Sikh Temple Murders: Everything is NOT Preventable
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This past Sunday morning, a gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. The gunman, along with at least 7 others, were killed, and three people are hospitalized in critical condition with gunshot wounds. There is no information on the gunman, except that he was in his 30’s and white, according to witnesses.
Someone I know through Facebook posted, as their status, that they would like the media to stop using the word “horrific” to describe the events at the Sikh temple, as if it happened regularly. The poster suggested the word “preventable.” In other words, whatever was in that gunman’s head, and the violence he obviously embraced at the Sikh temple, was preventable.
I get it. What the Facebook status meant was that all gun violence is preventable, and that by doing that-making all guns illegal, changing or getting rid of the Second Amendment-we would no longer have any of these massacres. That’s unfortunately not entirely true.
On April 19th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, using a homemade bomb, blew up the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, killed 168 people, including 19 children under the age of 6 and injured over 680. It is the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. McVeigh hated the federal government, and his anger towards the government was magnified after reading The Turner Diaries and the events of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people and he did not use a firearm to do it.
Violence is not preventable. We can educate and teach people to control their rage or violent tendencies, but we cannot prevent people from acting out. Mental illness is not preventable. It is treatable, but look at James Holmes, the young man who shot and killed so many in Aurora, Colorado. He was seeing a psychiatrist, and according to media reports, at least one person at Holmes’s college was aware of his emotional instability and made her opinion known to others. He still managed to act out his violent fantasy.
And what if Holmes had not been able to purchase his 6,000 rounds of ammunition? Does the Facebook status poster believe he would have suddenly changed course and worked with his therapist to achieve mental health? Or is it more likely he would have availed himself of the local Ace Hardware and a few Internet searches and come up with another way to murder and injure so many people?
Gun violence is not even preventable. We could curtail it, yes, if politicians had the balls to stand up to the NRA and ALEC, but we can never completely end gun violence. There are other countries with armed citizens, but they do not have nearly the amount of gun violence that America does. That’s societal, not because of guns. Guns make it much easier for unstable or unscrupulous people to kill and harm others, but we as a society have to recognize we love violence. The most popular films are usually the ones with the most explosions, the most fights, the most death and the most violence. That’s what we like.
We as a society also need to recognize that mental illness is not something to be made fun of or ignored. The NRA wants mentally unstable people to be able to purchase firearms, so they (the NRA) can turn around and tell NON mentally unstable Americans “See? You need more guns to protect yourself from mentally unstable people!” When McVeigh blew up a building and killed almost 170 people, I didn’t hear fertilizer manufacturer’s putting ads out telling Americans to buy more fertilizer to protect themselves from people like Timothy McVeigh.
It is a blight on our nation that people continue to use violence as an answer to their own problems. It is obscene that no matter how many people die from gun violence, the NRA will never back down. What is also a shame is that we, the American people, do not seem to understand that it’s the undercurrent of violence in our country combined with easy access to firearms that is the problem. Removing firearms would not do anything to curb societies’ use of violence. Timothy McVeigh didn’t need a gun to kill 168 people.
So what is the answer? I do not presume to know, and neither should most of us. I know that our son is not allowed to own a gun, not even a BB gun, much to his chagrin, he is not allowed to play video games rated “M,” and unless we are familiar with it, he is not allowed to watch R-rated movies. Do I think that if I let my son watch “Die Hard,” he will turn into a mass murderer? No, but I do know violence can be addictive, and I would prefer my child not ever think anything he sees in a movie is okay to do in real life, especially when it comes to violence. Maybe we are trying to “prevent” something in our house, and maybe it will work. There are kids in this country being raised to hate, being raised with firearms; not just BB guns but handguns and semi-automatic weapons, and being raised to believe the government is out to get them. That’s the problem.
We know absolutely nothing about the gunman in Wisconsin. That will not stop people on either side of the political discussion from claiming he’s this or he’s that. This will not stop people on either side of the gun issue from using this tragedy to their advantage. And this will not stop someone, somewhere, from letting their 9-year old son play “Grand Theft Auto,” or taking their 6-year old to a Klan meeting, or ignoring the signs of mental illness in their 16-year old son. How do we prevent that?
Thanks to Wikipedia for information on the Oklahoma City bombing and CBS News for information on the Sikh Temple shooting.
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I get it. What the Facebook status meant was that all gun violence is preventable, and that by doing that-making all guns illegal, changing or getting rid of the Second Amendment-we would no longer have any of these massacres.
Yes, because if we made guns illegal, nobody would actually be able to get hold of them, just like nobody today is able to get hold of marijuana, and nobody during Prohibition was able to get hold of alcohol. That’s exactly how the world really works.
we as a society have to recognize we love violence.
Actually, “we as a society” don’t. Only a tiny fraction of the population is actually violent. Rare isolated freaks like Page or McVeigh tell us nothing about the vast majority of the public.
The most popular films are usually the ones with the most explosions, the most fights, the most death and the most violence.
That has nothing to do with it. Popular culture in Japan is far more saturated with violent imagery than here, yet their society has far less actual violence than ours. This is playing into the hands of right-wing efforts to censor popular culture.
I don’t know what the answer is either, and I don’t know if that’s even a valid way of looking at things. Violence can’t be totally eliminated from any human society, it can only be reduced to some minimum level. In a country of 310 million, one mass shooting every couple of years may actually be that minimum level. Such events are spectacular and get everyone agitated and talking about banning things, but a modest effort to combat obesity or enforce vaccination laws would actually save far more lives.
Infidel writes:
Such events are spectacular and get everyone agitated and talking about banning things, but a modest effort to combat obesity or enforce vaccination laws would actually save far more lives.
I agree completely and while we’re talking about banning things we need to stop banning marijuana. It’s costing far more lives than it is supposed to save. As to gun control, we need it. The idea of anyone being able to buy an assault rifle such as an AR-15, AK-47, or MP5 over the internet or at any of the thousands of daily gun shows is just crazy. The US is the only country in the Western world with such liberal (non-existent) gun laws. The frontier has been tamed and we don’t need to carry guns anymore. We embarrass ourselves with this Wild West culture.
Erin, I posted a similar reply to Bill Formby’s post about violence. I think it is appropriate here as well,
I personally “fear” guns and can’t imagine ever using one or being on the other side of one. So, I support stricter gun control. BUT, also believe that humans (some societies more than others) may just be the only species that kill each other (or animals) for game, war, teritory, etc. Erin, I believe that to be true and so do you or you would allow your boy to interact with the TV games you mentioned. So, I also believe, as do you, that in the light of stricter gun control, humans will remain creative on how to kill each other as they have in history: gas chambers of concentration camps, lynching, atomic bombs, jet liners into sky scrapers, and (unfortunately) so much more. I don’t think religion is the answer to creating a human “soul” that does not kill for “fun”, and I don’t have an answer. But I have to believe that some day, thousands of years after I am gone, there will be a human race filled with compassion and reverence for life. I have to believe that. That will happen one human at a time.
EA-You’re right. We use violence to market, to promote, to sell. It’s ridiculous, and that laissez faire attitude leads right into Carol’s comment. I agree with you both, and I believe as Carol does that someday, we will have a human race that values peace over violence.
Violence is so deeply ingrained in American popular culture that it is even used to sell laundry detergent. The current television ad campaign for Era detergent uses violent metaphors to show the detergent’s effect on dirt and is “Chuck Norris approved”.