The shooting at the school in connecticut

[Cobraroll]

Honestly, I think it's the prevalent attitude concerning guns that's the main problem. The guns themselves magnify the problem a lot, but the main issue is the American culture regarding guns.

Mostly everywhere else, wherever people keep weapons, it's for things like hunting, recreation, or (in case of Switzerland) national defence. However, many gun-wielding Americans have their firearm "for protection". They walk around anticipating that one day, somebody will try to kill them or take their belongings, and then they will be able to shoot back. It's a matter of using the handgun to scare away or incapacitate the inevitable "monster" that someday will get you. Their solution to this problem is not to back away, or let the police sort it out, but violence. The retoric goes, how could you know that this burglar/mugger/madman won't just kill you? You must be able to strike before the assailant, killing them before they kill you.

On the other hand, how often do situations like this happen? How often will a random stranger go to the effort and legal trouble of killing you, and why? That issue is never discussed. "It could happen, ergo it's best to keep the gun ready". And so, an environment is created where every scare becomes an excuse to shoot somebody. The gun is there to kill the "bad guys", lest the law-abiding gun owner will be killed by somebody else, an unidentified and unspecified threat to personal freedom and security that nine times out of ten only exists in the gun owner's head.

The glorification of weapons and violence in the media doesn't exactly help either. In action movies, what is the inevitable fate of the many goons of the enemy organization/crime group/army, etc? They are shot and never adressed again. That's what you're "supposed" to do with bad guys. And why not? They're bad guys after all. Most often, they pop out of nowhere, their only purpose is to threaten the existence of the hero(es) by trying to kill them. One-dimensional half-characters that only exists to make life miserable for everybody. The media has you believe that the world is full of gun-toting madmen that only want to kill you, your family and probably your Constitution and your country while they're at it. They're presented as threats incarnate, and the only thing to do with them is to rightfully shoot them. Problem solved. Hooray America.


I admit this problem isn't limited to the US alone, but it's by far the country where the mentality is the most prevalent. This is due to the fact that the abundance of guns means that almost everybody can access them, even madmen and minors. No criminal is fully equipped without a gun. No policeman is operative without his revolver at his side. And unless avoiding guns is your hero's trademark, he's defenseless without them too. No action movie is complete without somebody being shot. The guns are portrayed as quick solutions to terrible problems, making the bad guys disappear once and for all. Point and click, and you're happy . What a wonderful message to teach your growing kids (or in the case of shows such as The A-Team, where there are guns fired everywhere but nobody is ever hit, thus portraying guns as "awesome fun things that aren't dangerous at all").


The US could do well with a generation without handguns. Or at least a massive attitude campaign, preferrably fronted by those who are meant to be responsible (The NRA, if I remember correctly, would have one heck of a larger impact than the government saying the same things). And less glorification of killing in the media. When somebody dies, it's a terrible tragedy for dozens of people who know and love the victim. That important fact is very watered out when you daily watch action scenes where tens of "bad guys" are heroically mowed down by the man you're meant to root for (and who can blame him? The only thing we ever get to know about the "bad guys" is that they're "bad", so killing them would be a good thing, right?). And the rest of the world* shake their heads in silence.

/end rant.


*It's actually worse in several third-world countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and now Syria, but the situation isn't really comparable. Over there you have a dysfunctional society where the guns magnify the underlying problems by making violence easier than ever (it's harder, messier and riskier to kill with a knife). The US has a functional society believing the guns is what makes it functional.

[spitllama]

The ignorance.... it's rampant...

Must ignore and continue vacation.

[MoboMoga]

But we must actually take the shooter into consideration. Yes, the children's death were tragic, yet something tragic must have happened to the shooter in his life in order to do such horrid things. We people could have prevented this. If only someone knew his misery and loneliness and was friendly to him none of this would've happened.

Did you think of how maybe one of the children may grow up and kill other people because the shooter murdered the child's family? It's tragic, but it can happen.

[Dude]

Cobra: I can't agree with you any more than I do right now. :')

[Bubbles]

*Cobra's mass of text*

Please dont tell me you're one of those kids-need-to-stop-playing-video-game-because-they-think-killing-is-ok-now people.

And the whole reason people are discussing gun regulations is so that if needed, someone has something to protect themselves with. I'm not exactly sure what side of the argument I'm on, since I understand both sides. Some people think that you need to be always prepared to stop or lessen crimes like this one, while others think you need to completely prevent them from ever happening in the first place. The problem is, its extremely hard to prevent them. Theres always going to be that one crazy person who will do anything it takes just to go and kill a few people, even if it means illegally aquiring a weapon or worse. If the government can set up some sort of system where they can prevent anyone and everyone from getting guns without it getting out of control, then go ahead, thats great. But if theres the slightest loophole where a person could get their hands on a weapon and create a massacre, then people would want to be able to feel safe by owning a gun that they could use to protect themselves if necessary.

Its not that holding a gun will make someone always edgy and kill someone at the slightest bump, but it makes people feel safe enough that they will stop overly worrying about something that rarely happens.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Please dont tell me you're one of those kids-need-to-stop-playing-video-game-because-they-think-killing-is-ok-now people.

If there were no video games, people would blame movies. If there were no movies, people would blame books. If there were no books... well, I don't know what they'd invent to take the blame.

