deepest wish right now is that every human would stop talking.
And every motor would STOP.
That my ears could hear all the birds. And the silence of humans.
tsisageya
But that I would still have the internet. lol
tsisageya
And that my children and their children’s children will live long, happy, healthy, and Christ-like lives.
Live long and prosper?
mbl
America “has jobs which are intensely unpleasant, with the asshole boss being the norm… People have to be medicated to function in American society because it requires unpleasant and unnatural behavior, virtually all the time. ”
Just wanted to thank you for writing this. It’s rarely talked about, probably because working-class people don’t have a voice anymore.
If you’re not aggressive, not “money-motivated,” care more about other people than just making a financial profit, you’ll have trouble succeeding in today’s job market. Used to be that, as a result of the Privacy Act and probably other laws as well, employers could only check your references and ask your former employers about your work history–how long you’d worked for them, what your salary and duties were, etc. Now employers can actually make you take a physical (with one of their own doctors) and can access your medical records! They can have your body physically examined to see whether they approve of you as an employee. I’m talking about basic jobs answering phones, working in customer service, etc., that don’t require physical labor at all. They also can test you for drugs, check your credit history and, of course, your criminal background. (It’s as though your applying for a job arises some sort of suspicion in them.)
But in the process of all that background checking and medical probing, they can find out your religious, political and racial background, whether or not you’re disabled, what your sexual preferences are, etc. All this used to be illegal because we wanted to encourage employers to hire Americans, but now suddenly it’s okay in the USA, so we have a lot of unemployed Americans who can’t pass all those background investigations. Also now that you’re required to show two forms of ID, employers can see your date of birth. I called the EOC and they actually told me that it is now legal for employers to ask potential employees their age! I believe this is a result of the Patriot Act. And age discrimination is a serious problem as many employers prefer to fire older, better-paid employees and replace them with younger, less-experienced employees whom they can pay a lot less.
What no one’s talking about is that many Americans can’t find jobs due to discrimination. And all this background checking makes it easy for employers to discriminate (that’s why it used to be illegal!)
But Americans aren’t angry about all this ’cause they’re taking tons of antidepressants and sedatives then sitting in front of the TV set where they can get titillated and stimulated till they fall back asleep–and dream of more titillation and stimulation…
tsisageya
America was fucked-up from the very beginning. Srsly, white guy?
Celsius 233
@ mbl
January 1, 2013
What no one’s talking about is that many Americans can’t find jobs due to discrimination. And all this background checking makes it easy for employers to discriminate (that’s why it used to be illegal!)
But Americans aren’t angry about all this ’cause they’re taking tons of antidepressants and sedatives then sitting in front of the TV set where they can get titillated and stimulated till they fall back asleep–and dream of more titillation and stimulation…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Which is one of many reasons I left; my sister recently joined me abroad and is working at a decent job.
Your post is like looking at my previous life as a working stiff “on the floor” of warehouses and manufacturing plants. I managed to go from blue collar to white; from machinist to engineer; at base it never changed because I never got above the status of employee.
Great post and a serious look at what is!
Edward Hara
I find it amazing how many people want to live in a society where the idea of a loving God Who commands us to love one another is treated as something to be despized, and then expect the same society to function well. We have ample evidence that societies that exclude God and a higher moral code based on loving your neighbor are societies that are violent, repressive, and deadly to live in. Think Russia, China, Cuba, N. Korea of the last century.
Yet to mention the idea of God to Liberals is to get that look that says “I’m sorry you are an ignorant, superstitous moron.”
No true believer in God would do the things I see American Capitalists doing to their fellow man for the sake of a buck. No true believer would commit the moral atrocities that Liberals do and try to pass them off as moral behavior. This is one reason we have so mnay crazy people in America who are on the verge of cracking. The unresolved giilt of evil living, the free wheeling use of drugs that bend the mind ans the moral senses, the anger at being treated as a thing by others who just want to use you for their gratification — these and a hundred other daily abuses that people must endure because we do not accept that God has told us “Love your neighbor.”
A truly Christian society would be marked by a strong sense of community where money would not be the most important thing on earth, where charity would mean universal health care, not health if you can afford health, respect for other nations instead of seeing them as little brown people to be exploited for their raw materials, war as a last and regrettable response rather than the always first response to every disagreement. Perhaps the best example we had in the last century was Dorothy Day.
There is so much to say and this is such a limited space, but the starting point is to find peace within by finding the love of God within. That love gives peace, and a peace that is then able to be given to a sick world.
Celsius 233
Edward Hara
January 6, 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The gods of the various religions, including Yahweh of the old testament, have been responsible for most of the wars that have resulted in the largest losses of human life in the course of human history.
Your sentiment, while likely well meaning, is just that; sentiment.
No thank you; I choose life as it is and as it comes…