Sarcasm and Facts: The Bane of Sound Bite Activists Everywhere
Over the past 12
months or so our country has seen several horrific tragedies, the kinds
of tragedies which spurn people to action, looking for solutions and
ways to prevent such tragedies from ever happening again.
Indeed, it is good to see our society is not ambivalent about evil coming to our world. The movie theater killings in Denver and the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School are certainly the most public of them, but there have been many episodes where the public wanted to cry out in sadness and then spurn into action to prevent such horrific things from ever happening again. We also look for reasons, explanations, something which might make sense of it maybe, and lastly we look to assign blame and responsibility somewhere.
In October 2006, another murderous nutjob killed 5 innocent Amish schoolgirls between the ages of 6-13. You may even recall hearing about it as well. What you might not recall, since our national attention span is something just a whisker above that of a gnat, is the conclusion the investigation revealed as to why it happened. Apparently the child murdering deviant did it because he had been daydreaming of molesting young girls. Yes, before you ask, he used firearms. Another fact of this case you may not realize is this: all of the weapons he used in his attack would still have been 100% legal in the event of an assault weapons ban AND a ban on large ammunition clips. So, absolutely nothing which has been proposed in Congress or talked about on Capitol Hill regarding gun control would have done anything to prevent the tragedy from happening. The facts about the case are readily available online and not in dispute.
Why do I bring it up? So people can remind themselves to think before they act on policies which may or may not actually solve the problems they are being sold as resolving.
This is not going to be a long blog about gun control, per se. No, rather I am writing about the interesting reactions to the events and how often I see so many people focusing their attention in the wrong direction. It is human nature to look for a way to prevent such tragedy from occurring again. These murders in particular and many other public killings drive us to do more in trying to preclude them.
The events at Fort Hood, the crazy, murdering ex-cop in LA, and the like leave us wanting justice, a desire for making such tragedies a thing of the past, or at the very least, far less likely to occur, and thus they hope people will take steps taken to address those concerns. But when the victims are children, whether we like to admit it or not, it wounds the very fabric of our soul with a profound sadness which demands we attend to trying to ensure no child ever has to face such a fate ever again. And that sincere emotional response tends to push logic to the side and allow emotion to seriously cloud our thinking.
After all, our sensibilities and emotions demand we place blame somewhere and we must make every effort to ensure those responsible are made to pay, and bold steps must be taken to ensure it never happens again. The term righteous indignation comes to mind.
Yet, despite it all, the blame and responsibility for these two recent mass killings amazingly does not seem to fall on the people who committed these horrific acts. Nearly all of the media attention, legislative action and public debate has been directed at the instruments the killers chose to employ, the industries which created those instruments, the corporations who serve that industry, and countless other faceless entities even loosely associated with such things. We seem to want to blame faceless "things" and not the people who actually commit the acts. Maybe it is because the killers are all dead now and we can't enact justice upon them anymore? I don't think so, I think the issue lies deeper.
Why can't those looking for a way to prevent such killings again see the rather obvious shared trait by all three murderers: their serious mental health issues? I have yet to see a single politician looking to hold hearings on the failings of our mental health system in this country, or anyone talking about how to address that problem and fix it. It will not be an easy solution, it doesn't give rise to nice protest signs, rallies and sound bites on TV about how much you care. I don't possess the answers to it all either, I am merely pointing out what seems to be an huge part of the problem and the fact that nobody seems to be addressing it at all. Why is that?
Did you know in China, between March 2010 and December 2012, there were no less than 6 attacks on school children by men using knives, hammers, cleavers, axes and even box cutters to kill over 25 kids and injure another 115. You can look it up.
If we are to employ the modern in vogue American approach to solving this problem, we need to ban cutlery and certain hardware. We need to threaten to close down Ace Hardware, True Value stores, Home Depot, Lowes and God help the Ginsu knife folks. We probably need to ban knives longer than 4". Cordless power drills should probably go too.
Sarcasm is truly an under-appreciated tool. Hopefully it is helping to shed some light on some of these silly suggestions for trying to prevent these kinds of tragedies in the future, and maybe getting some folks to work a little harder to find a solution which may actually work in helping to prevent another Sandy Hook. Indeed, why are we so easily drawn to these "sound bite simple" solutions being proposed by elected officials today? Are we looking to truly solve problems, or just feel better about the notion we did "something" to try and stop the next Columbine?