[Bubbles]

But people already do blame those things. Not so much books though, but replace that with the internet

[BlackDragonSlayer]

But people already do blame those things. Not so much books though, but replace that with the internet

I've never heard the media blame movies for violence since... I can't remember...
But I have heard them blame TV/movies for smoking and alcohol abuse. 

[Cobraroll]

Please dont tell me you're one of those kids-need-to-stop-playing-video-game-because-they-think-killing-is-ok-now people.

Oh no, by no means, I don't blame video games. The attitude has been around since before the turn of the last century. Various forms of media only reflect what the rest of society feels.

Basically, it boils down to a mentality where the world is perceived as full of "evildoers", and that whenever you feel threatened by them, the only appropriate response is to shoot them dead. Criminals, communists, terrorists... same kind of folks under a different name. People who only appear in your life because they want to destroy you. If one of them shows up, it means he's there to take your belongings, your freedom, possibly your life. This has evolved into a society where some people perceive threats in every shadow, and keep their guns close so they can kill them before they are killed themselves.

In reality, the world is quite devoid of one-dimensional would-be murderers whose only dream is to destroy you and your loved ones. Every human is a person, with his own loved ones, ideals to pursue and dreams to fulfill. Few if any persons have ever existed only with a desire to kill people. But in this line of thought (anywhere, worldwide), if that person is not one of "us", and you feel threatened by him, he only exists as a threat that should be eliminated and that is why you need a gun. To eliminate the threat. Looking beyond the threat is never adressed. Shoot, kill, bury, he got more than he deserved. End of story.

Every potentially dangerous situation is boiled down to a matter of life or death. Kill or be killed. And the means to kill lie handily around all over the country. No need to run, negotiate or trick the assailant. A bullet or two to his chest is a surefire way to stop the problem, right?


The psychotic mass-murderers aren't really a product of this mentality, though. With or without guns, a psychological problem is a psychological problem and should be adressed as one. But the guns strewn everywhere provide the psychotics with an easy way to go on a rampage. It doesn't require much effort, skill or preparations to kill with a gun once certain barriers in one's mind are gone. Point and click, and one of the voices in his head is silenced forever. Or the person he believes to be incarnate evil is rightfully banished from this world (As far as I've understood, this was the motive behind the Giffords shooting). Or something similar. In a society full of deadly weapons, from time to time a nutjob will acquire one and do a lot of bad stuff. The nutjobs themselves are nutjobs regardless of the weapons, but they can easily use the weapons to go to a new level of nutjobbiness. This has happened a couple of times the past weeks in China, where the assailants used knives to go on a spree in kindergardens. A few kids died, and many were injured but survived. Not so much in Newtown. Twenty-nine shot, twenty-seven dead. Similar numbers (times three) on Utøya last summer. A madman can do a lot more damage with a gun than with a knife.

And to be honest, psychotic mass-murderers aren't the main problem either. I don't know how many people were killed in shooting sprees in the US the past year, but I doubt the number exceeds 150. In total, somewhere around nine thousand Americans were killed by handguns in 2012. Mass-murderers are the exception, not the norm. The norm, where one person kills one person (which might or might not be himself), is usually a result of the mentality discussed above (usually caused by and magnified from a fit of sudden rage, substance abuse, minor psychological problems, etc).




Video games and the Internet, by the way, just happens to be the latest things to blame for "the decline of society". Earlier, people have blamed television, movies, music (any genre, and that includes polka), books, fairy tales, art, songs, demons, etc, etc. Heck, I bet even "extensive looking at clouds" has been determined to be the cause of insanity somewhere, sometime throughout history. Probably, people have been banished from places because the funny hat they wore was said to be bad influence on children.

[KefkaticFanatic]

I don't think people in the US quite understand how absurd our mentality is around firearms.  One of the first things people I know from overseas will ask about or make note of is how we strangely are able to carry around weapons, and should they be fearing for themselves.  Like a serious question.  Of course we won't get anywhere going to completely ban civilian weapons with all the hicks and their interest groups whining, but there is really no reason that we need to keep around such an antiquated practice.

[Ruto]

Yeah I think Cobraroll has it right...also I posted this which makes a lot of sense.

The other thing I'd like to bring up is that most people who still carry guns think that they have a right to even if other people are dying because that right exists. And the overall feeling I'm getting from the state of politics in this country is that no one thinks they have to help anyone out, that it's really all about themselves.

My physics teacher's commented a lot about that and how people seem to need guns for their own shortcomings/insecurities. There was even a NYT editorial earlier this year (written by a retired police officer) that he knew someone who complained about gun control being too strict would also make racist and ignorant (and in my experience, misogynist) remarks about others. You wouldn't want someone like that to own a gun, really.

[Sebastian]

1 year and 2 days ago, was this brutal shooting. I just want to keep these kids families in my prayers.

[blueflower999]

Wasn't it two years ago?

[Sebastian]

Whoops...sorry. Yes, 2. I just remember it was on the 18th of December.

[Ruto]

Ugh why the bump...Just write about this in some other recent post.

1 year and 2 days ago, was this brutal shooting. I just want to keep these kids families in my prayers.

Meanwhile there's lots of stuff that hasn't been actually done about crazies getting guns...