So we’re two weeks out from the latest gun massacre, and we’ve heard a lot about how to quell the next one.
“Improve the mental health system.” No one would argue that.
“Add more security to schools.” Depending on how that’s defined, there’s popular support for it.
“Look at our toxic pop culture and its effects on some.” We need to do something there. Well, some defenders of violent video games and movies use the same defense that some anti-gun regulation folks use: Why should all of us be punished for the actions of a few?
“Tighten some gun regulations.” The third rail.
Let’s take each suggestion separately.
Yes, our mental health system needs to be better in identifying and helping those who need that help.
In Arizona, however, over the last few years we’ve cut the mental health care budget, leaving thousands without the critical care they need. And the result? Schizophrenics go about their business with no support or in some cases even medication. And our hospitals have become the intake for those in critical need.
Not exactly encouraging.
Worse, all too often, the shooters are identified as mentally disturbed only after their horrific crimes. As many have pointed out, how do we peer into the minds of madmen who hide that madness? Families of the disturbed are often unwilling or unable or don’t know how to help their sons or spouses, leaving those disturbed to fend for themselves, their families living in fear or ignorance.
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA believes we should have armed security in every school, with the NRA even finding and training volunteers. Others have called for every school to have an armed police officer stationed there.
Many would agree with the latter idea, that a uniformed officer trained in dealing with madmen intent on indiscriminate killing might deter that or at least diminish the carnage.
But staffing our schools comes with a cost. And guess what? So far, few of our state legislators seem enthusiastic about finding the money to put officers in schools.
Two legislative leaders, House Speaker Andy Tobin and House Appropriations Chair John Kavanagh argue that the state doesn’t have the money to do the job. And the state cut existing funding for school resource officers in half over the last two years.
As to the toxic culture we live in, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late senator and writer, once penned an essay entitled “Defining Deviancy Down.” In it, he argues that our culture relies on shock, that shock sells but has a short shelf life, that we become numb to the shock, so to sell the pop culture, often its creators will continue to “define deviancy down,” resulting in a spiral of ever cruder culture, all designed to shock us and sell product.
And so video games, for example, now feature single-shooter games where the graphics are realistic and the games even bloodier and deadlier.
Does that mean we create a culture of mass murderers? Of course not. But could the constant immersion in those games leave the mentally unhinged eager to act the shooting out in real life? Possibly.
But defenders of that defining deviancy down fall back on the First Amendment right of free speech, regardless of how irresponsible that speech might be. And so we’re left with Moynihan’s essay’s essential truth, that our culture continues its chase of the crass.
And, last, the idea of doing something about gun regulations. Some like LaPierre have noted that the last time an attempt to regulate semi-automatic weapons, the bans were ineffective because of all the loopholes. Which is true. But those loopholes were thanks to LaPierre himself, who lobbied heavily for those loopholes when the legislation was being considered in the early 1990s. The ban didn’t work because LaPierre and Co. made sure it wouldn’t work.
But can’t we all agree that gun dealers at gun shows, even the private ones, must perform background checks on buyers? Can’t we all agree that large clips or magazines should be eliminated? The shooter in the Aurora movie theater had a 100-round barrel magazine on his semiautomatic rifle. The only reason there weren’t even more deaths there came only because that magazine jammed.
Some argue that making the clips smaller only means that the shooter has to change out the clips or magazines more often. But wasn’t that the moment that the Tucson murderer was taken down by civilians, the time when he was trying to change out his gun clip?
But LaPierre and others seemingly won’t even entertain the most modest of reforms, claiming that this is part of the “they want to take our guns from us” movement. This is laughable. If anything, we’ve become even more lenient in our gun laws. One only has to look at Arizona for evidence of that. But even the Bane of Guns, President Obama, has done nothing to restrain guns. In fact, the only legislation he’s signed into law has been to widen gun use, to allow guns in national parks and on the Amtrak system. Ironically, Obama has expanded the rights of gun owners.
Nevertheless, the paranoid among us, urged on by some right wing commentators and the scare tactics of the NRA, are adamant in their fear of Obama. And so are equally adamant in fighting any — any -— new gun regulation. These folks believe that any new regulation is just the first step on a slippery slope of gun confiscation. And LaPierre has been successful in fueling that fear. And gun dealers have profited from that fear.
So here we are, two weeks out from the deaths of 27 innocent people and we wonder if anything will happen. Oh, sure, commissions will be commissioned, reports will be reported, serious discussions will be discussed. But it will take the persistent effort of courageous politicians and others to actually achieve something meaningful before those little kids’ murders fade from our memory and we return to “normal.”
Slabside posted at 8:06 pm on Thu, Dec 27, 2012.
Well said samkat.
IceCat posted at 7:07 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
SamKat wrote: fact vehicles account for more deaths than guns do each year
Here in Arizona and nine other states there are more deaths by firearms than auto accidents.