Before you answer that, let me just bring up one more interesting fact of note. In 2011, there were 9,878 deaths caused by drunk drivers, by contrast less than 1000 people have died from mass shootings in the past seven years (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/1937041/). Of course, even though nearly 80 (yes EIGHTY) times more people, including children and grandchildren, are killed every year by drunk drivers, we don't seem to care as much as a society about working to solve that problem. I have to wonder: why is that?
Honestly, I am surprised we don't see the politically motivated to impose their values on everyone crowd blaming the automobile manufacturers, the distilleries, the breweries, the restaurants, and stores who sell alcoholic beverages. I guess I should not use sarcasm here, after all Mayor Bloomberg might be planning new legislation to limit cans of beer and other adult beverages to being sold only in 12 ounce containers or less, certainly drinkers will never have more than one. Maybe some aspiring big-name lawmaker will start banning vehicles which can carry over 1000 pounds of cargo and passengers from our roadways. One thing is certain, you won't see them point to the people who broke the law and drove while intoxicated as the real problem, there is no cause to be had there.
Maybe we should institute background checks for drinkers? Think of the jobs that program could create. A whole new government department could be created.
Listen, I know this blog won't change many minds, but my intent is to just get people, maybe a few, to think about the many various things being proposed, and to perhaps analyze whether or not it will really do anything to solve the problem, or if it just seems to "sound good" and make you feel like you did something.
If we are being honest here, unless you have the power to make ALL guns disappear, at once; or really the power to wipe out all evil in the world at once, all of our solutions will likely leave us wanting in the end. So, hopefully we can work to find solutions which can be implemented, which can actually have a reasonable chance of success and will result in an actual reduction in the number of such killings. Teachers carrying assault rifles won't help, neither will forcing every single public school, building and area to be a 100% gun free zone.
Maybe we start with universal background checks? Allow licensed, trained and responsible teachers or staff to carry? Maybe have an office at every public school where law enforcement can come to do work whenever they like during school hours? There are many ideas out there besides wishing bad guys would obey gun restrictions. I would suggest if you really want to know more about various gun laws and restrictions, go read up on cities like Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York where the gun restrictions are the harshest and yet murder rates run rampant, especially from those illegal guns. Go check the statistics in places where they might have a different approach.
George Carlin, I do miss you. I am sure you would offer an interesting take on the issue and make me think a little at least. If anyone else actually reads this, I thank you for taking the time to do so, and hope it may motivate you to ponder the many varied proposals being made so rashly today, and decide for yourself if they will actually solve the problems at hand.
Indeed, it is good to see our society is not ambivalent about evil coming to our world. The movie theater killings in Denver and the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School are certainly the most public of them, but there have been many episodes where the public wanted to cry out in sadness and then spurn into action to prevent such horrific things from ever happening again. We also look for reasons, explanations, something which might make sense of it maybe, and lastly we look to assign blame and responsibility somewhere.
In October 2006, another murderous nutjob killed 5 innocent Amish schoolgirls between the ages of 6-13. You may even recall hearing about it as well. What you might not recall, since our national attention span is something just a whisker above that of a gnat, is the conclusion the investigation revealed as to why it happened. Apparently the child murdering deviant did it because he had been daydreaming of molesting young girls. Yes, before you ask, he used firearms. Another fact of this case you may not realize is this: all of the weapons he used in his attack would still have been 100% legal in the event of an assault weapons ban AND a ban on large ammunition clips. So, absolutely nothing which has been proposed in Congress or talked about on Capitol Hill regarding gun control would have done anything to prevent the tragedy from happening. The facts about the case are readily available online and not in dispute.
Why do I bring it up? So people can remind themselves to think before they act on policies which may or may not actually solve the problems they are being sold as resolving.
This is not going to be a long blog about gun control, per se. No, rather I am writing about the interesting reactions to the events and how often I see so many people focusing their attention in the wrong direction. It is human nature to look for a way to prevent such tragedy from occurring again. These murders in particular and many other public killings drive us to do more in trying to preclude them.
The events at Fort Hood, the crazy, murdering ex-cop in LA, and the like leave us wanting justice, a desire for making such tragedies a thing of the past, or at the very least, far less likely to occur, and thus they hope people will take steps taken to address those concerns. But when the victims are children, whether we like to admit it or not, it wounds the very fabric of our soul with a profound sadness which demands we attend to trying to ensure no child ever has to face such a fate ever again. And that sincere emotional response tends to push logic to the side and allow emotion to seriously cloud our thinking.
After all, our sensibilities and emotions demand we place blame somewhere and we must make every effort to ensure those responsible are made to pay, and bold steps must be taken to ensure it never happens again. The term righteous indignation comes to mind.
