It's happened again. Another "mass shooting." I didn't even realize there wasn't a set definition of a mass shooting...it's just a broad term meaning multiple people were shot. You'd think that with all that happening so periodically in the US, we'd at least have a definition for it by now.
I suppose since it's unpleasant, we...or the gun lobby and gun supporters...avoid defining it, like they avoid tracking the weapons or collecting accurate statistics when they reflect poorly on gun enthusiasts.
When something like the church shooting happen, the groups that hold up the framework supporting what enables people to do the things they do, and their opponents, adopt PR spin. Usually pithy and trite sayings that are easily repeatable so each side can echo-chamber to their loyal members that they are in the right and the other side is delusional. Any challenge to that worldview is immediately met with a semi-rational explanation as to why that's the exception, despite not all explanations are of equal merit under the scrutiny of statistics.
For gun enthusiasts it means such brilliant insights as "gun free zones make easy targets,..." You know. Places like Naval yards or military bases. Obviously those were exceptional because of some bullshit regulation that prevents personnel from carrying weapons, so the shooters anticipated taking everyone down before someone from the armory could go all Tony Stark on their asses.
See, responsible gun owners should carry weapons. It's not just a right, it's almost an imperative that people should carry weapons, to be available at a moment's notice to take out a bad guy. Because only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Unless that good guy left his gun in the bathroom. Or in a theater.
Bah, they just need more training. Responsible gun owners with proper training. Like the police. I mean, police departments wouldn't get all sorts of body armor and toys from the DOD, turning your local police department into a paramilitary group, without proper training, right? Surely the boys in blue get periodic weapons training so they're not only careful with the deadly weapons but practiced enough to effectively use them as a last resort when de-escalation efforts fail on suspects? That's why they tend to be accurate with their weapons when they have to discharge bullets around civilians.
If you were on social media you probably saw the religious explanation for school shootings. Speaking to invisible beings that watch you shower lends comfort to some folks, and there seems to be an oddly skewed link between religious, conservative folks also being gun-loving folks. When another school shooting takes place, you inevitably see the comics on social media about, "Why didn't God stop the shooter? Because God isn't allowed in the schools anymore."
Yup. If we only had more religion, we'd have less murder. Unless God told that person to do it. Which He seems to do at a disturbing rate. Apparently it's sometimes just His plan for kids to get shot.
Even if facts were brought up to cloud the claim like God isn't banned from public schools (the school cannot promote prayer, but students are free to do so. It's a "separation of church and state" thing that seems rather simple because practically speaking...it is), I'd also note that I'm pretty sure God wasn't banned from the church where Mr. Roof decided to try starting a race war by gunning down parishioners. The same folks that felt the need to hijack whichever school shooting tragedy to promote their religious insecurities stay quiet when this happens.
By far the most popular refrain, despite having some of the above regurgitated and swirled around in sound bites, is that all of the shootings are tied to mental health. These people are crazy!
To be sure, a large number of shootings in the US are self inflicted. Depression can be a bitch. And depression is a mental health issue, one that is making gun enthusiasts look bad with all their killing themselves with a gun enthusiasts favorite toy making them look bad. I'm sure that secretly gun enthusiasts with more people would kill themselves with bleach or electrical outlets so, in their minds, people would naturally try banning bleach or electricity rather than precious hobby murder death toys. The high percentage of suicides, and suicides being linked to depression, fits nicely into the narrative that it's not a gun problem but a crazy problem.
Sometimes I hear this and wonder how far the crazy extends. The pro-weapons movement is supported most vocally by Republicans but tacitly by Democrats, so you hear Republicans and conservatives using this line the most...while the biggest step forward in getting health care extended to all US citizens, the Affordable Care Act, is square in the gun sights of Republicans. Mental health is the real problem, but we'll discuss it after we try again to dismantle "Obamacare," right?
Perhaps it's the most winning refrain because it's so flexible. Once you define any act of using a gun to shoot innocent people, it's...crazy! And it's easy to classify a bad guy shooter as "some crazy bastard" or "a loon on a shooting spree."
It doesn't matter if the person was actually mentally disturbed. I mean, there are the examples where people say something like God made them do it and that earns them a psychological evaluation, but there's a certain kind of cognitive dissonance that makes it sane to say that an invisible all powerful being watches you 24/7. As long as it's in line with your own belief system, that's sane behavior. But that's besides the point. The point is that these people are called crazy simply by defining "crazy" as being willing to shoot innocent people. Suddenly you can't go wrong with framing people getting mowed down in a hail of bullets as an act of a mentally disturbed person expressing their crazy. Then "We need to talk about the REAL issue of MENTAL HEALTH."
