*I stole this title from my good friend Eddie
The events at Virgina Tech earlier this week are still fresh in my mind. While i am continuing to process the magnitude of what occurred, I'm becoming increasingly incensed at political talking heads using emotionally charged events to advance their political agendas.
You are going to hear a lot about gun control in the coming weeks. In fact, if you check out ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News or any major news outlet you can already find articles and commentary on the subject. Regardless of your feelings on gun control, it has absolutely nothing to do with this sad event. Nothing.
Simply put, while a guns were used, they did not fire themselves. When a drunk driver kills a family of 4 we don't immediately seek a ban on cars. This is just another example of people looking for a government-sponsored pacifier to make them feel better. Or as my buddy Kennt noted "a band-aid" when "we should be looking at the underlying meaning of people committing any violent crime whether it's with a gun or not."
The problem is; we are the problem.
From A Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano
Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."
From What we Know About Mass Murderers and Why They Kill by James Alan Fox
...perpetrators have a long history of frustration and failure and a diminished ability to cope with life's disappointments.
By all accounts, Cho Seung-Hui was a deeply disturbed young man who wrote disjointed diatribes about ''rich kids," ''debauchery" and ''deceitful charlatans" on campus. A young man who stalked women that rejected his advances. A young man who couldn't deal with that rejection.
My buddy Jason said, "A lot of shootings happen because people are scared to take an ass whooping.
If everyone would watch "Friday" the world would be a better place."
He might have quoted Friday, but damn if it isn't on point.
In the age of Helicopter Parenting where Everyone Gets a Trophy and Dodgeball has been outlawed and the Weak Inheriting the Gym, how are kids supposed to learn that they don't always win? That life isn't always fair?
How will they become self-sufficient?
And in the most extreme cases, will their inability to deal with rejection or failure lead to more bloodshed?
Can our dissent into pussidom be stopped or is it too late?
6 comments:
Anything that can bring "gun control" to the forefront is a positive in my book. At this point, America's obviously a violent society and I'd rather take my chances with somebody chasing me with a knife.
In a perfect world, only Jack Bauer would have a gun.
S.T.
Is this more an argument: (a) against gun control or (b) that america is pussified?
Eff guns.
Anonymous #1 - "Anything that can bring "gun control" to the forefront is a positive in my book." Seriously? You are happy that 33 people died so that we can talk about gun control?
Anonymous #2 - It's an argument against people using a damn national tragedy to further their political agenda and an argument for examining the real reasons that stuff like this continues to happen.
Also, in keeping with the theme, there will be no more anonymous postings. Why? Because posting anonymously is pussified.
Anonymous #1 - "Anything that can bring "gun control" to the forefront is a positive in my book." Seriously? You are happy that 33 people died so that we can talk about gun control?
My thoughts exactly.
There's far fewer gun murders, gun mass shootings and gun robbieries in Europe where the gun laws are stricter? Food for thought.
I wish it was the case that America is becoming increasingly pussified. Women are statistically less violent, which is not to say that women are inherently less violent. But for some reason, we rarely hear about women going on killing rampages. Why are men more violent? Some of it is biology, but women are certainly capable of committing heinous crimes, like Susan Smith who murdered her own kids. So why are men more violent than women?
I think that this guy was small, Asian, and from what I could tell, spoke with a lisp. He doesn't exactly fit into our definition of manly. I think he tried to compensate for these things by intimidating women and scaring his classmates and professors with violent fiction stories. The massacre was, in part, the culmination of all of his frustrations along with lots of other factors (like mental illness). I think part of what happened can be explained by our narrow definitions of what it means to be a man.
I definitely agree with yall that this guy thought he was entitled to certain things and he used fear and intimidation to get (what he thought was) respect. Stalking is all about power and control and the shootings were obviously about the same thing.
To be fair, the politicization of school shootings comes from both sides. I think it was Heston who said that if the kids at Columbine had guns, then that tragedy would have never happened.
You do have to wonder what kind of law would allow a mentally ill person to buy a gun.
Trish
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