We had a shooting, quite possibly the worst in

[nadinbrzezinski]

modern history...

And they are telling us the usual story... the cause celebre of US History (The single deranged MALE shooter... does not matter what they do or why, they are always single and deranged)

So here are several questions?

WHY is this happening?

The usual suspects have come out... availability of guns, video games, porn. role playing games... don't forget to add Catcher in the Rye to the list now ok (After all Mr. Cho was an English major)

We have also been told that nobody read the warning signs, well except the dean of the Creative English Department who approached the cops more than once due to his writing, but that one came and went fast since it does not fit the story line.

Ok folks lets ask the serious questions, shall we?

We have these vents happening almost like clockwork every 18 months or so. They usually do not leave 30+ people dead, but they leave bodies behind.

And except for the case in Canada... they seem to cluster in the US.

Some of these could even be considered terrorists events, not that our media is going to go there (single deranged male shooter thank you, Watt is wrong with me by not accepting the usual story line blindly) And no, not all terrorists are of Eastern Descent who pray at a mosque. We do have nice cut white boys in the US who belong to groups that should be considered terrorist in nature.

But every time we have these things we refuse to ask the question. WHY?


Well I will attempt to give you some explanations:

1.- Our society worships violence, and violence is seen as the best and only solution to all problems. Kiddies this means that if we all of a sudden took all guns out of ciruculation... there re other ways to kill... suffice it to say I have seen some of them... and next we will have to take out knives, used in an incident in England some years back.

2.- Men will be men and personal insults are solved by violence, watch any movie and read many a book... the message is at times implied at times obvious

3.- We have been immured to the effects of violence

4.- We do not have a safety net of any kind

5.- Mental health still has a stigma... and HMOs will not pay for counseling if they can avoid it, Don't believe me, read any insurance policy.

Now the facile explanation of we have too many guns... folks Canada has more guns per capita than we do... the shooting in Canada was their first, we have them every 18 months... so stop blaming objects, that is an easy cop out

What is fundamentally wrong with our society and how can we change it?

The first thing we should demand is a fuller safety net, that universal health insurance should include full and equal access to mental health, for example. In fact, not that I have had time to do this, but things accelerated for the worst since Reagan let loose a bunch of people who truly needed mental health care.

Our violent TV and other media... sorry folks, but our media is partly to blame... I know Ed Schultz and company do NOT want to see this, since they work in it, but it is time any media producer takes responsiblity... and things like COPS, though entertaining (if you ever worked along side them, you'd even get the jokes) should be off the air, immediately.

Our teaching of history has to get rid of some myths, like the lone individual gun man in the West.

The prevalence of guns in the west was very low, per capita... I mean they were EXPENSIVE... comparatively speckling MORE expensive than in modern times... oh and folks they had extensive gun control in almost every town, where only the sheriff and his people were able to be armed... hence the shooting at the OK corral, which was over guns and the right to carry them. But the myths says otherwise and the NRA has held to the myth fast.

And I am sure I can come up with other things, but if we keep going the way we are, blaming the usual suspects but not asking truly, what is wrong with the society... I can guarantee you, we will be having this conversation not too far from now.... over and over and over again.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I just love how you put things and thinks in order like that.

eye bee proud to K&R.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. You're right historically

Dodge City had a rule that guns the cowboys had were to be checked in before they went to town. And when the Dalton Gang tried to rob the bank in another Kansas town, the men who had been alerted got their guns from the hardware store, where the owner just asked that they bring them back when they were done.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. And there are MANY, and I mean MANY

examples like that across the West, most folks could NOT afford to buy the gun or the bullets.

A gun ran, on average, anywhere from a month and a half salary to two, and riffles...oh boy those WERE expensive

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. I've done extensive genealogical research on my family

and it may surprise you to know that even in colonial times there weren't a whole lot of guns around. I've got numerous inventories of wills of the men in my family, starting in the 1600s, and guns are not mentioned. During King Phillip's War (1676), the militia was assigned guns and ammunition--they were not kept in a central location but scattered so that the Wampanoags couldn't storm one place and get the entire armory. From the documents I read, it appeared that the bullets and powder, at least, were supplied and augmented by the government. One of my ancestors was in his 90s during this war, and was exempt from service--and his inventory at the time of his death about ten years later did not show any weaponry at all.