Not only does it deflect from the root cause, but it adds a stigma to people with mental disorders. Bonus!
Let's pretend this is a mental health issue. Like, an actual one, not the made up all-encompassing excuse used by gun lobbies. Mental health problems tend to come from a place where the brain has an issue. A chemical imbalance. Or it's just wired different from what is generally seen as "normal" (remembering that many of the people claiming shooters are crazy also believe in invisible beings influencing people's behaviors...if it weren't tied to religion, I really don't think people would hesitate to slap a 'crazy' label on that.)
Sometimes it's treated through talk therapy. Or drugs. Or some coping mechanisms. But you're never really cured like you get rid of a sickness. It's always there.
You know what doesn't have to be there? Guns.
The root cause, as I see it, is gun availability. There's nearly 89 guns per 100 people in the US as of 2014. Despite claims that guns aren't so easy to get, there exist nice loopholes in the laws that bypass special checks into whether the person that wants a gun should really have one (it is a right, after all.) Hell, if you really want a gun with less accountability you could get it on the Internet. That buys nicely into the narrative that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Which is another deflection (since that would apply nicely as an argument against having any laws, since why bother having them? Criminals will just break the law anyway...)
Most of those suicides I mentioned before? They're deaths by opportunity. You hit a dark spot...really dark spot...and that gun is available to you. What would have happened if that person didn't have the gun? Would they go through the hassle of acquiring the gun just to shoot themselves? Maybe. Or maybe they'd be inclined to call for help. Or talk to someone. Maybe they'd do what gun enthusiasts claim and find some way to off themselves. It would be stupid to think you'd stop everyone from killing themselves who are harboring thoughts of harming themselves, and some of them do take time to plan it out. But the people who act on impulse? Probably not so much.
And having a gun available when the impulse hits is definitely a factor in suicides and homicides.
Look, I get it. Guns make you feel powerful. One little twitch of a finger and you can snuff out the life of an animal or send a target flying off a wood block thirty yards distant. Wrapping your fingers around a cold metal pistol grip makes it easy to fantasize about taking down a burglar or some threat to your family breaking into your home in the middle of the night. Blow that rapists' balls off! You're a hero! (Just try to actually shoot a burglar and not your own kid.)
But I don't carry a gun. I enjoy target shooting. I remember shooting in my high school gun club. My father and I would target shoot from the back porch. I grew up in the country...guns, bars and churches were commonplace. I would still go out and target shoot, but it's not the first thing that leaps to mind as something to occupy my time. The home I grew up in had a couple of weapons available, but we weren't gun enthusiasts.
I'm wary of guns...I know that if I fuck up, I can injure myself or someone else with just a momentary lapse in judgement. I like knives and swords...fucking up with those takes a little more effort. Guns? It doesn't seem uncommon for people who consider themselves "responsible" enthusiasts, even buying guns legally with the rather optional background checks and permits, end up having a gun found around the house or dropped somewhere in public, like a bathroom or theater. People have trouble not losing their phones or cameras...but at least if someone finds those, they won't run the risk of accidentally killing someone.
At some level gun advocates know that they're peddling an excuse. I mean, the world they paint when describing how to curb shootings would have everyone taking safety courses and carrying a concealed weapon because hey...criminals are pretty level-headed people, not impulsive and opportunistic. Obviously they'd never apply the "it won't happen to them" or "I'm exceptional" thinking to their situation and open fire knowing that everyone around them was packing heat as well. School shooting? Wouldn't happen if everyone from the janitor to the school principal had Glocks in their pockets. Keep in mind that these same advocates, statistically speaking, think most other people they share the road with are too stupid to drive properly.
There's the excuse that this is a mental health issue, while ignoring that you can't "cure" brain wiring. And while you can drug people and counsel people, dealing with a soft issue that has a significant stigma attached isn't going to prevent impulsive shootings and suicides when guns are available at the local Wal-Mart (or Nazi/Gun shows...for some reason they seem to often get tied together, perhaps because a significant number of gun enthusiasts have a deep love of war trinkets that happen to tie Nazis? Maybe that ties to the mental health issue again?...and the argument seems downright disingenuous when the party advocating this as the real reason behind gun violence dumps so much effort into dismantling a law that aimed to bring health insurance to people in the first place as well as allowing our military veterans, a group of people who are very prone to depression and mental health problems, extremely sub-par care.
