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Another attack, many killed or wounded. The War On Terror may have prevented another 9/11. but it cannot protect people from "mad men". Women don't do things like that!. In today's world, going to church, shopping, school, a park or the cinema are no longer safe activities; because anyone with an angry or bigoted agenda can get weapons and ammunition. Heavily armed, angry young men spring from the midst of their own community and slaughter innocent people. Last year it was Utoya, Norway, this year Aurora, Colorado and Milwaukee. It seems that periodic mass killings are the price that Americans are willing to pay for their love affair with guns and violence.
Each time this happens, people in the USA buy more guns at an alarming rate and the press calls for stricter gun laws and better mental health facilities. The USA is overflowing with easy-to-get guns, assault rifles, and all manner of combat gear. Health care of any kind in the US costs a small fortune and is hard to figure out. Norway has very strict gun laws and rather good mental health care available to all. So what has gone wrong and what can be done to fix it?
Better mental health options are always a good start, but with population growth and the the increasing fragmentation of modern society, the expense would be beyond most community budgets. In the "old days" communities monitored their own - people knew what the neighbors were up to and when they were not themselves. Today people keep to themselves and don't want to get involved. We live on streets where people rarely even know each other's names or say hello. The elderly are parked in a rest homes and rarely visited or never noticed. Just count all the unattended elderly who die alone.
Gun control makes sense in any civilized society. Norway has strict gun laws and a death rate per 100,000 people of 3.8, while the US has a rate of 14.3. That adds up to more than 35,000 gunshot deaths in the US. There is no reason what so ever for a normal citizen to own assault weapons or any combat items. It is strange that everyone accepts the idea of a driver's licence, and car registration, but argues about registering guns and bullets and who gets to have them.
But no matter how strict the gun laws are, a resourceful, deranged person will still be able to get weapons. Making it harder to get and own guns stops most of this and saves many lives. Loss of life from a killer on a rampage with a knife is far less than from one with assault weapons. But extreme cases like Aurora and Utoya are hard to stop with laws. The killers are driven by anger and their heads are filled with violent images of death and human suffering. Where did that come from?
Some experts use the video-game argument, that these violent images are the fault of staring at combat games. Others feel that is too simple. They say we should be looking at the amount of violence we all endure on a daily basis in our normal lives and from TV and movie viewing - its monstrously high. Even a daily dose of the news will give you more human carnage today than was seen just 30 years ago on all TV shows. The Aurora gunman used smoke bombs - where do you think he got that idea - it wasn't from a tour of duty in the army. Anders Breivik used bombs and was outfitted like a special ops soldier. He is also a neo-nazi who hates foreigners and denies the holocaust. And yet he was running about in normal Norwegian society like anyone else - an unnoticed ticking time bomb. The shooter in Aurora was playing the part of The Joker with orange colored hair. Some speculate that Heath Ledger, the actor who lThe Joker in the last Batman film, had become so engrossed in his role that he lost himself in the part and that this helped to push him into an early grave.
The less attention we pay to those around us, the less we feel like we are a part of a community, a state, or a nation, the easier it becomes to dehumanize others and pull the trigger, whether it be a metaphorical trigger like being fired, an eviction notice, a finger in traffic, or a real gun depends on how extreme the isolation, and how desperate and unbalanced the young man is - remember: woman do not do things like this - but, who knows, that day may come.
©2012:Tim Newlin-timtim.com
