Bang bang! Did anyone record this?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The gruesome murder of two TV persons on air is now top news around the media at both sides of the Atlantic. The sad thing is, people have grown so accustomed to hearing that sort of news coming from America that the overwhelming response I'm hearing is, "Meh, no surprise there". It's just that Americans reaching for the gun to sort out their issues has become the standard now.

There are two possible explanations for what happened, and the pattern that it's part of. One is that there's something very perverse in this right to freely and openly bear arms that's at the core of American society - I mean, the very idea of someone being able to carry a loaded gun around schools, hospitals, or as is this case, a live-TV studio, is truly mind-boggling for a non-American.

Apparently, the POTUS does share that sentiment as well, since with a visible mixture of embarrassment and vexation he has again reminded his compatriots that they should overcome their obsession with guns, and even abandon it at some point. It's evident that under the surface he's feeling pretty angry in his helplessness, because he knows he can't say what he truly thinks, even if he's not running for election any more - it's just that the whole nation would turn against him the moment he opens his mouth on the question. That's how deep the lead poison has infiltrated people's hearts and minds.

The second reaction was the outrage from the killer's callousness, as he used smartphones and social media to record his act and express his jubilation from having committed it. He clearly did that out of some perverse need to feed his ego, as per the mores of our modern exhibitionist age, where everyone should know about an event, lest they thought it didn't really happen, or worse - didn't pay any attention.

Such is the cruel reality in which we live, where everything has to be photographed and filmed, otherwise it's not real. This way, in a sense we're all accomplices to the crime, being ourselves willing voyeurs. That young man was doing his sinister act, and we were watching it, and couldn't get our eyes off it. If we had consciously chosen to watch, then indeed, we were accomplices. We were besmirched. And quite voluntarily so.

But the hard, disgusting truth that all these rational reactions serve to conceal is that the guy was feeling genuine pleasure from ending the life of other human beings - because that's what guns are for. So what if he had some scores to settle with somebody? So what? Many people occasionally get angry for various things - I've become frustrated over various reasons from time to time. But I'm sure neither I nor any of you would ever think of venting that anger through deadly fire, would we? But this man's brain operates in a different way. Anger is just a plan, a foundation. The decision he took and the pleasure it brought him is what matters. And this has deep roots too - because Americans are being brought up from the earliest age to draw delight from shooting with guns. "That's the American way, what can you do", I'm often told.

For example there could be valid arguments against arming cops as is in several other countries, since they seem alarmingly prone to getting trigger-happy. But the truth is, such an idea would never stand a chance in the US. It would be ridiculed and rejected even by the most ardent proponents of gun control, because it's simply inapplicable to the conditions of the gun-soaked American society.

There are guns being produced even for little kids, even for 5 year olds, and kids are being given real guns as a birthday present - their proud parents then teaching them to shoot with them with pleasure. And it's no surprise that these are then being misused by kids with fatal consequences. But of course, that still hasn't brought anybody to the logical decision to remove gun-holding rights from kids. And that is mind-boggling to a non-American, too.

I know at least two persons who, on their regular trips to the US, when invited into a friends' home, have first inquired if there were any guns inside, and upon positive answer have politely declined the invitation. One told me that the general reaction is bewilderment. It's just that many Americans simply refuse to even attempt to understand their motivations.

Behind all this, there are of course organizations like the powerful NRA. They've tirelessly worked in the same direction, namely the propagation of guns throughout the populace - for profit, of course. They're using the 2nd Amendment as a shield, which was carefully formulated to match the realities of its time: it was meant to allow the young American nation to defend itself in case its former British colonial masters ever attempted to re-gain control. There's no longer a threat from a colonialist invasion today, and yet that Amendment is being cited as Gospel. Because it has become part of the American's bloodstream now.

But the NRA's actual goal (apart from the obvious financial interests of the wealthy gun-producing lobby) is to preserve the unwritten principle of leisure and pleasure behind gun use. According to that principle, there's nothing bad in shooting at things - and if things do take a bad turn, it's because the perpetrator had "mental issues" (as is the narrative surrounding this particular case that has triggered this post). But our anti-hero here Vester Lee Flanagan was actually not mentally ill. He was "just angry". And in America, anger seems too easy to get expressed through bullets. President Obama could speak more openly now about his true thoughts on the matter, now that he's not running for re-election. But if he does, he's risking to hurt his own party, and giving more ammo (ha!) to their detractors and opponents - whose agenda includes even looser gun laws. So unfortunately, I'm not seeing the shootings rate slowing down any time soon. In fact, I expect it go be getting only worse.