Other than militia service, the only time I've been able to find any of my ancestors having guns were two uncles who hunted while on the frontier. My uncle said that his great-grandfather only had his father's gun from the War of 1812--and that he didn't use it--it was more of a relic. (this gentleman lived from 1808-1872).

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. It doesn't surprise me, one bit

but I am a historian by training

That is why we need to get rid of myths in schools


Davy Crocket was the exception, not the rule

;-)

And if you still have that rifle, preserve it

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. went to another family member

just have the history

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Ah for the record, I do love to look at OLD

firearms, the workmanship is incredible in some of them

;-)

And I also love history

[AZBlue]

3. We have had this conversation before - and you're right, we need to make changes NOW

or we'll be having it yet again. And since this is a politically-based board, we should demand change from our legislators on a local and national level - and look for a 2008 candidate that realizes these changes need to be made.

"...but if we keep going the way we are, blaming the usual suspects but not asking truly, what is wrong with the society... I can guarantee you, we will be having this conversation not too far from now.... over and over and over again."

Well said. K&R.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. It is time we demand changes

or we will continue down a path nobody really wants to go down

[BlackVelvet04]

8. Absolutely this country has a violence

problem. Movies, games, music, etc. glorify violence. When a government sees violence as the solution to a problem then the populace will as well.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. The novels I write are antiwar

yes tehre is violence, but there are consequences to the violene... and nobody walks away unchanged

Perhaps that is why they don't sell that well

They are not "american stories."

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Yes, in some ways. We need to teach our children compassion, empathy, and

tolerance for others. (Too bad so many churches have distorted the teachings of Jesus and instead, teach fear and hatred.) Parents need to supervise their children's activities including violent TV, movies, and video games. We need to have resources for people with mental or emotional problems. We need to end poverty and social isolation.

However, you're wrong that Canada has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US. As of 1997, the rate of gun ownership in Canada was .25 and the USA's was .82, 3.3 times greater. If we look just at hand guns, there were 1.2 million in Canada as restricted firearms and over 76 million in the USA or 63.3 times. Granted the US populations about 9 times greater than that of Canada, but Canadian gun laws from the '70's seems to have improved their situation.

[LSK]

11. K&R #5

I wonder so much why people seem to ignore the example of Europe and Canada in issues such as sex, violence and health care. It seems we can learn a lot from them. Yet we continue to stumble around in the dark like we are addressing problems that nobody has ever faced before.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Two words

Amrican Exceptionalism

Another myth

[LSK]

15. Too true

I made the mistake of reading The European Dream by Jeremy Rifkin about a year ago.

http://www.amazon.com/European-Dream-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/1585423459

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Bad bad you

will start working through Dawkins the God Deception... should be fun... just careful where I read that

[paparush]

17. Nothing I hate more than 'comparatively speckling'

what this country really needs is a good spell checker!

:sarcasm:

[TahitiNut]

18. In post-Reagan America, after the greatest eradication of the not-yet-complete "social safety net" .

... including the closing of mental health facilities nationwide, deadly violence has increased monotonically. As we create ever-greater differences between the 'haves' and the have-nots' and increase the predations on those least able to bear such burdens, we'll see ever-increasing extremism and violence. The right will, of course, call for increases in the very policies that increase the stresses and anger - and we're off to the races with a geometric acceleration in the instances of violence.

We're a disintegrating community - preferring to employ cheal overseas and migran labor than our neighbors, preferring prisons to mental health facilities, preferring 'nanny-state' laws to tolerance, preferring to blame 'them' than bear a shared burden, and willing to be spectators in our own governance. Protest? As long as we get permits and don't offend anyone - especially the powerful. As such, we don't deserve democracy and we continue to prove it. After all, in the face of such unspeakable tragedy, we see DUers pointing the finger of blame at other DUers, whether they be males or gun-owners. Appalling. Totally appalling.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. that is why we must demand the changes

that will bring community back

You forgot in the list the fun the pubbies made of HRC book It takes a Village. I may have a problem with her current politics, but those rabid attacks were a symptom of
severe disaffection

It is quickly becoming a each man to his own society, and that is NOT a socity... at least not a functional one

[TahitiNut]

21. It's the Tonya Harding School of Social Welfare ...

It's not necesary to be the fastest runner to escape the bear. It's only necessary that someone else is slower. As long as we can knee-cap someone else, we can survive. We call 'em "volunteers" when it comes to military service and call 'em homeless or lazy or failures or addicts or crazies when it comes to being food for the Corporatist Machine.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. And in the end that leads to other problems

[krispos42]

20. Canada does not have higher per-capita rate of firearm ownership

We have about 770 guns per 1,000 people here. IIRC, Canadian police estimate that there are about 8-9 million guns in Canada (about half registered, as all guns are required to be by law) in a population of 30 million people, for about 300 guns per 1,000 people.

