Three years ago after a mass shooting, I wrote about the world being broken. Sadly, three years later the carnage continues. 
After each unfortunate event, the rumblings for more gun control grow louder and then die down as nothing happens. America forgets and moves on. Finally, after the latest senseless school shooting in Parkland Florida, the rumblings have erupted into action across the nation. It is official: People hate guns, gun owners, the NRA, and anyone who speaks favorably about guns or gun ownership. America and the world want someone to blame and they, understandably, want action. Meanwhile, the NRA who was once a respected organization, sits on it’s same old tired arguments
“We need a good guy with a gun and to outlaw mental illness!”
accusing the media of encouraging mass shootings and blaming “crying white moms” for the violence.
How did we get here? How did we become a nation full of despondent people who are so down on life that their best course of action is to take up a weapon and kill as many people as they can? Why has this become a way of life? The problem according to most people is that we are able to buy “assault weapons” in the form of AR style rifles.
The reason people kill?
As I wrote three years ago, I don’t believe it is just the guns. You can provide a population of people with all the hammers and saws you want but that doesn’t make them carpenters. Similarly, just having access to a gun doesn’t make someone a mass murderer. If that were the case we’d have had over a century of mass murders by now. From the early 1900s until 1968 it was far easier to buy all guns and much more military-like guns than it is now. Sure there have always been some sort of events as long as there have been people, but the “popularity” of mass shootings didn’t really get going until Columbine in 1999.
Columbine . . Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two rich suburban kids decided to take up arms and go kill high school students using a collection of shotguns, carbine rifles, a handgun and bombs. It was a carefully planned and coordinated attack that their parents had no idea was about to happen. It is confounding that two kids were amassing an arsenal of weapons in their bedrooms and their parents were oblivious. But where did they get this idea and why? Their images and actions are strikingly similar to a popular, very violent movie from the same year as the Columbine shooting.
Even now as we mourn the deaths of 17 young people and staff from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School the most popular sell-out film in the country is Black Panther. The movie include 163 shootings and countless other scenes of violence.
Doing a quick scan of popular films back through the 70s one finds titles like “Dirty Harry” and some war films and westerns. In the 80s more movies focused on shooting and killing came along: Die Hard, and The Terminator. In the 90s Hollywood really started to hit their “action movie” stride: Terminator II, The Matrix, and a bunch of films highlighting gang violence. Even the war movies changed. The 1970s gave us Patton focusing on one of the greatest military leaders of all time. In 1998 we got The Thin Red Line pretty much focusing on killing people. Starting in the 2000s, there are too many to list. No film could be made without violence and sex. Action has become the operative word in Hollywood. In fact, at the same time Hollywood stars are calling for tougher gun laws and more restrictions, they are cranking out gun and violence filled movies daily.
Liam Neeson: Wants tougher gun laws. Starred in the Taken series, and Non-Stop.
As America deals with one violent attack after another and the daily sexual misconduct scandal, perhaps it’s time for our entertainers to look inward and begin producing films that don’t spend 90 minutes encouraging awful behavior.
Let’s talk video games. I had the Pacman patterns memorized. I don’t know how many screens I could get through but I could get my money’s worth out of a quarter. At home I wasted enormous amounts of time blasting little two dimensional space craft from the sky and blowing apart odd-shaped rocks with a little white bb shot from a triangular rocket ship. These were the video games of the day. What do kids play today? It’s a long list and the most popular are graphic and violent. We have games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive. This one features team play and world championships. Then there is Bulletstorm. The highlight on the website is “Make it rain bullets!” These games follow on the path of a a decade of first-person shooter games like Medal of Honor, and Operation Flashpoint. Such games featured real people as the enemy with graphic endings when the game player pulled the trigger. Amazingly, most of these games are rated 12+. I wasn’t even allowed to read “Jaws” when I was 12 because of some of the language in the book. Oh and here is my favorite. I hate to even include the link but it gives the game player the opportunity to relive Columbine in the eyes of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.
A far cry from Pacman and Asteroids.
The video gamers are quick to jump to the defense of the games saying “Oh no. It’s not us. Video games don’t make people killers”. After a while these arguments start to sound as thin as the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” line. Certainly psychologists have noted a concern. As we ponder the question of whether the public has a need to have AR style rifles (or any other guns) perhaps we should be pondering the question of whether America needs violent video games and movies as well.