Alaska: 104 gun deaths, 84 motor vehicle deaths
Arizona: 856 gun deaths, 809 motor vehicle deaths
Colorado: 583 gun deaths, 565 motor vehicle deaths
Indiana: 735 gun deaths, 715 motor vehicle deaths
Michigan: 1,095 gun deaths, 977 motor vehicle deaths
Nevada: 406 gun deaths, 255 motor vehicle deaths
Oregon: 417 gun deaths, 394 motor vehicle deaths
Utah: 260 gun deaths, 256 motor vehicle deaths
Virginia: 836 gun deaths, 827 motor vehicle deaths
Washington: 623 gun deaths, 580 motor vehicle deaths
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015.html
While motor-vehicle deaths dropped 22 percent from 2005 to 2010, gun fatalities are rising again after a low point in 2000, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shooting deaths in 2015 will probably rise to almost 33,000, and those related to autos will decline to about 32,000, based on the 10-year average trend.
As the nation reels from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the shift shows the effects of public policy, said Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.
The fall in traffic deaths resulted from safer vehicles, restricted privileges for young drivers and seat-belt and other laws, he said. By contrast, “we’ve made policy decisions that have had the impact of making the widest array of firearms available to the widest array of people under the widest array of conditions.” While fewer households have guns, people who own guns are buying more of them, he said.
Rich posted at 7:40 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
You are not going to stop such things a Newtown, government can't and laws and bans are just counterproductive, the killing fields they create encouraging rather than acting as a deterrent. The average man can cut it down a bit by taking the responsibility into his own hands. Nothing else will work. Banning things, gun free zones are the problem, not the solution. Banning creates an underground market you can't control at all, gun free zones become killing fields.
It appears that Mike is simply afraid of guns, so he tries to justify that with counter productive measures that kill.
The United States is not an exceptionally violent place. The murder rate is 4.2 per 100,000, the world averages 6.9. If guns are to blame, how is it the world's largest gun ownership falls well below the average in violence? Yes, things like Newtown are horrible, but allowing Mike, and other cowards to destroy your society and turn your schools into killing fields because they are over sensationalized by the press doesn't make sense.
Slabside posted at 9:25 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
I find it amusing icecat failed to include Illinois stats.
onepercent posted at 9:35 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
@ IceCat - Care to disclose where you obtained those numbers? Of course not, because then you would have to admit that 71% of those "gun-related deaths" were suicides. This is from a New Times artilce entitled "Arizona had More "Gun Deaths" Than Vehicle Deaths in 2009, Says Anti-Gun Group; Omits Fact That 71 % Were Suicides":
"Slate, an online magazine, and the Tucson Weekly recently published articles that claim Arizona's "gun death" rate now exceeds the rate of vehicle deaths.
The articles, spurred by the Newtown shooting, were based on a May report by the anti-gun Violence Policy Center in Washington D.C., which lists Arizona as the No. 2 state in this gruesome comparison.
Neither the VPC nor the two publications mention the word "suicide," (okay, except for a brief mention of "murder-suicide" in the Slate article). Yet suicides are a major factor in the VPC's research, even if no one wants to talk about it.
Using statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the VPC notes that Arizona had 856 "gun deaths" in 2009. Looking at the rate per 100,000 people, "gun deaths" exceeded motor vehicle deaths that year.
But the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control statistics also show that in 2009, Arizona had 605 suicides by firearm.
That's a whopping 71 percent of the total of so-called "gun deaths.""
sockratties posted at 9:38 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
Trying to muddy the discussion of guns and violence by confusing it with the slaughter on our highways is ludicrous. Parallels between the two issues are antidotal and unproductive. It’s like saying “heart disease kills more people than cancer so why should we try to cure cancer.”
If we want to discuss gun violence, let’s discuss gun violence. There are endless ways to illustrate that humans, usually men, are violent when unrestrained by law, license, morality, fear, common sense or belief. If the violence itself cannot be controlled then we need to find a way to control the action. That is the practical discussion. Posturing and conjecture won’t solve the problem or our legislature would have solved it long ago.
Cincinnatus posted at 10:55 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
How utterly curious. Here's a sterling metaphor for where the country is today.
I responded to a post by Rich and it disappeared. I couldn't figure out why until as an experiment I clicked on the report button on one of SamKat's posts I didn't particularly care for and it disappeared. Apparently all of us are returned to a state of nature where we can make each others opinions disappear by hitting a button. For the RIght the button is FOX News and Rush and for the Left it's CNBC. No wonder we can't get anything done.
valleynative posted at 11:01 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
The overwhelming majority of gun deaths involve neither rifles nor large magazines. Banning them in response to newsworthy tragedy is nothing more than a ploy to make the ignorant public feel like the government is doing something to protect them.
The Ft. Hood shooter was able to change magazines many times without being tackled by any of the trained soldiers in the area. The Tucson shooter was, fortunately, spectacularly incompetent in his choice of ammo, magazine, weapon and tactics. Legislation to protect us only from the most incompetent criminals goes beyond the concept of "low-hanging fruit" to picking up rotting fruit from the ground.