Please stop repeating this disinformation.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. My source is

Moore, I will check on the stats and compare them per capital and by numbers to the US.

But I have yet to see him be wrong on anything

By the way why you do not have the level of violence is societal, not access to firearms

[krispos42]

24. LOL because I don't have time right now! :-)

I work nights, and have to get my butt in the shower!

However, consider that Canada has a largely monoethnic population, a good social safety net, and not much of a drug problem. Probably all that good mental health care up there helps as well.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Yep

things went down the drain after Reagan removed quite a bit of the safety net

There are valid reasons but the shootings occur here every 18 months like clockwork (it seems) due to a society on the brink, I'm not kidding

And gun control (or the lack off) is juwt a conventinet excuse

take guns out, knives will be next

[jtrockville]

27. Who can knife dozens of people in a single spree before being stopped?

[krispos42]

31. You're missing the point on this issue

Extreme limits on guns might stop mass shootings, or at least make them much rarer.

However, what I and many others feel is that it will increase the overall homicide and violent crime rate drastically.

On an average day in this country 26 people are killed via guns, and 14 are killed via 'other'. If, in order to cut the number of people killed in mass shootings in half, the homicide rate rises 1%, we're making the problem worse. A 1% increase in the homicide rate is 150 extra corpses a year. A 5% increase is 750 a year. Mass shootings in America do not make up anywhere near that number of people.

The UK banned semi-automatic rifles (aka 'deadly assault weapons') in 1989, in a moral panic response to a mass shooting event in Hungerford that killed 16 people before the gunman killed himself. In 1998 all private ownership of handguns was banned in another moral panic response to a mass shooting event in Dublane where a gunman with 3 handguns killed 16 schoolchildren and a teacher before killing himself.

Despite (or because of) these measures, plus the 4 million police-monitored public-area security cameras installed in the UK, homicide, violent, and property crime continues to rise. Between 1967 and 2005, the homicide rate of the UK has creapt up steadily until now it is literally double was it was 40 years ago. Things are so (comparatively) bad in the UK that Parliment is trying to ban pointy kitchen knives, and people are marketing bullet-and-knife-proof vests for children.

Compared to 40 years ago, our homicide rate is down 11%. We had a really bad spike in the '80s during the crack wars, but it settled out during the Bush 1 years.

[Irreverend IX]

32. Look up the Ikeda Elementary School killing in Japan.

Not quite a dozen, but a deranged man with a knife managed to kill 8 kids and wound 13 others and two teachers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. It happened in the UK at a school for todlers

yes some people are taht sick, and sick is the operative word here

[elehhhhna]

26. He was a one-man Beslan massacre.

[ellisonz]

28. Umm...

"The single deranged MALE shooter... does not matter what they do or why, they are always single and deranged."

Columbine.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. So they were two

they were still deranged, no attempt at understanding why it happend or whther they had a political motive ever entered the converstaion, They never do, whether it is Columbine or Oklahoma City

[laundry_queen]

29. I agree with most of this.

However the shooting in Montreal at Dawson College was not Canada's first. There was another one in Montreal some years ago, with many women killed -and which prompted a lot of gun regulation - and there was one in Taber, Alberta a few years back right after Columbine, that killed 1 student.

[UTUSN]

30. Neh. 30 to 50 Iraqis are BLOWN UP every day, and several G.I.(s)

Some lives are worth more than others.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. I than Oberman and to a point John Stewart for making that

exact point over the airwaves

[debbierlus]

33. A Standing Ovation

Beautiful. Magnificent

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. Very, very, well said.

The myths that infect our society with glorious tales of "strong men", "taking matters into their own hands", "fighting for honor", "smoke 'em out", and all the rest of the adolescent bluster that passes as "manhood", is the root cause of our society's obvious taste for bullying and violence. Not just among ourselves but in our dealings with other nations.

Our history is full of violence that has been redecorated as heroism.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Well for the moment sending this to congress

and yes I corrected my literary refernces in the actual letter

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x703171