Yet, despite it all, the blame and responsibility for these two recent mass killings amazingly does not seem to fall on the people who committed these horrific acts. Nearly all of the media attention, legislative action and public debate has been directed at the instruments the killers chose to employ, the industries which created those instruments, the corporations who serve that industry, and countless other faceless entities even loosely associated with such things. We seem to want to blame faceless "things" and not the people who actually commit the acts. Maybe it is because the killers are all dead now and we can't enact justice upon them anymore? I don't think so, I think the issue lies deeper.
Why can't those looking for a way to prevent such killings again see the rather obvious shared trait by all three murderers: their serious mental health issues? I have yet to see a single politician looking to hold hearings on the failings of our mental health system in this country, or anyone talking about how to address that problem and fix it. It will not be an easy solution, it doesn't give rise to nice protest signs, rallies and sound bites on TV about how much you care. I don't possess the answers to it all either, I am merely pointing out what seems to be an huge part of the problem and the fact that nobody seems to be addressing it at all. Why is that?
Did you know in China, between March 2010 and December 2012, there were no less than 6 attacks on school children by men using knives, hammers, cleavers, axes and even box cutters to kill over 25 kids and injure another 115. You can look it up.
If we are to employ the modern in vogue American approach to solving this problem, we need to ban cutlery and certain hardware. We need to threaten to close down Ace Hardware, True Value stores, Home Depot, Lowes and God help the Ginsu knife folks. We probably need to ban knives longer than 4". Cordless power drills should probably go too.
Sarcasm is truly an under-appreciated tool. Hopefully it is helping to shed some light on some of these silly suggestions for trying to prevent these kinds of tragedies in the future, and maybe getting some folks to work a little harder to find a solution which may actually work in helping to prevent another Sandy Hook. Indeed, why are we so easily drawn to these "sound bite simple" solutions being proposed by elected officials today? Are we looking to truly solve problems, or just feel better about the notion we did "something" to try and stop the next Columbine?
Before you answer that, let me just bring up one more interesting fact of note. In 2011, there were 9,878 deaths caused by drunk drivers, by contrast less than 1000 people have died from mass shootings in the past seven years (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/1937041/). Of course, even though nearly 80 (yes EIGHTY) times more people, including children and grandchildren, are killed every year by drunk drivers, we don't seem to care as much as a society about working to solve that problem. I have to wonder: why is that?
Honestly, I am surprised we don't see the politically motivated to impose their values on everyone crowd blaming the automobile manufacturers, the distilleries, the breweries, the restaurants, and stores who sell alcoholic beverages. I guess I should not use sarcasm here, after all Mayor Bloomberg might be planning new legislation to limit cans of beer and other adult beverages to being sold only in 12 ounce containers or less, certainly drinkers will never have more than one. Maybe some aspiring big-name lawmaker will start banning vehicles which can carry over 1000 pounds of cargo and passengers from our roadways. One thing is certain, you won't see them point to the people who broke the law and drove while intoxicated as the real problem, there is no cause to be had there.
Maybe we should institute background checks for drinkers? Think of the jobs that program could create. A whole new government department could be created.
Listen, I know this blog won't change many minds, but my intent is to just get people, maybe a few, to think about the many various things being proposed, and to perhaps analyze whether or not it will really do anything to solve the problem, or if it just seems to "sound good" and make you feel like you did something.
If we are being honest here, unless you have the power to make ALL guns disappear, at once; or really the power to wipe out all evil in the world at once, all of our solutions will likely leave us wanting in the end. So, hopefully we can work to find solutions which can be implemented, which can actually have a reasonable chance of success and will result in an actual reduction in the number of such killings. Teachers carrying assault rifles won't help, neither will forcing every single public school, building and area to be a 100% gun free zone.
Maybe we start with universal background checks? Allow licensed, trained and responsible teachers or staff to carry? Maybe have an office at every public school where law enforcement can come to do work whenever they like during school hours? There are many ideas out there besides wishing bad guys would obey gun restrictions. I would suggest if you really want to know more about various gun laws and restrictions, go read up on cities like Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York where the gun restrictions are the harshest and yet murder rates run rampant, especially from those illegal guns. Go check the statistics in places where they might have a different approach.
George Carlin, I do miss you. I am sure you would offer an interesting take on the issue and make me think a little at least. If anyone else actually reads this, I thank you for taking the time to do so, and hope it may motivate you to ponder the many varied proposals being made so rashly today, and decide for yourself if they will actually solve the problems at hand.
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