WesternConnections posted at 11:05 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
Teachers choose this profession out of passion; they’re not expecting to get rich. Support staffers are equally motivated and drawn to work in education for rewards other than money. These employees all truly are "in it" for the kids: teachers, nurses, social workers, speech pathologists, librarians, building managers, custodians, cafeteria workers … They all deserve respect and support. When we quit bashing teachers, we might find the time to listen to them.
Most discussions about education today ignore teachers and their expertise, supplanting their knowledge and experience with the latest fad promoted by vendors with profit on their minds and acolytes spouting the latest "research based" edu-speak.
We hope the national conversation about education will change from bashing teachers to finally recognizing that teachers are the single indispensible element in our schools. One of our goals is to change the conversation in Gilbert Public Schools to do exactly that. http://westieconnect.com/ http://westernconnections.com/
Cincinnatus posted at 11:25 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
My last should have read MSNBC not CNBC
Cincinnatus posted at 11:25 am on Fri, Dec 28, 2012.
My last should have read MSNBC not CNBC
doctoralstudent posted at 12:16 am on Mon, Dec 31, 2012.
“fact vehicles account for more deaths than guns do each year”
The numbers cited are put forth using multiple logical fallacies. As presented, the numbers are non-comparative and end up being nonsensical to logical study.
One example is that for the people that the list includes some people that were in need at the time to be shot. A law enforcement officer that is justifiably shooting a bank robber or a lady that is justifiably shooting a rapist are included in such numbers.
Likewise with suicides as multiple peer-reviewed scholarly works show that the methodology for suicide is not a deciding factor.
Compared to deaths by automobiles, the number in our current society is extremely few that would be considered justified.
Using the presented car/gun/total-numbers methodology one could claim most anything such as the score of tonight's game having a score of 40 points. But without breaking it down that the 49ers scored 27 and the Cards 13, simply adding up the scores in total is a logical fallacy.
Attempting to use such numbers like this for controlling gun owners is either an incompetent attempt at logic or an attempt at lying to people.
doctoralstudent posted at 12:28 am on Mon, Dec 31, 2012.
I'm quite disappointed with Mr. McClellan's article and the high rate of factual fallacies and logical fallacies.
The article makes use of multiple buzz-words, however, in the context they are presented, they make for nonsensical gibberish.
By comparison, Ralph Nadar's work “Unsafe at Any Speed” would have been a laughing stock had Nadar claimed that the Corvair's “tire-connector stuff” needed “lots of bars” so that the “car-turney-handle-wheel” moved the car over. But no, Nadar became familiar with the dynamics of the subject and accurately described the geometry of the swing-axle suspension and lack of anti-roll bars. Even if Nadar claimed the Corvair had “solid axle” suspension and other factual mistakes, Nadar wouldn't have had the impact he had even though “solid-axle” is a type of suspension, but was never on the Corvair and therefore was simply not applicable.
In order to have a logical discussion, it is important to be able to give a passing description of the subject matter, the dynamics of what is actually occurring, and then apply logical thinking toward such premises.
The article above builds up multiple factual fallacies, then makes use of logical fallacies.
The concepts presented in the above article are unsupported.
JMJ posted at 8:26 am on Mon, Dec 31, 2012.
As usual the eddies of tangential argument detract from the original message presented. Courage is needed for meaningful change. Instead of posturing with meaningless proofs of how superior one's intelligence seems to be to valid points, solutions need be sought. The one-up-man-ship of commentary continues, yet the problems remain. When it comes to mental health, our state is probably 200th out of 50 [I exaggerate, but it's close...]. When it comes to any funding for education, we are 47th out of 50. Now, Horne wants to arm principals [who are incredibly intellectually disarmed as we speak] on the cheap to defend their schools. The first thing the ones I know would do is install bullet-proof glass in their offices and an impenetrable steel door, supply themselves with enough food for a week, and hunker down. Courage is not the forte of people who are in these positions, contrary to the Sandy Hook staff who faced off with the madman.
Logic? In Arizona? Really?
TempeTownToilet posted at 5:28 pm on Mon, Dec 31, 2012.
The Second Amendment wasn't created to give the people the right to go target shooting or rabbit hunting.
The Second Amendment was create to give the people the right to overthrow a tyrannical government.
If the people are going to succeed in overthrowing government tyrants they need the same weapons the government has.
In 1776 that meant flintlock rifles, swords and cannons.
In 2013 that means machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, bombs and tanks.
The Second Amendment wasn't created to give the people the right to kill defenseless unarmed children.
The Second Amendment was created to give the people the right to kill well armed government tyrants.
DonMey posted at 12:33 pm on Thu, Jan 3, 2013.
Just look at the NY newspaper that is printing the addresses of all gun owners. What did they do when they felt threatened? They hired armed guards to protect them. Talk about IRONY! (side note: The paper is owned by Gannett, the same company that runs Arizona Republic)
Just like the NRA said: The best way to stop an armed "bad guy" is with an armed 'good guy".