They must know much of the PR spin excusing gun violence in America is bullshit when so much evidence is presented...pure numbers showing how America compares to other first-world nations, from the number of bullets our police use against our own citizens to the number of deaths attributed to weapons to the number of accidental shootings are reported to...well, the list goes on...and enthusiasts continue to deny there's a problem that can't be hand-waved away. I look at these numbers and agree there is a mental health problem; they're crazy if they don't see that America has a gun problem. They won't say it, but you can tell they know...the NRA dumps tons of cash into lobbying efforts aimed specifically at preventing studies for accurate weapon statistics. (Some say the lobbying is to prevent the government from rounding gun owners up after collecting big ol' lists of people to target as threats when they're just exercising their rights...paranoia is a mental health issue too, isn't it? Because I'm not sure that a government with murder drones and bunker busting bombs and...you know...an actual military is going to be all that afraid of your cache of AR-15's in the basement...)
Nowadays shootings are rather common in the US. It bugs me sometimes. But my new line is I don't care. I realized nothing would change when Sandy Hook happened. Twenty kids. Elementary school aged. Mowed. Down. And what changed? Squat.
I grew up hearing the constant, "Do it for the kids! THINK OF THE KIDS!" line used as an argument for everything up to and including trying to ban books and movies that would have kids seeing tits. Sandy Hook had little kids murdered and nothing fucking changed.
In fact, you heard people say the discussion about gun control had to be tabled because people were too emotional to think straight. Now's not the proper time! We need to wait until tempers cooled...conveniently, waiting also meant that people's interest in getting things changed would also cool, once something else shiny crossed the FaceBooks and Twitters. Democrats and Republicans alike did jack shit to keep it from happening again. Oh, and Lanza, the gunner, was roundly criticized as crazy. Don't worry, folks...he was crazy. An outlier. And he's dead now! He won't do it again!
When 9/11 happened, it didn't take long for the US to begin military operations into a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. It took even less time for people to start attacking anyone with the Muslim label. Hell, there were some incidents against people who just weren't light-skinned enough or had a name that was a little too...middle eastern-y. Apparently waiting and cooling down before taking action only applies if it means infringing on a hobby with an associated lobby carrying deep pockets.
At least when Hinckley tried shooting the President (did you know that Mr. H in Greatest American Hero became Mr. H because of that shooting? He was originally Mr. Hinckley. They changed it to Hanely, and referred to him as Ralph or Mr. H after the assassination attempt. Don't worry, though. John Hinckley was crazy too) there was a law passed that pretended to make an effort in stopping gun violence. But when you can mow down 20 toddlers and not have a damn thing done about it? That is pretty much a giant neon sign that this will not change in the foreseeable future.
Gun enthusiasts aren't fighting for protection or rights. They like shooting guns. They like blowing things away. They like the image and power guns convey. They aren't interested in anything that can possibly limit their right to shooting people or keeping others safe...when guns are stolen from a gun shop, there's no way to tell if those particular weapons are ever recovered again (was that a gun-free zone? That is why criminals pick certain targets, right? I bet that gun store didn't have any guns to protect the shop in case someone discovered a break-in...)
It's entirely about themselves and their love of guns. It's a precious hobby with a lobby behind it. Not protection, since guns are far more likely to be used to shoot yourself or a homicide than for protection. It's exceptionalism; these reams of statistics, what facts can actually be found, comparisons to other countries, news stories of idiots leaving guns in theaters...that's not them and never could be them. They treat weapons with respect, and never like some kind of toy or irresponsible tool of intimidation, especially since it could make you and your enthusiast movement look like the mentally unstable people that mass shootings are blamed on in the first place.
The twisted part is the number of people for whom mass shootings don't signal a time to reflect, but rather panic that someone will take their guns away. Purchases spike as enthusiasts fear they'll have a witch hunt, with eager anti-freedom liberals knocking on doors to confiscate precious murder tools. There's been a shooting! Get more guns!
To those people I assure you, no one is coming to get your guns. Someone with ready access to a gun...don't worry, he was crazy and the person he got the gun from was irresponsible, unlike the vast majority of not-crazy and very responsible gun owners out there...blew away 20 elementary schoolers and not a damn thing was done about it. Since then there were deaths in naval yards and military bases and college campuses and there's been hardly a squeak. The only reason it's getting some attention at the moment is the shooting at the church...motivated by racism. Still the party line is mental health.
It's reached a point where racism is now a mental health issue, and they feel totally secure in using that ridiculous line to protect their golden One Ring. I'm almost curious to see how deep the absurdity will go.
