A Shooter Without a Cause
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“Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.”
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Despite my feelings about and support for Feminism, my support for equality under the law for all —despite how I feel about the ugly stupidity of racism, about the need for effective gun control and many other things, I am not acceptable to the secular religions that now speak for and exclusively for the movements, the victims and all those affected by these things.
I can’t call myself a Feminist or even perhaps a Liberal these days because I really don’t buy the idea of there being 17 genders. In fact, I dropped out of more than one on-line Feminism forum years ago because I didn’t think pornography is rape or that rape is murder and a few other well-intentioned but hyperbolic things.
I’m sometimes damned as a racist simply for asserting that life matters; human or otherwise, which is the principal, liberal foundation for the struggle against it. If A is equal to B then B is equal to A, but hey. . . there’s not enough grit in that observation to grind an axe on.
So again this morning, in another venue, I commented on someone’s angry assertion that this appalling slaughter in a California bar was only and exclusively the result of too many guns in America. I suggested that a hundred years ago, machine guns were available over the counter at a hardware store to anyone with the cash, and that semi-automatic pistols came on the market in the 1890s and yet, these murderous/suicidal obscenities seem as rare as the sunrise today.
I am sure we have more guns per capita now. I’m not denying that we have more guns than statistics or sportsmanship or security or even sanity would justify, but the mass shooting era is rather new and we don’t really understand why. There’s not one simple reason and more than one solution is required. We must understand that it’s not just one thing if we’d rather be effective than shout hollow certainties into the darkness.
That’s heresy of course, by which I mean it’s not a talking point of the self-appointed, nor was my observation that human events are described by equations of many variables, some of which aren’t yet understood. Heresy! And I’m subject to the angry blackballing of the various clubs. I’m not a lawyer or statistician or politician. I’m just an ordinary person who somehow struggled through the Calculus of Many Variables with great effort and little retention but this opinion:
I think you don’t solve equations or problems by ignoring all variables but one.
I’ve quoted the Pogo hypotheses too many times to want to repeat it, but we, the most enthusiastic, zealous and eager aren’t solving problems. It’s undeniably getting worse. It’s not just the scapegoats or the bogeymen and creatures made of straw. It’s not all the fault of the opposition. It’s because we are vain and self-important and too intransigent to admit that we don’t understand why people are walking into bars and clubs and schoolrooms and churches and religious sanctuaries. It’s not just the number of guns or the rate of fire and especially not how the weapons look in our modern age. I want to ask why and I want to ask it of the facts, not of the cults.
“We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”
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Humans don’t like to think and we don’t like to be rational when angry and simple and exclusive arguments are so much fun. Enough Nobel winning psychological research has been done to give that idea credibility. If we don’t all recognize this and apply it to solving problems rather than waving our slogans and solutions and knee-jerk reactions like flags, we’re not half as smart as a cartoon ‘possum.
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True, that’s a third rail of higher voltage than Social Security. For untold millions, it’s the only part of the Constitution that matters.
I don’t think we actually need to eliminate the 2nd amendment or repeal it as it’s well established that we can define “arms.” We’ve been doing it for a long time. We can list something as a “destrutive weapon” We can require special permission and licensing and we do. It would not even be difficult to add a number of items to the list, but I should point out that one of the main problems is that our national love of firearms notwithstanding most people don’t know a thing about them and consequently we have laws based only on appearance and the term “semi-Automatic” has acquired the same status as a machine gun or submachine gun.
Listening to the audio of that latest shooting, it was obvious that a pair of civil war revolvers could have done the job in terms of rate of fire and number of rounds fired. The Feds don’t even regulate them as firearms at all.
No one solution is going to work as there are so many reasons for the madness, including madness itself. We are more of a hate based society then we were because we’ve always had guns. The mass shooting thing is more common and ‘regular’ murders are less so. Is there some way to tone down the 24/7 howling anger being broadcast and printed and shouted on line? Vast amounts of money are being spent on promoting the need for guns everywhere, promoting fear of violence, but also promoting the imminent confiscation that somehow never happens. When there’s a shooting we buy more guns and it seems to be in a runaway mode. That even seems to be promoted by foreign enemies who would love us to kill each other and soon.
The singular feature of autoloaders is the ability to hold a very large number of rounds and can be reloaded in seconds. Can’t we allow the guy in bear country a second and third shot but limit it to say 5 and restrict them to non-removable magazines?
Looking for a grand solution may be keeping us from instituting lots of little ones and that’s what it may take.
Repealing the Second would be like peeling an onion while wearing welder’s gloves. It isn’t going to happen and doesn’t need to if America’s Congress would just act. I believe what you are saying is correct Glenn with regard t looking for a ‘grand solution’ keeping us from instituting little ones, but no one seems inclined to do that either.