Ps. Cue the race card being played now. "When a white guy shoots a black guy, you're all over them. This guy shot a white TV anchor for making racist remarks about black - so where's the outrage?" Yep, I've been expecting that sort of argument to be brought up any time now.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I mean, the very idea of someone being able to carry a loaded gun around schools, hospitals, or as is this case, a live-TV studio is truly mind-boggling for a non-American

It wasn't in a studio. It was on location.

Also, the very idea that someone can carry a loaded gun past police guards into a magazine office or through a train station on to a passenger train is truly mind-boggling, too.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jer 17:9

[telemann.livejournal.com]

This part wasn't too terribly mind-boggling though, n'est-ce pas?

French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who was on board the Thalys train during the attack has slammed train staff who he claims locked themselves in an office away from the attacker and refused to help the trapped passengers.

Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206426/U-S-Marines-armed-gunman-onboard-high-speed-train-Amsterdam-Paris.html)

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

After the Costa Concordia? Not really. That it is why it is better to be part of a pack, not part of a herd.

The "perverse" right of the individual to weapons.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

You mean, you believe in a world of armed aristocrats and disarmed serfs. How very European of you.

I can do those strawmen too.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

You mean you believe in a world where it's a shooting anything-goes free-for-all?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The arrogance and violence are in the genesis of the American nation (after all, they exterminated almost the entire population of a continent in order to make "Lebensraum" for themselves). And what's being demonstrated by them for the last 200 years or so, both on the domestic and especially the international front, could hardly surprise anybody.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

The explanation is short and simple. Americans prefer to solve their problems with bullets because shooting doesn't require too much effort, and you need zero thinking to do it. If it were hard and complicated, few would be able to do it. And that means fewer customers for the gun clique. Whoever has visited the "Real America", the small towns in the heartland, would know what sort of denizens dwell there, taking shooting at cans and bottles and anything they could put their hands at, out of sheer boredom, as their main pastime. From there to shooting at other things that move and breathe, there's not such a long walk.

[garote]

It would be nice if you softened that rhetoric just a little bit to accommodate the many perfectly civilized Americans from the midwest up and over to Alaska (including the Canadians in the middle of course) who use firearms to feed their families on a seasonal basis. It's not just a handful here and there, either. I assume since you've visited "The Real America" you're aware of how, come October and November, you can actually hear rifle shots echoing across the landscape for hours at a time in peak hunting season, in large chunks of Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, etc. (Call it barbaric, but at least when they eat meat, they have the guts to come by it directly.) They maintain and practice with firearms for reasons that haven't changed for about 200 years.

I am very much in favor of gun control, but I have also met plenty of red-staters - the "sort of denizens" to which you prefer, perhaps, outside shooting at their cans and bottles and anything else - who believe that it's a cultural matter, and that the federal government is fundamentally the wrong tool for the job. To them, the feder'l gummint is a distant monolothic entity driven by the huge coastal cities that would sooner steamroll them than listen. (And they are not mistaken in that interpretation, I believe.)

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

And your sweeping generalizations are an example of enlightened European "thinking"? Really? Because I'm not seeing it. You know, you should check your facts. That's what thinking people do. Of course you offered none, just an recitation of personal fears, and flatly unexamined bigotry.

Per capita, those "rednecks" who own private guns shoot far fewer innocent people than the police do. For one thing, the private citizen is not protected from accountability by "qualified immunity."

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

I doubt he'd be allowed to carry a gun into an actual studio. Well, this wasn't a studio, though.

See, I'm all for comprehensive gun control, but what law, short of banning guns throughout the populace entirely, would've prevented this guy from shooting those journalists? I mean, he owned his gun legally; he wasn't mentally ill (so any psycho test wouldn't have detected a problem with him), etc. How could have that murder been prevented?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

he wasn't mentally ill

And we know that, how? Did he pass a psychology test? These should come regularly. Gun licenses should not be permanent. They should be renewed periodically, including after a psychology test.

Fine, it wasn't a studio.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

We have like 7 different licenses for different types of guns; all of them require you to prove you have a legitimate need for a gun (personal protection isn't a legitimate need; you need to be a member of a gun club or have a hunting permit already), they all require psych evals and they all only last 5 years. You also have to keep your guns locked in a safe, and the ammunition locked in a different safe. We also can't have automatic weapons, or clips of more than 8, and most semi-autos are on licenses that most non-farmers can't get.

Since then no mass shootings (down from nearly one a year through the 80s and early 90s), homicides by gun are down 27%, suicides by gun have gone from 22% to 7%, and theft of guns has dropped from over 4000 a year to 1500 a year.

