And the Oscar for best killer goes to …
That’s how it’s starting to feel in America. Our real-life, mass shootings with the dramatic cell phone videos and gripping narratives by survivors resemble violent movies.
American popular culture long ago made violence cool. The proliferation of high-capacity weapons, far beyond what is needed for hunting or self-defense, means that if a hateful man wants to declare war on other people, he can.
There is a voyeuristic quality to observing a mass shooting unfold. We watch, maybe even tear up, then soon go on with our lives.
By the time Nikolas Cruz killed 17 children and adults at a high school in Parkland, Fla., I realized I had forgotten the not-too-long ago shooting at a church in Texas until it was mentioned in a news wrap-up.
The victims hadn’t been identified in the Florida shooting before there were the usual calls for “common-sense gun laws” and denunciations of the NRA, as if Cruz were merely a bystander.
We have many gun laws, and the Florida shooting may lead to more.
The problem with gun laws is the elected officials who write them come from two major political parties that fight like estranged spouses. They would rather hurt each other than get along for the sake of the country.
Democrats push the hardest for gun control laws, but at the same time they want to weaken punishment for many felony crimes – even those committed with guns.
Republicans refuse to budge, suspecting that Democrats will ban guns outright yet forgive criminals who use firearms. Gun control is also a class issue. There’s a perception that gun-owners are low-brow Neanderthals who only vote Republican.
It wasn’t surprising that after the Las Vegas shooting at a country music festival, a CBS vice president was caught on Facebook saying she had no sympathy for the victims because, as country music fans, they were probably “Republican gun toters.” (Hayley Geftman-Gold was later fired.)
Except for prison inmates, most Americans can obtain a gun – legally or illegally – if they want to. How come we aren’t all dealing with our various disappointments in life by shooting people?
It’s only a rare few of us who are consumed with a viciousness to cause pain in others. Motive is irrelevant. There is no justification.
If you could read the minds of guys like Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, Devin Kelley and Adam Lanza as they act out the starring role in their personal end of days, their thoughts as they destroy good lives could probably be reduced to: “Fuck you, motherfuckers!”
They hate life. They’re going to make the rest of us hate it, too.
How do you reason with someone like that? What concessions do you make? You don’t. It makes no difference whether Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, Devin Kelley, Adam Lanza, et al are mentally ill or evil.
In the context of killing people, the mentally ill are evil, and the evil are mentally ill. All it takes is a .38-slug to the head or heart to take care of men like these.
Civilians don’t need high-capacity assault weapons to do the job. Banning such firearms is a reasonable restriction, but bans are not new.
In 1989, California approved an Assault Weapons Ban targeting 50 brands and models of semi-automatic firearms. Ten years later, the ban was expanded to include some models of AR-15s. Congress has had temporary bans on such guns. If another ban passes, hold off on celebrating.
Outlawing AR-15s is not going to prevent a motivated man from taking a .22- rifle and tricking it out to perform like an AR-15. How many Americans had ever heard of bump stocks until Stephen Paddock came along? The human imagination isn’t restricted by man-made laws.
Gun laws need meaningful punishment. Even then, if a man is determined to get a gun and kill, no law will act as a restraint. It will take human effort to stop him.
The changes we need can’t simply be legislated. Laws can’t heal what’s wrong with our culture. In that regard, the power-influencers in the news and entertainment media have more clout than the NRA.
It took us a few decades to reach this place. Within 24 hours of the Florida high school shooting there was speculation that Cruz had a hard life and was lonely on Valentine’s Day. Hard lives and loneliness have always been with us, but they haven’t always been treated as excuses to kill.
Only one kind of person opens fire in a peaceful setting filled with kids and adults who are likely unarmed: a coward.
Don’t expect the people shouting loudest for more gun control to condemn Cruz.
In the Feb. 12-19th New Yorker magazine, staff writer Adam Gopnik analyzes what New York University sociologist Patrick Sharkey calls the “great crime decline” in America, referring to the drop in violent crime in the past decade.
In his analysis, Gopnik is loath to credit the decline to incarceration and aggressive policing.
“Liberal-minded people do not merely want mass incarceration to be the moral scandal it obviously is,” he writes. “We want it to be a practical scandal as well… .”
Gopnik acknowledges that Sharkey, “a sympathizer with progressive causes,” does credit incarceration for the lower crime rates. Now that the streets are safer, guess what Sharkey wants to do? Open the cell doors.
This progressive philosophy is intertwined with the gun control debate. It’s why law-abiding gun owners don’t want to give away their gun rights.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
From the archives:
I saw your comment at the New York times. Thanks for trying. This political tactic making the NRA the great bogeyman doesn’t work. I know you’ve seen the comments. I’ve got NRA members in my family. They don’t want to buy AR 15s. Being insulted by gun haters makes them dig in and give no quarter.
The NRA is probably a lot like other large organizations: The folks at the bottom of the hierarchy are not always well-represented by the top echelon. The executive leadership has its own agenda. The media fixate too much on the NRA.
The Florida school shooting has generated such emotional news coverage it’s hard to sort out all the mistakes. The kids are right to ask, “Where are the adults?”
There’s currently a detailed story on The New York Times website about the many people who tried to warn law enforcement about Nikolas Cruz — not just the man who called the FBI that has already been reported. There were a lot more, including Cruz’s own late mother, who called local law enforcement about her son’s violent behavior and his arsenal of weapons. The link is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/us/fbi-tip-nikolas-cruz.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Why was there no follow-up? What’s the point in passing “red flag” laws to disarm dangerous people? How dangerous does someone have to appear?
Maybe these callers should have contacted their local newspaper to report Cruz.
The nytimes.com story leaves a big question. What the hell do you have to do to get taken seriously if you call police about somebody like Cruz? How do you get someone to listen? I ask that not in anger but honestly. I’d like to ask all the people who took those calls and didn’t do anything, why didn’t they? What should the callers have said? Do the cops get so many calls about homicidial maniacs they don’t take them seriously. This shooting wouldn’t have happened had somebody listened.
The kids protests are being used by polticians. They need to figure why none of the warnings were heeded.
Maybe the NRA needs to get up a toll free line so people can call about guys like Cruz. The NRA might take the warnings more serious.
An NRA Hotline to report potential mass shooters? I haven’t heard that suggestion before. I suppose they could pass on reports to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and while they’re at it, they could also alert the local legislators where the presumed suspect lives. That might reduce the finger-pointing if something goes wrong. The gunman would shoulder the blame.
Who knows? I’ve see a deal of bad ink about this education “initiative.”
https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-did-parkland-shooter-slip-through-cracks-15741.html
Speaking of guns -50 years since Hue, Tet, and Khe Sanh.So fast, so long ago and just yesterday.
Aside from a few retrospectives in the major media, I haven’t heard many references to Tet.
A friend of mine was in college during the Vietnam War, and the draft lottery number for his birth date was 10. He considered the possibilities: Move to Canada, claim he was crazy, claim he was homosexual or claim he was pacifist. He would have gladly served in WWII, so he couldn’t honestly call himself a pacifist. He had received his notice ordering him to report at the induction center in L.A. when the military draft ended.
That link from City-Journal speaks to how America has become so much more adolescent. How many urban 20-somethings today could survive Basic Training? My next essay will be about Oregon’s effort to extend adolescence to age 25. Seriously, the state legislature’s Senate Judiciary Committee is looking at this. If one of OHSU’s psychiatrists has her way, nobody under age 25 would face criminal charges in adult court.
No way would I have wanted to be armed when I taught! It sounds like Nikolas had behavioral problems that were indulged. Basic Training indeed. That’s what teaching is like todaqy.