Glenn, compliments on a well written article. I was recently answering a question on Quora of a similar nature about why these things keep happening. It is a singular problem to America in terms of frequency and brutality. To me it is a problem with several common factors. The first of course is the guns and their ever increasing lethal capacity. Another is part of the American culture where human life is often measured in terms of financial worth. The hatred, for example, of the mere idea of everyone having a right to even basic health care. I remember Ron Paul saying at one point that if people could not afford health care then let them sit by the side of the road and die. Then we have 35 states with the death penalty even though we now know we have an imperfect legal system that have sentenced people to be executed only to find out later that they are factually innocent. At one time there was a belief that it was better to allow 100 probable guilty people go free than to risk the conviction of one innocent person. That seems to have gone away. Donald Trump contended that the Central Park 5 be put to death even after they were exonerated from their alleged crimes. We have been divided into two camps: One that has at least some empathy for other beings on this planet; and, then those who would start eradicating everyone else.
Two recent examples locally point to the mental state of the later type. First a man who was an Alabama football fan was beaten so severely in a bar in a Louisiana bar that he died the next day. Second, two people (a male and a female) started shooting at each other at a middle school in fits of road rage. No one was injured but both are locked up. This is the definition of nutcases gone mad. Not only do we need healthcare for all, we need a significant boost in mental health care for all. Our friend, who I have loved since forever, Mr. Pogo, was absolutely right. The enemy is us and our way of life.
My contention has always been that the 2nd amendment was NOT carte blanche for gun ownership. In the days of the minutemen it made sense for there to be a law to allow ownership of guns for the protection of our newly formed country. We have come a long way from those days of musket rifles. And it is time for the country to grow up. While severely restricting gun ownership will probably not stop all gun violence and illegal possession, it will force us to have a different conversation in this country because the current conversation gets us nothing but more dead people. We certainly need drastic measures to curtail the continued horrors but I think it is going to take another generation to get there.
I agree Rocky. At least another generation. Unfortunately I believe we are becoming inured to the horror of it all.
There’s one common denominator and it’s GUNS! It doesn’t matter about what once was, but what’s happening today. There has been a total of 307 mass shootings since the beginning of the year, and no one wants to do anything about it. No bump stock ban, assault weapon ban, high capacity magazine ban. What is it going to take? Even if those bans were in place it wouldn’t limit the killings. We just need to at least make people work hard to own a gun and the penalties for illegal gun ownership should be stiff.
I’ve long maintained the constitution is an imperfect document and one that can harm more than help American society, in particular with regard to individual amendments. The second amendment, for example, wasn’t designed to give everyone the right to keep, bear, carry, or own semi-automatic weapons, whether they be long guns or handguns, and the second amendment wasn’t designed to give carte blanche ownership to every American, unless under threat from a foreign power. It has been interpreted more liberally over the years, until, finally, it has become the tool of the NRA to ensure their control of Congress and the government. If we want to actually stop mass shootings and random gun crime we need to ban guns. Period. There are exceptions, of course, those guns used for hunting can be privately owned, but only after potential owners pass a rigorous background check as is done over most of Europe, the civilized world if you will. Handguns are strictly prohibited from public ownership. People may petition for ownership, based on employment status, such as couriers, security personnel, and, of course, the police and military. People who cannot demonstrate a clear need to own a handgun may not own one. Period. It’s long past time we did away with the second amendment, which, while fine for its day, is now killing people. Gun ownership should be difficult, not easy, and certainly not automatic, and shouldn’t be based on an outdated amendment attached to an outdated document.
Mike, I know you own several guns, but I’m not surprised at your position, but I also agree with Glenn, in that there might be more than one, and there could well be more than one cause for the needless slaughter. It is getting worse after all. Well written article Glenn.
I do have several guns Tim, and I also agree there may be many causes, but no one is addressing them, so let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater and repeal the second amendment. That, of course, will probably never happen, but I like the idea.
“Humans don’t like to think and we don’t like to be rational when angry and simple and exclusive arguments are so much fun.”
That is very, very true Glenn, and I tell my grown daughters that all the time, well, not exactly, but with similar meaning.
Actually. I don’t entirely disagree with you although I don’t see any valid reason to own a semi-auto gun. That aside, you are correct, the problem is more complex than Billy got a gun. We need to deconstruct each horrible event and life of the killer to find the root of the problem. Frequently we see a pattern of mental illness/ anger issues not reported, not treated and a lack of community support. We need to roll back our efforts to first deal with bullying both in person and on the internet. We need to nip it in the bud and offer community support to the bullied and the bully who frequently has things going on in his/her life that is triggering the acting out. We need to teach our children so much better. We need to destigmatize mental illness and have available programs for anyone who needs help to regain mental health. We need a VA director who is well qualified and not a political appointee to ensure our military people get all the help they need without stigma. We also need a president who doesn’t refer to them as “weak”. And we need a national standard of gun laws with heavy penalties for states who are slow oto comply or don’t (cut their federal funding) including blocking sales and confiscating guns from those who are having problems, allowing them to be restored if they complete treatment and are signed off on. As a society we need to rediscover community and what it means to be connected. We have lost the connection we used to have. When was the last time you broke bread or even had a10 min conversation with your neighbor? Volunteered a few hours a month for anything community based? We are more broken than we know.