For the vast majority of people, this didn't change the type of gun they used, nor how they actually used it. It just kept a closer eye on who was using guns and how they stored them. I'm convinced that the single most effective law you could bring in is the separate safes for weapons/ammunition thing as it pretty much completely removes accidents and crimes of passion.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

Seems to me the sign of violent schizophrenia is manifest not only in isolated gun attacks on unsuspecting victims. It is rooted in capitalism itself, in all the ways in which people are alienated and repressed by a system far more violent than the incidents themselves. Gun culture is just one aspect, but really the basis for violence is the re-enforcement of dominance psychology, the idea that individuals must assert their right to repress others through direct armed action, when said others are perceived to fall below the norm. This hidden conflict in society is on one hand imposing equality and individual rights of freedom while on the other asserting the universal duty to punish those who fall short of its standards, by alienating and removing their dignity. Whether this means genocide on the aboriginees in order to develop modern society or whether this means shooting the thief before he even reaches my doorstep, is just a matter of degree. The goal of capitalist expansion cannot stop at geographical territory or economic frontiers, it also advances inwardly, impelling us to act out immediately against the perceived threat of the other. Internalized violence is a motivating factor for success, as rational agents we keep violence under check, but rational control also fails since it is set up only as an instrument for negative freedoms ("thou shalt not..."). Bringing it into context, the discourse of "protect yourself with guns" bears the ultimate consequence of protecting the wrong thing. The social discourse needs to be changed so that individual duty is not radicalized by this constant drumming up of fear and revenge towards the perceived wrongness of the other.

[garote]

It sounds like you're trying to externalize the animal desire for self-preservation, to an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Dunno, there are some very capitalistic countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore, with very low murder rates despite being more capitalistic than the US in many ways. Even Canada and Australia, the two most US-like countries around do pretty well. There were several countries who did away with capitalism last century and didn't exactly see an absence of violence towards their citizens. Venezuela has been notably moving away from capitalism for the past 15 years and has seen it's murder rate increase dramatically.

When you get down to it, the US's murder rate is only an outlier when compared with other developed, capitalistic countries, making it difficult for me to see that capitalism is the problem.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Dunno, there are some very capitalistic countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore, with very low murder rates despite being more capitalistic than the US in many ways. Even Canada and Australia, the two most US-like countries around do pretty well. There were several countries who did away with capitalism last century and didn't exactly see an absence of violence towards their citizens. Venezuela has been notably moving away from capitalism for the past 15 years and has seen it's murder rate increase dramatically.

When you get down to it, the US's murder rate is only an outlier when compared with other developed, capitalistic countries, making it difficult for me to see that capitalism is the problem.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I own a firearm (one that does not require a license in my state) and am friends with many gun owners who have very strong (but well researched) opinions on this topic. Note that most of them are not actually opposed to certain levels of gun control and registration. No NRA zealots there. I am not, myself, opposed to such things on principle. But, I want to put this disclaimer, because I may be somewhat biased on this issue.

---
I do have to agree somewhat with one of garote's points: the majority of gun owners in the U.S. own them for peaceful food gathering purposes. Even those who own them for self-defense almost never end up using them. Now, that doesn't mean that a program like the one that Australia enacted wouldn't work here: so long as the rights of these folks to continue using their firearms are combined with much harsher penalties for failing to secure them, or for using them inappropriately, I don't think I'd be too upset. I'm just not really yet convinced that it's actually necessary.

What makes all of this such a crazy issue is that the actual statistics are just so complicated:

- The rate of gun murders is the lowest than it's been in more than 30 years.
- However, the rate of non-fatal gun INJURIES in assaults is up.
- BUT not when we include "aggravated assault"
- gun robberies are down
- but gun suicides are up...

So we're left arguing over whether there's even a problem to address, while the rest of the world (who enjoy far lower rates of all of these things) is left wondering if we're just completely insane. But I think the only statistic really worth discussing is the elephant in the room: we do have the highest rate of "mass shootings." (The murder described in the article doesn't really count as such, t was just a particularly visible "everyday" murder.)

No, what's troubling, at least to me, is the ongoing (and seemingly unstoppable) epidemic of mass-killings, almost universally committed by white males who have been radicalized by a specific handful of ideologies. These are, in effect, terrorists, though they are never called this by the mass media because they don't have brown skin and they're not from an Arab country. But terrorists they are, and this is what's really the problem with guns in America: terrorists continue to use them to commit terrorism.

So we're left with what I think is the real question: is the problem guns themselves (which don't, statistically, actually seem to really be causing that much of an issue in and of themselves) or white male terrorists? And if the problem is with a certain segment of the population being radicalized by certain ideologies, is the answer to that problem to restrict access to guns (I'd grant that maybe that actually is a part of the solution,) or is that merely addressing a symptom, and is there another, better solution? If so, what is that solution? If the solution is something that's only achievable through long-term effort and culture change, does restricting guns in the short-term save lives in the meantime? Australia's example seems to bear this out.

