“The
shooter wore a ballistic helmet, ballistic vest, ballistic leggings, a throat
protector, a groin protector, gloves and a gas mask, all black. Police say the
gunman killed at least 12 people and left 58 others injured, many critically
with gunshot wounds, before surrendering meekly when police confronted him at
his car behind the theater.” http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018737426_shootingsuspect21.html
We choose this.
The man dyed his hair red in
an attempt to impersonate “the Joker” and gunned down a crowded movie theater
with weapons designed to kill humans. These weapons were purchased legally in Colorado in the weeks
before his terrorist event.
We choose this.
Though we may (we must!) legitimately
argue that the young man made a poor choice – an illegal choice, we must also acknowledge that the young Mr.
Holmes utilized his assault weapons according to their engineered purpose. He
terminated crowds of humans with them.
We choose this.
In the name of “Freedom” – of
speech and of the right to bear arms, we fiercely choose to enable Mr. Holmes
and others like him to exercise their freedom on us.
Freedom of speech enables a withering desensitization of the media-attached mind through
perpetual cinema violence in which thousands of murders and attempted murders
occur before the eyes of developing teen-age minds on television and movies.
The developing teen-age mind crystallizes these scenes into part of the
framework through which the young man will solve his own frustrations and
conflicts. Lethal violence becomes a familiar, comfortable option for human
interaction.
Add to cinema violence the
interactive, first-hand combat practice in many of today’s video games and the
already crystallized framework of ethically muted violence in the aforesaid
developing mind gains split-second, real-time kinesthetic refinement. If your
home is not unusual, mass murder is practiced
and polished on your son’s X-Box as
often as he plays. Watch him.
We choose this.
Violent scenes on-screen
shape our “story” of how life works. Violent scenes we practice with the latest technologies quicken our practice of this
story. Add an Ipod full of angry lyrics to bridge the “down time” between
screens and we create an almost seamless virtual “boot camp” for annoyed,
American domestic terrorism.
We choose this.
Freedom to bear arms enables both the safety-conscious elk hunter and the
desensitized, carefully practiced, internally hemorrhaging angry young man to
make purchases at a Colorado
gun shop. The careful elk hunter purchases a rifle designed to kill an elk with
a single shot and feed his family for a year. The angry young terrorist
purchases a handgun, shotgun and assault rifle designed to kill and wound a crowd
of humans with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The elk hunter goes elk
hunting; the human hunter goes human hunting.
We choose this.
Through a toxic cocktail of
media school, video game boot camp and weapons availability we functionally
endorse the mass murder events that keep splashing our neighbor’s lives
across headlines- and it is very profitable.
This cycle of violence profits
the movie industry, the television industry, the video game industry and the
weapons industry on it’s first turn; then profits the American news media as
the violent stories unfold, along with American health care, pharmaceutical and
insurance companies, who all subsequently participate. Violence generates
volume and sales across multiple industries in our capitalist system. Make no
mistake, mass violence is very profitable for strong sectors of the American
economy.
It’s just not profitable for
you and me.
We choose this.
In the name of “Freedom,” we
choose this way of living. But other first world, civilized nations with
“Freedom” have different outcomes. Northern Europe and Canada do not
suffer the same “American” regularity of lethal violence that we have come to
expect here at home. Perhaps it’s time we wonder why this is true? I suggest
one significant factor: Other civilized, “free” nations issue assault weapons and
handguns. They do not sell them. But there is a significant catch: they issue
these weapons to accountable and carefully trained active duty assault troops,
not to untrained, unaccountable civilians.
Young men in these nations
are equally prone to violent behavior as our fine young Americans, but they do
so with less lethal tools and subsequently inflict far less damage.
I am familiar with a response
many will raise to my proposal, that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill
people.” This is very true. I am acquainted with the counter arguments: that a
properly armed public can repel such an attacker, and that if we properly
attend to the moral character development of Americans, Americans won’t shoot
one another.
These popular arguments are
untenable in 2012. Dressed as Mr. Holmes
was in a full suit of body armor, gas mask and bearing multiple assault
weapons, only a similarly dressed and weapons-packing combat vigilante would have
much effect on his assault, and only after he paused to reload his assault
rifle. Who wants to live in a world where body armor is fashionable attire at
public events? Not me. There is no freedom here.
Secondly, moral character
development has been the traditional domain of family and church; and both
institutions have dramatically lost favor with mainstream America since
1960. We can no more ask family and church to correct fallen ethics than we can
ask our local 4-H equestrian teams to attend to our public transportation woes;
America does not ride horses anymore. Furthermore, recent research shows that church
affiliation & attendance does not statistically affect individual moral
choices. I other words, “good Christian”
(insert your favorite religion here) is a misnomer. Do we shift this duty
to the public schools? Perhaps moral character development is already there…
So to summarize: putting
concealed weapons and body armor on movie-goers won’t work, and we can’t preach Mr. Holmes out of his propensity
to kill volumes of us.
Our other option is to
address his unhappiness. Apparently the
young man was well educated, from a nice, healthy and church-going family, out
of work and out of friends.
This scene deeply frightens
me, because Mr. Holmes is not an isolated demographic. Our country is swelling
with young men just like him – from your and my pleasant but not perfect little
families. He has a hard time making friends, he’s frustrated and he’s in his
mid-twenties – full of testosterone. Because he’s well educated and from a
family of resources, he knows how to think and plan, coordinate and organize.
In short, he can be as dangerous as he is otherwise productive.
So add “depressed, resourceful
and well educated” to the violence cocktail of media school, video game boot
camp and weapons availability.
How do we address his
hopelessness – when it is fueled equally by a very real national economic recession and a very false, media generated heroic story of potential grandeur and
immediate success that has been crystallized into his personal story? This
hopelessness will create fireworks because it has been trained to expect
instant gratification corresponding to instant input. Fail! He expects an
immediate change when he engages his life situation proactively, and when
immediate gratification doesn’t happen, he sub-consciously activates his
frustration sequences: shoot.. shoot..
shoot.
Though young men across human
history have been idealistic, hormone driven, resourceful and frustrated, the easy
and systemic de-sensitization to violence that our young men are raised in today is
new to American culture, and is particularly strong among the poverty classes. We
cannot pretend any longer that what we thought worked in the 20th century
will work today.
Two dramatic civil actions
are necessary if we freedom-loving Americans desire a different future:
- We need to take pre-emptive action on lethal resources. Weapons designed to hunt humans belong among law enforcement
professionals and in National Guard armories where our founding fathers
intended them to be stored – registered to the active militiamen who either
own them or to whom they are issued.
- We need to take pre-emptive action on the
multi-media boot-camp that feeds and hones violence. Media scenes and
games that depend on violence need to be re-rated “X” and sold or viewed at
“Adult Only” establishments.
Both actions will face
significant resistance from our fellow Americans who benefit and profit from
the current state of “Freedom.”
In harmony with these two immediate civil actions, we must intentionally begin to re-knit the complex and ancient safety
net of resilient human relationship and attachment that has unraveled in our proud
new, modern, isolationist, podcast, individual–choice society.
Here is how we address hopelessness: We must come to know in our bones that we are not alone, not friendless, not hopeless, not isolated in destructive crazy-talk- but this knowing can only follow real, redemptive relationships and inter-dependent community life.
How will we re-knit the net? How will you?
I, for one, am tired of
watching this recurring cultural car wreck, and I’m done straightening our bent
bumpers and pretending it will never happen again. No! Let’s change the way we
drive!
We choose our America. What
will you choose?
What if Mary was volunteering
in young Jesus’s classroom in that school?
