Another Mass Killing – Another Wrong-headed Debate

In the aftermath of yet another of the all-too-regular tragedies we seem to have in this country, the Internet and various mass media outlets are engaging in yet another debate. I’m speaking of course about the horrible deaths of seven in Santa Barbara by Elliot Rodger. I’ve barely been involved with news media this holiday weekend, and honestly, I don’t need to hear many of the details about this case to know that most of the debate surrounding this case is going to be wrong-headed and futile. After all, a 24-hour news cycle and the constant chattering of the Internet requires that we have something to talk about, especially if the talk allows us to bloviate endlessly about our pet agendas.

Surely Elliot Rodger’s spree shows that we need more gun control. The killer posted video manifestos that seem to have indicated he was a follower of the idiotic “movement” of so-called “Men’s Rights Advocates.” His obvious mental health issues highlight our failure to address mental health as a incredible problem. Or in the case of other killings, he was a conservative, or a right-wing nutjob, or a racist or a terrorist or a religious extremist. He must have listened to heavy metal, or played video games or watched violent movies. Pick one, there’s plenty of shit-flinging to go around and surely in all that fucking noise there has to be one cause we can point to as the solution.

There isn’t A solution. There have to be a number of solutions because the truth of the matter is that if someone is driven to kill multiple people on a spree, then there are multiple long-term contributing factors to this person’s descent into ultraviolent self-immolation. Long-term problems do not have one-fix, one problem solutions. Just in the little I’ve researched on this particular killing unearthed several problems that don’t have easy solutions.

Elliot Rodger, regardless of what particular ideology or agenda he espoused, had long-term mental health issues. Just within the last year, law enforcement had been summoned multiple times for multiple different issues. There were plenty of warnings about this kid even before he reached the age of maturity. And yet law enforcement could not act to get him the help he needed because to their assessment, he did not pose a danger to himself or others. Parse that sentence. Police officers are not mental health professionals, nor should they be expected to be yet the law puts that burden on them. If they see no physical evidence of imminent violence, they have no power to force mental therapy on an individual. Would you want your own mental health being questioned by a police officer with the potential for forcible committal at stake? If you answered no to that question, then you are admitting that the system which places the onus for psychological diagnosis of violent potentiality on rank-and-file police officers is woefully broken.

Similarly, we can try to blame this kid’s parents for not getting him the psychological help required. After all, they were not poor, they had no financial reasons for refusing any kind of treatment. I’d guess they probably got him plenty of treatment of some kind. Did the stigma associated with mental health issues prevent him getting the right help? Were his school’s hands tied with regard to forcing the parent’s to submit the child to the right kind of treatment? We can’t know whether treatment would have helped or not. For children whose parents are not affluent, the chances those kids do not get proper mental treatment for issues is much higher – something our healthcare system is not even remotely prepared to provide. The Affordable Care Act did somethings to address that but we need more comprehensive mental health initiatives than as part of some other initiative.

As for gun control, I have to address that. Say what you will about responsible gun ownership, or that only crazy people kill people with guns, or that he could easily have used a different weapon to kill people, the fact remains that he DID choose a gun to kill. He was crazy and yet the mental health issues that SHOULD HAVE disqualified him from gun ownership DID NOT. Part of that is about the lack of good background checks in the system for gun ownership, and part of it has to do with the above-mentioned mental healthcare system. The system does not track escalating patterns of mental instability, especially when those patterns stretch from adolescence into adulthood. And even if the healthcare system did track it, the law does not allow stringent enough background checks against that history – in most states, I think it only prevents gun ownership if the purchaser has committed a crime. At which point, it’s too goddamn late.

This kid chose a gun to kill with as opposed to some other weapon for one reason. Guns are more efficient at killing than say a knife, baseball bat or tire iron. For a minimum of effort, one killer can achieve maximum damage. That’s not a problem with background checks, that’s a problem with guns itself. That is the entire purpose guns supplanted spears, bows, swords, daggers, halberds and all other forms of melee weapons in military history. Guns are efficient killing machines and thus they are the favored weapon of spree killers. And America revels in providing those efficient instruments of death at every goddamn corner Wal-Mart with little to no consolidated tracking of which members of our population are strapped to the teeth. The existence of guns don’t cause spree killers to kill, that is an absolute truth. It isn’t as if someone with violent desires is going to suddenly become non-violent in the absence of firearms.

It simply means without guns, the body counts are going to be a lot lower and that’s why I continue to advocate the removal of guns from our society. They, and their shitheel enabling cheerleaders at the National Rifle Association are a fucking cancer on our society. Every time Wayne LaPierre utters the words “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he kills more of our collective soul, all in the name of gun manufacturers selling more guns, more ammo and more death.

As for the dangers of ideology, certainly there are ideas more potentially harmful than others. “Men’s rights advocates” are entitled man-children concerned about their diminishing power in society in the same way that old, white rich fucks who espouse anti-immigrant, equal pay or anti-gay policies are afraid of losing their death grip on the idyllic fantasy-land of White America in the 1950’s, when the gays, minorities and women were all kept in their place by systemic oppressive privilege. However, ideas do not kill people. Ideas only provide justification for killing people. In the hands of violent sociopaths or psychopaths, they are rationalizations and inspirations, not causes. That’s not to say ideologies are not dangerous and should not be opposed.

The real dangerous ideologies aren’t the ones that espouse violence overtly. They are the ones that espouse the diminished value of other people who do not follow the particular ideology. Anything that makes another faceless group worth less than the followers of said ideology is the thing that opens the door to violence. Anthrax had a great line in their song One World – “It’s much harder to kill a man, If you’ve seen pictures of his kids.” While that song was about the Cold War and its potential for nuclear holocaust, it’s a concept that fits just as well for any ideology. Violence is easier to commit if the victim is not considered as an individual worthy of respect. The only way to combat ideology of this nature is with critical thinking and a deeply ingrained respect of the lives of all sentient beings.

In the end, we will never stop all spree killings, nor all violence. Man is inherently violent, and life is inherently brutal. Civilization is a man-made structure built to channel man’s innate predilection for violent conquest into the construction of positive things. There are no easy solutions to the problems of violence. Dealing with your pet agenda as if it isn’t only one component in a continuum of problems isn’t a solution. It’s hot air.

 

May 26, 2014 at 6:47 pm | Politics | No comment

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