By John Lawrence
We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can’t flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals.
It’s a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.
It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It’s ubiquitous. It’s celebrated and it’s done in order to make money from “entertainment.”
That’s right. We’re entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don’t think so. How many video games don’t involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason.
Let’s face it folks. We’re more in danger from Americans with sick minds blowing children away than we are from terrorists. Yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending ourselves from terrorists and hardly anything defending ourselves from ourselves. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”
Why wasn’t the FBI monitoring websites for the “involuntarily celibate”? These are the websites that Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer telegraphed their intentions on. Why wasn’t the FBI tracking them? And why are violent young men, who willingly state online their murderous intentions, allowed to purchase guns regardless of the fact that they’ve never before been convicted of a crime?
In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, a man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up. I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.
President Obama should have had a hundred anti-gun demonstrators waiting for him when he got off that helicopter in Roseburg. Instead he was met by a bunch of yahoos who all they can think about is their freakin guns. These people are a bunch of angry a-holes who have nothing better to do than to be worried about their guns right after 10 people from their own community, Roseburg, have just been rubbed out, their young lives lost forever, in a hail of bullets. Their answer is to arm everyone?
Preachers in pulpits are now carrying guns. Principals in schools are now carrying guns. Anger and guns. They now characterize American society. Oregon is one of seven states with provisions, either from state legislation or court rulings, that allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses. How friggin convenient for Harper-Mercer!
Do I have to detail all the tragedies perpetrated by sick individuals who not only had possession of but were even encouraged by their parents to possess guns? There was Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook who fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Surely he was affected by a culture of violence which makes it seem “routine” to off people. President Obama has said that mass killing of Americans by Americans has become routine. “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it … We have become numb to this,” he complained. During his presidency, President Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence 15 times.
No longer can we “wonder at the gunman’s motives” or think this is a”rare occurence.” It’s routine, folks; it’s happening every day. Get ready for the next one. Your children could be next. In fact it already happened just 8 days after the shootings in Roseburg. Gunmen opened fire on campuses in Texas and Arizona. Copycats? Perhaps. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got the ball rolling at Columbine. They paved the way for the others. That’s their legacy. They were first.
The others: Dylan Roof, who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC; Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people in Isla Vista, CA; Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy enlisted man, who killed 12 people in Washington, DC; John Zawahri, who killed 5 people in Santa Monica, CA; Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine, who killed 3 people in Brookfield, WI; Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran, who killed 6 people at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI; James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora, CO; One L. Goh, who killed 7 in Oakland, CA; Scott Dekraai, who killed 8 in Seal Beach, CA; Jared Lee Loughner, who killed 6 in Tucson, AZ including the attempted killing of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Omar S. Thornton, who killed 8 in Manchester, CT; Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed 3; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, TX; Jiverly Voong, who killed 13 in Binghamton, NY; Steven Kazmierczak, who killed 5 in a geology class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL; Robert Hawkins,who killed 8 at a shopping center in Omaha, NE; Seung-hui Cho ,who killed 32 on the Virginia Tech campus; Sulejman Talovic, who killed 5 at a Salt Lake City shopping mall …. And the list goes on.
A rather long sentence, isn’t it, the preceding? Many of the perpetrators were students, many were former Marines or Army vets.
They all had grudges; they all had violent uncontrollable anger. They all had access to guns. They all purchased their guns legally. They all had Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
According to Wikipedia: “Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED [what an apt acronym!]) is a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand…” There is no need to probe these people’s minds any further, to ask ad nauseum “what was the gunman’s motive.” They were all sick and they all had legally purchased arsenals at their disposal. They all planned their killing sprees. Most of them telegraphed their intentions on social media. Some were even cheered on.
Can we learn nothing from other countries which have strict gun control and far fewer gun deaths than the US? Why is there even a debate as to whether more guns or less guns is the solution?
Does the FBI even read the Washington Post, which had a really informative article: “Incels, 4chan and the Beta Uprising: making sense of one of the Internet’s most-reviled subcultures”? Incels are INvoluntarily CELibateS by the way. Maybe society should just get them all girlfriends or sex workers. It might just solve a lot of problems.
The following is from the website, dailymail.com in the UK:
Chris Harper-Mercer wrote the anonymous message on bulletin board 4chan: ‘Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest’ 9 hours before the killing began. It was written at 1.19 AM yesterday morning and the first shots were fired at Umpqua Community College at 10.38 AM.
Under the disturbing message, many users encouraged the person to go ahead with their threat and even advised the poster on the best ways to kill people. One user wrote: ‘I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire.
‘Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it is possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.’ While another user wrote: ‘You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. ‘Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.’ ‘If you are suicidal and hate people, then do it. If not then stay away from what will ruin your life,’ another user wrote.
A user wrote: ‘In this very clearly hypothetical situation you actually shoot people in your high school or college, try to aim for s***** people at least. Spare the kind fools, humdrum druggies, and churchies and go for he whom really terrorises the populous: Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. The post continued: ‘You’ll do the world a favour by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves.’ In 2013, 18-year-old student Neil Allan Macinnis shot dead two women at a Virginia college – before the killing he posted on 4chan asking users to ‘wish him luck.’
Some of the posters on the site even tried to contact the FBI tip line. Evidently, they were asleep at the switch. I guess they’re only interested in foreign terrorists, not domestic ones. They better wake up that this is a phenomenon that is not going away. Prevention is the only alternative at this point in a nation that is locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger over the slightest grievance especially at schools and on campuses.
How many remember San Diego’s own mass shooting on campus in 1996? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of the killing that took the lives of three San Diego State professors.
Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
The San Diego State University shooting was a school shooting that occurred at the San Diego State University (SDSU) engineering building on August 15, 1996 in San Diego, CA. Three professors were killed by master’s degree student Frederick Martin Davidson. Three months later, a copycat threat flier was sent, with threats against professors and racial insults.
Davidson, the three faculty members, and three other engineering students assembled in the classroom shortly before 2:00 p.m. The three students were there to support Davidson, and to witness a Master’s thesis defense. Liang stood, formally introduced Davidson, stated the purpose of the meeting, and sat back down. Davidson then handed Liang a printout of an e-mail, from a prospective employer who was interested in hiring Davidson, that stated that his future employment with the company hinged on a successful Master’s thesis defense.
Without time for comment from Liang, and without saying anything himself, Davidson turned to the first aid box on the wall, removed a 9 mm handgun, and immediately started firing. He hit Liang first, killing him while he was still seated at the faculty table. Lowrey and Lyrintzis were also hit. However, Lowrey tried to escape out the only main access door to the room. There were other doors in the room, but only one door led out to the hallway, and other parts of the third floor of the Engineering building.
Davidson was between the main door and the faculty table, and shot Lowrey several times; he died on the floor in the main doorway. Lyrintzis fled from the main door and Davidson, into an adjoining classroom, and hid under a table. After killing Lowrey, Davidson reloaded another magazine into the handgun, and pursued Lyrintzis into the other room. There, he shot and killed Lyrintzis while the latter was still under the desk. Overall, Davidson fired 23 rounds, with 16 rounds hitting the professors.
The three students attending the thesis defense were not shot, and escaped without injury. One of the students made it out through the main doorway, and notified the third-floor students and faculty to evacuate. Davidson later commented that he was not angry at the students, and had no intention of killing them.
After the shooting, Davidson himself called 911. Police arrived to find Davidson in the third-floor hallway still holding the handgun. He was reportedly sobbing and begging for police to kill him. He soon surrendered to police without further incident. Davidson had intended to kill himself after the shootings, but could not due to “pure cowardice”. Davidson had left a murder-suicide note in the hallway for the police to find, detailing the location of evidence and computer files in his house.
Guns and angry people. To say they have no impulse control would be an erroneous statement. They had to purchase guns in the first place, laying the groundwork for future misdeeds. They had to work up a head of steam about some real or perceived mistreatment or grievance, and, finally, they had to load up the guns and take them to the killing field. At any point in time along the way, they could have turned back. They not only had a preconceived plan; they probably fantasized about it for months.
Many Americans are so obsessed with the Second Amendment that they can’t even imagine that other societies might be doing things differently with much better outcomes. See A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe in 3 parts by Frank Thomas and myself for alternatives to the violence and gun-ridden society of Amerika and for some alternatives that actually work, that is if we can give up our love affair with guns.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
We have proven that as a Nation, we are not responsable enough to possess guns nor do we possess the wisdom to realize that. The “right to bear arms” is NOT an “entitlement,” it is a privilege that is abused and taken out of context for every reason other than the intended purpose (see U.S. Constitution). The 4th Amendment should be repealed until we, as a Nation can demonstrate an ability to behave as if we are responsable and care about the lives of our own people. If everybody didn’t have a gun, we wouldn’t need guns. Its nothing but fear mongering.
I agree that we need a real conversation, as proposed by Bernie Sanders, to get to the bottom of this complex issue. Shouting won’t do.
But even Bernie (my candidate) leaves out an important ingredient of the discussion that will need to take place. And this is the fact that many of the shooters were taking (usually either going on, or coming off of) prescription drugs (SSRI/SNRI antidepressants for the most part) which may well have been the “triggering” element in the tragedy that followed. These medications are clearly marked with warnings that they can cause, in the person taking them, aggressive and violent behavior, including suicide and/or homicide. Yet this obvious contributor (see the website SSRI Stories for news accounts) is never discussed. Your Congressmen and Congresswomen are all given massive amounts of campaign contributions by BigPharma, so the issue is just plain off the table. And the media won’t touch it either – look at the incessant number of ads for this or that prescription drug on television for a reason why.
One of my closest friend’s husband – a happy guy in his 30s, was given an SSRI for “new job anxiety” and killed himself in his garage within a matter of days. His widow won a sizeable lawsuit against the company that made the drugs, and she has been speaking out ever since. But mostly those speaking out are just speaking to the choir and most give up in fatigue, with the struggle far from over.
Politicians talk about “mental health”, and truly mental health needs to be about support, empathy, and talk therapy as opposed to fifteen minute “med checks”, but the angle of violence induced by prescription drugs is never part of the discussion. And it needs to be. This class of drugs is given out like candy.
Hey “1 n maggard”, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
You want to repeal the 4th?
Going to ban knifes, bats and bricks too ? The author od this drool is daft !!!!
Was going to say the same thing.
The other day I walked into Nico’s to order some food. As I was walking in I pass by about 10 homeless people who are sitting right out front asking for money. I order my food and wait. As I am waiting, one of the homeless guys walks in to order something. I am immediately fixed on his belt. On his belt is a 12 inch knife. If I had said anything outside like “Get a job” or “Go to the seawall kooks” I would have probably been stabbed.
One of my favorite quotes is… “I carry a gun because I cannot throw a rock 1250 feet per second”
But a quote we must always remember… “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
However, this quote should really read “Guns don’t kill people. Crazy/Mentally Unstable people kill people. And those people should never be able to own a gun.
ALL part of the 9/11/01 Induced Crazy VS Crazy Fake War based on massive HI TECH PR FEAR to the Ignorant Masses— Says Old Hermit Dave—