I do think it's not as easy as just saying "Americans are shooting each other. Guns bad. Get rid of guns." There is a gun problem, but at the same time, the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans will never have to face the direct consequences of gun crime. Of course even one gun murder happening to anyone seems a preventable tragedy, but murder is a far older concept than firearms. Getting rid of guns won't get rid of killings. But it would be ignorant to try to claim that the murder rate wouldn't go down if guns weren't around.

I do think that it's a culture problem, and a terrorism problem, and that's where the majority of the effort has to go in order to curtail such things. I'm not against the idea of gun control in principle... but guns are very entwined with our identity, for better or for worse. Getting Americans to let go of guns would need more than bans, but a long-term change in our narrative. It would require changing our cultural identity, and that's not something that can just be done by legislative decree.

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't get it. The majority of gun owners get their food through hunting!?

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

A separate quick point I think ought to be made: I note the use of pictures of very young children holding firearms. That must seem positively insane to folks outside of the U.S. Hell, it seems insane to a lot of the folks here inside of the U.S.

OK, it even seems a bit insane to me.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the other side of that argument. Child gun fatalities are horrible, but they are almost always preventable. There are many things that parents can do to help prevent such tragedies: own a gun safe, use trigger locks, store ammunition away from the gun, but perhaps equally effective is simply teaching children, from a young age, to respect guns and their power.

As stated above, a great many families who own guns use them as tools: to hunt, to deal with pests on the farm, etc. They're an essential part of rural life. These kids up in that rural environment, sharing the same rural values. They go hunting, help out on the farm, etc. When the kids are not taught about guns, and instead view them as something forbidden and tantalizing, they're going to want to experiment with them, play with them, and that leads to tragedy. If, instead, parents are open about guns, their uses, but also their danger, and remove the mystique from them, children are less likely to play around with them.

For a lot of families like that, taking the kid on their first hunting trip is a rite of passage, and along those lines, so is buying their children their first hunting rifle (which are made in smaller sizes and calibers appropriate for a smaller frame.)

I know it seems unthinkable ("what the hell is that young child doing holding such a dangerous device!") but in that culture, you are looking at a tradition, and a rite of passage, one that millions of children grow up taking part in without injury. And generally, when you're hearing about the mass-shooting on the news (or even the tragic accidental death of a child playing with a gun) it's usually not involving these kinds of kids, who've been raised to respect guns as a tool, and have seen first-hand exactly what they can do. Instead, it's someone whose family owned a gun, who didn't bother to treat that as a responsibility and to teach the children about gun safety, and who didn't properly secure it. I see the kids in these pictures above, and often think: "they're probably from a family that treats guns a lot differently than most folks I know." Even my own knee-jerk response is to say: "OMG what are those young girls doing with those powerful ASSAULT RIFLES" But if we stop and really examine the picture, it's a bunch of kids who have probably been raised to respect such devices all of their lives, who were given legitimate hunting rifles that they will likely end up going out and using with their parents out in the woods later in the year. They will most likely go on to use them responsibly. (One hopes. There is only so much we can tell from a picture.)

[garote]

Heh. Either that or the father has a gun collection and he made his girls pose with them because he thought to himself, "this'll show how badass our family is! Don't mess with us! WHUH YEEEEEAH"

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

OK, let's do some deconstructing:

But the hard, disgusting truth that all these rational reactions serve to conceal is that the guy was feeling genuine pleasure from ending the life of other human beings - because that's what guns are for. So what if he had some scores to settle with somebody? So what? Many people occasionally get angry for various things - I've become frustrated over various reasons from time to time. But I'm sure neither I nor any of you would ever think of venting that anger through deadly fire, would we? But this man's brain operates in a different way. Anger is just a plan, a foundation. The decision he took and the pleasure it brought him is what matters.

So, you're effectively saying that it isn't the gun; it's the criminal. It's his attitude. Congratulations, you've just agreed with the gun rights advocates. So, after blaming Vester Flannigan's attitude, philosophy, mind set, state of mental health, I note that you barely question where he got his attitude, but proceed to paint "Americans," and their supposed culture, as you project it, as the villain, even though statistics would not bear you out on that portrait and more damningly to the point, after you yourself have just out of your own keyboard, pointed out that Vester Flannigan is a tiny outlying exception, not the rule. You've managed to contradict yourself in a single paragraph.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Whatever validates your preconceived dogma, comrade.

[garote]

Man, you're a week late and a dollar short.