In the wake of two more mass shootings in the US yesterday there is more of the same type of reactions--lots of anger, lots of sadness and much frustration that nothing is being done to curb this horrible reality in which we now live, while at the same time demands from others of "what should we do" And the responses always seem to fall along two lines: more gun control (and possibly also control of ammunition sales), something which I wholeheartedly support and feel will have the fastest impact if enacted; and better mental health care, which I also strongly support, though I feel it has much less to do with most of out gun violence than we want to think.
I want to talk about a couple of the other factors which I really cannot recall seeing coming up in conversations about rising mass shootings in our country (which does not mean I claim these ideas are unique to me, only that I do not see them explored in the reading I do--and I am the first to admit that I often need to stop looking at coverage of violence; I simply cannot take it).
As a parent and a teacher, something I have seen often through the years is that mother or father who parents via control and controls through fear. Parents who do not teach their children to think for themselves, have compassion, and figure out the right thing to do----but instead teach their kids to adhere blindly to the rules and any misstep is punished, often rather severely compared to the scope of the infraction. Theses are the people who remove a bedroom door and take all electronics and fun items from a 12 year old who fails to do their chores. Some kids react to this type of thing by quietly dealing until they are old enough to get away, some become depressed, but a significant number, seeing they have nothing else to lose and are already basically seen as "bad kids" react by doing things to earn that punishment that they will face no matter what. It can't get much worse than the punishment for not doing chores, so they might as well set the garage on fire if they will endure the same thing---feel like they did something to earn it. These kids seem to almost make it a mission to live up to their parent's view of them little delinquents just waiting to act up.
I see the same sort of thing playing out on a societal scale in the US in the past decade or so. With mandatory sentencing laws, zero tolerance policies in schools, etc we have seen a massive shift in my lifetime in how misconduct is treated in the US. From a young age, kids now hear that even minor mistakes can "ruin their lives" This phrase is no longer the over dramatic whine of a hormonal teen--it is often told to the teen by a parent, teacher, administrator, etc. And while sometimes what we are telling our youth is a myth (really it will not "ruin your life" if you are not admitted to a top tier university, a handful of mediocre grades and no AP courses does not, in fact doom one to a life of working at 7-11 for a non living wage) at other times that is downright true---far too often people languish in jail for decades over a minor drug offense (and are unemployable afterwards thanks to having a record), or listed as sexual predators for dating a someone two years younger in a fully consensual relationship, are kicked out of school based on one incident of stupidity with an otherwise good record, etc.
In short, instead of allowing people to suffer reasonable consequences, learn from their mistakes and then move on; our culture has increasingly become such that people are afraid to make ANY mistake and the consequences for so doing can be dire----I truly feel this leads both to the often remarked upon tendency to not own up and take responsibility, and to violent and angry reactions from those who feel they "can't win" so might as well "go out with a bang" and have had plenty of time to build up resentment towards a system which must feel rigged from the get go, given that humans DO make mistakes--it is simply a part of being human.
I think there is a LOT we can do to change this which will have a long term positive effect including a long term effect of reducing the number of mass shootings and other senseless violence in our country. I'd love to see us all work on stopping the for profit prison system, work on changing laws (especially mandatory sentencing) to have more reasonable consequences for non violent crimes, work on being sure crimes are prosecuted and sentenced fairly across economic and racial lines (it should not be that a rich white kid can expect a slap on the wrist for the same thing a poor black kid could spend two decades in prison for): Likewise, we should all be pushing our schools to have reasonable punishments, (no zero tolerance, no jump from doing virtually nothing to expelling students with little in between) and also to be fair across racial and economic lines (none of this stuff where the child whose family can afford to pay for repairs receives no additional punishment but the child whose family cannot is in detention and ISS for weeks--when both did the same thing at the same time in the same school, etc). And all of us can make a conscious effort not to repeat the rhetoric: not to continually tell our children that one poor grade will destroy their future, not to hold one misstep against someone for years, etc.
The second societal change which I think is contributing to this horrible phenomena of the mass shooting becoming commonplace is an increasing acceptance and even sanction of normal people viewing themselves as judge, jury and even executioner.
We see this playout almost weekly in nonlethal but often still life altering ways on facebook, twitter or other social media. Someone tweets a joke that is misconstrued as racist rather than sarcastic and within hours tens of thousands of people who had previously never heard of the person who tweeted are commenting, criticizing, and demanding the tweeter be fired. There is a short film of what appears to be a police officer abusing power; only a small percentage of posters call for an investigation into the department as a whole, training and standard procedures and how those might play into the issue, and only a few more call for there to be a full review of the officer and their history with the department---meanwhile many thousands call for the officer to be fired immediately (and for balance, some in between number insist that the officer must be in the right no matter what video and audio show). Word gets out that a dentist is a big game hunter and has killed a much loved lion, possibly illegally; in a matter of hours the vitriol in posts has gotten so bad that the dentist must close his office (affecting not only himself but his employees and patients) and he and his family must go into hiding due to threats on their lives. And on and on it goes.
Demands for people to be fired for things they say and do when not on the clock, which in no way affect their job have become common place--and often companies cave to these demands and those making the demands sit smugly behind their keyboards and feel that they have done something good by destroying a career or worse based on a mere snippet of information.
That is the just the tip of the iceberg though, the less dangerous version of this vigilante mentality which has a dangerous grip on our society and seems to be strengthening. The bigger danger, and at the root of this mentality are a rash of laws along the lines of Colorado's Concealed Carry Act, which require public owned places, including universities to allow those with permits to carry their guns (CU refused to comply for a number of years and when forced to, an argument made by sherrifs in the suit was that law enforcement cannot be everywhere, and they need people with carry permits to be armed to help keep people safe -- which pretty much amounts to law enforcement personnel telling the greater public to see themselves as capable of taking the law into their own hands, in a very real and life ending way) and the so called "Make My Day" laws are similar in that they encourage ordinary people to see themselves as legitimate law enforcers. Even the colloquial name glorifies the image of being allowed to legally shoot trespassers as some sort of fun, cowboy role.
Again, there is quite a lot we can do abut this. As individuals, simply refusing to engage in online witch hunts and being the voice of reason who suggests being able to express a dislike of an attitude or action without demanding terminations, etc is an easy way to start. Repealing laws that encourage or sanction citizens shooting one another in anything short of extreme life threatening situations would be helpful too.
None of the above is to take away from the need for gun control legislation, including licensing requirements, a database to track gun and ammunition purchases and flag those buying large numbers (and/or limits), etc--but I think they are crucial pieces of the puzzle that ought to be discussed and dealt with as well.
This was a long and rambling post--if you stuck it out to the end, thank you.
--Hadley
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