I do believe that high capacity weapons should be banned. If you want to play with such toys, join the military. We cannot stop the mass harm, but we can take this too-easily attainable weapon out of the arsenal. The notion that, "if they don't have guns, they'll mix explosives with stuff they buy from CVS and a recipe from the internet." Very true--but it takes effort. Going into your mother's gun cabinet--to which you have full access--takes almost none.
And while I believe there needs to be some drastic mental-health care reforms in this country, I also don't see that as being a huge deterent. Part of the mental health problem is the reluctance to seek help. Short of going back to the system that allowed willy-nilly committing of people who either didn't fit in or wore out their usefulness, there will always be those who fall through the cracks, no matter how good our reforms are.
I don't know if it's human nature, or an American thing, this mad attempt to bandaid a situation that requires stitches and a splint. Let's ban all guns! Let's arm teachers! Let's put a security guard in every school, armed to the hilt with the best this great nation has to offer! Huzzah! I call bullshit. And that's the worst part, because though I cry bullshit, I have no answers. I hate the bandaid, but doing NOTHING isn't an answer either.
So what do we do?
And this is why, whenever I see anything about Newtown, I break down in tears, because I--who will find something positive in any negative to somehow lessen the horror of it--can't find a thing.
Comments
The issue I think you have is with this whole Hollywoodesque black hat/white hat 'right to bear arms' culture which is still so prevelant chez vous.
It seems to be an odd admixture of macho, got to protect 'our' wimminz and zomg! terrorism!
Some of the answers are to be found in your 17th century history. (but I suppose that as a 17th century specialist historian, I would say that! :o)
A sea change in attitude won't be obtained easily, but it has to come and ceasing to pretend that the NRA represents anything sane would be a good start!
Edited at 2013-02-22 03:35 pm (UTC)
My biggest problem is and always has been this bandaid effect. So much policy in this country is in effect to placate, not to actually ammend. Your kid's being bullied in school? Enact a "no tolerance" policy. Huzzah! Great going, folks, except that no tolerance thing gets the kid who fights BACK expelled along with the little blotter who was bullying him to begin with.
At what point does the one time bully in school in the US then become the societal bully with a Kalashnikov or Ouzi who goes back to bully the whole school in a particularly lethal fashion?
The whole bullying thing in this country is getting attention because it's popular, I hate to say. I'm GLAD! Because people are actually taking it seriously now. I just find that when you're trying to protect the bully along with the bullied, you're really not making much headway.
Kids who are spanked learn that being bigger and stronger makes you either right, or above wrong. They learn that humiliation is how you get someone to behave the way you want them to. So is it any wonder when kids go to school that they use the same tactics on their peers?
It's such a huge, involved thing, this bullying. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.
Way more than have died in school shootings in our lifetimes.
Does that help at all?
I do think more stringent background checks
and better care for the mentally ill
would help a lot, but will we get either of those?
I dunno.
Yes and yes--I agree that both those things are necessary. I do think, eventually, we will get the better background checks. As far as better care for the mentally ill? I doubt it.
http://www.motherjones.com/environm
I think if parents were more engaged with their kids, we wouldn't have had Columbine. If mental health was not a joke in this country, we wouldn't have had Aurora or Sandy Hook. Or Killdozer. Or Lubys. Or University of Texas in the 1960's. But in a nation that increasingly shows empathy as weakness, it's not surprising. Anymore, it's nothing but me me me and that just creates a rich habitat for psychotic behavior.
No, honestly, I do. Like virtually every damn issue on the planet, the gun thing is down to a male mindset that reveres 'power over' above all else.
We won't stop gun violence, or bullying, or rape, or child abuse, or environmental degradation, or poverty, or WAR until we eradicate patriarchal values.
Which is why we need feminism. In my view.
It brings to mind something I read recently--a family who didn't want a female dog because they didn't want to worry about puppies or spaying. When asked if it wasn't the same problem with a male dog, the answer was no. The puppies weren't their problem, and they'd never "emasculate" their dog by altering his reproductive junk.
o_0
Yeah. The mindset's gotta go.
Edited at 2013-02-22 06:15 pm (UTC)
Everything is run by men. The judiciary, our education systems & medical professions; the pornography industry, the entertainment industries; the military & big business. All of them function by wielding inordinate amounts of power over others. Particularly women & girls.
More often than not this 'power over' is achieved by abdicating responsibility for any potential consequences from poverty & ignorance to pollution, abuse, illiteracy & death by war.
I reserve my biggest contempt for governments & the church.
The major influential powers are still those of the established patriarchal governments & churches. While church leaders of all faiths & creeds aspire to glory & salvation at the right hand of their respective gods, our politicians strive toward some odd notion of honour by setting themselves up as our saviours on earth.
How bloody dare they!
And truly, until Christianity loses its grip on this country, it's never going to change.
I don't believe oppression is strictly limited to gender. Sorry.
I do wonder, however, who is ABOVE those women making your life miserable.
I do think we need to find a happy medium, though, to commit to facilities those that do need some help for brain issues, and are resistant to committing themselves, or unable to afford the care. I agree that this was overused in the past, to the point of being criminal, but surely we can find a happy medium. And notice I say "brain" issues, because I HATE the term mental illness. Mental implies thinking, reasoning, and all the conditions now labeled "mental" are biological in nature. I think a big step in all this would be to outlaw the term mental illness. It implies, and the insurance companies perpetrate this by not paying, that people could just think themselves well if they were only mentally stable and strong enough. Horseshit. The chemicals and neurons in the brain are misfiring!
Ok I'll shut up now.
In a perfect world, we would not have to have laws protecting the "mentally ill" from being committed against their will, because loved ones and bribe-able healthcare providers wouldn't abuse the system by getting rid of an elderly parent no one wants to care for, a wife a man doesn't want any more, or a deaf child pegged as being "an idiot." (yes, that was once a "formal" term.)
It is a never-ending cycle that, honestly, I don't see being fixed. There will always be the problem caused by the solution, because one solution (the committment laws) causes new problems (mental illness being swept under the rug.)
I cannot control the actions of others, I can only control my reaction to them.
That's pretty much the size of it.