Guns, movies, and video games aside, the fundamental question remains about what switch has flipped in people’s heads that make them lose respect for others in general and other’s lives in particular? Let’s say for a moment that there are sweeping changes to the law and all guns are banned, collected, and destroyed. Does it bother no one else that there is still a contingent of our society out there who, given the chance would do harm to others in mass? Getting rid of the tool isn’t going to change that behavior. With the power of Google, or even just a library card (do they still make those?) anyone can build pretty destructive devices with supplies from Wal-Mart and Home Depot. In fact our own Government provides army field manuals that are available free for the download and tell the reader how to make very effective weapons from things scrounged up around a house or even a dump.
How to Build Weapons. Courtesy of the government.
In general I look around the world today and I see people with little respect for one another. In social settings, we stare at our cell phones updating Facebook and Instagram so that our followers have up-to-the-minute knowledge of our whereabouts and activities. Despite the most generous speed limits in history, I see people on the roads driving aggressively EVERY SINGLE DAY. This includes tailgating, weaving in and out, speeding, and changing lanes without indicating because one hand is on the wheel, and both eyes and the other hand are on the cell phone. Everyone considers themselves and their business more important than everyone else. They are willing to risk the lives of those around them on the road because they couldn’t get up a few minutes earlier to make that 9:00 meeting. There are always a thousand excuses why they need to behave this way and not a single one of them are legitimate. In school, kids have no respect for teachers, adults, or their classmates. Stories of students attacking teachers are becoming more and more common.
How do we fix this? Boy I sure wish I knew the answer to that. Right now the common cry is to make AR style rifles go away. Honestly, I don’t have a dog in that fight and really don’t care either way but I don’t think that fixes all. While I personally believe the second amendment was written to ensure the US had an armed populace capable of defending itself against a tyrannical government, I also feel that Americans, as a whole, don’t have the personal integrity to continue without more firearms restrictions. In fact, one wonders if the entire constitution might not be written differently today. Obviously there are millions of responsible gun owners currently who will never shoot anything more than a target or a game animal. I’m sure there are millions more who, if they were to choose to become gun owners, would do so properly learning how to safely own, handle and shoot a firearm. But there are clearly a bunch of others out there, who learn gun handling from video games and movies and don’t have the sense of responsibility to own a gun or really anything more sophisticated than a loaf of bread.
Would this document be written the same today?
AAA is a powerful lobby for the automotive industry and drivers. When new laws are needed, they work with lawmakers to create careful legislation to protect drivers, road departments, and the automotive industry. The same can be said for AARP, and dozens of other advocacy groups. The NRA has taken a different path. Their standard line is that there are already plenty of laws on the books that should be enforced. After each shooting they repeat the same old arguments and make ridiculous calls to arm people that don’t want to be armed. It should be clear to all at this point that the current laws may have been useful at one point but aren’t working. Things like the NICS background check system have too many dependencies on too many inept government agencies to ever be effective. We need something different. I’m sure I’ll be disowned by many of my gun owning friends for saying so, but if “something different” means we are a bit inconvenienced when buying a firearm, well, I think the law abiding among us will still be okay. Unfortunately, I think the NRA has missed its opportunity. As hatred of the NRA turns up to new levels, companies that partnered with the NRA are abandoning those relationships. I think lawmakers will follow or they will lose their seats. Unfortunately, the NRA has let it’s membership and gun owners down. Hunters and shooting enthusiasts should brace themselves for what comes next.
Lack of leadership from the gun lobby will probably lead to a heavy-handed new gun laws in the wake of continued mass shootings.
The video game and movie industries needs to learn from the NRA. In 2011, the Entertainment Software Association, a group that represents the video gaming industry, won a Supreme Court decision protecting it under the first amendment. Reading about this and the arguments about how the industry doesn’t feel that video games are a factor in today’s violence is eerily similar to the path the NRA has followed. Video games are protected by the constitution, a strong economic driver, have a powerful lobbying group, and lots of voters. Be warned video gamers! Get your organization and industry to scrutinize itself a little closer before it’s too late.
On the movie front, actors and actresses were quick to react in the wake of the All the Money in the World pay scandal. They also reacted in a unified manor to the recent outing of sexual misconduct by the likes of Harvey Winestein and Kevin Spacey by supporting the Me Too movement. At one point will these folks start declining scripts where the main feature is bullets and death?
As far as personal respect for others, I can only do my best to have that and encourage others to do the same. We have long heard the call to open our hearts and minds to others and respect their story. It is amazing how a little thing can change someone’s day or outlook on life.
I was at Wegman’s Friday morning for my usual pre-work group run. While waiting at the coffee counter afterwards, I noted that the young man in front of me wearing the uniform of a Wegman’s employee, bought 21 coffees. He asked for a cup for himself, and to give the next 20 to the first 20 Wegman’s associates who came for coffee. The world needs more of this.
Along the Way 