CSotD: It’s not the guns, it’s the inaction
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The other day, I started my reflections on the Santa Barbara shootings with a cartoon drawn in the wake of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Here, Steve Breen makes a more pointed comment on a massacre that happened just a few years later.
And so here we sit, three decades later, still asking the same question, "What will it take?"
I noted in that earlier posting that one issue is states that refuse to cooperate with federal background checks by providing the relevant information. The next time someone says "We don't need new laws; we just need to enforce the ones we have," you might want to bring that up.
And when they say that mental health, not guns, is the issue, well, I agree. To an extent.
Probably to a greater extent than they'd like.
Drew Sheneman is right: a lot of really, obviously insane people love guns.
But you can't divide the country, or the question, into crazy people who own guns and sane people who do not.
A lot of really, obviously sane, decent people own guns. I grew up in a hunting culture and, while I haven't specifically looked for that when contemplating a move, the places I've most enjoyed living have been ones with a strong, rural, blue-collar culture that, among other aspects, included a lot of multi-generational hunters.
However, if the majority of gun owners are good, responsible people, it's also true that the majority of people who drink alcohol are good, responsible people.
It doesn't mean that we're wrong to distinguish between those who can handle alcohol and those who can't.
And, while the 21st Amendment did repeal Prohibition, it did not mean that we can't have laws restricting alcohol sales and against drunk driving, though for godsake don't let Scalia and Alito know I even suggested the possibility.
Moreover, when movies and TV shows make a fetish of drunkenness, the public seems reasonally comfortable in calling them out for it. Doesn't mean there can't be a funny movie that involves people getting drunk. But people getting drunk is not inherently funny; you have to bring something else to the script.
As the late Dudley Moore learned when his much-loved movie "Arthur" spurred his much-reviled "Arthur II."
So why did "Arthur II" tank at the box office, while "Rambo XLVI: Kill All The Baddies" and "Die Harder Than Anybody Ever Even Dreamed of Dying Before" rake in the cash?
Our gun fetish scratches a deep societal itch, as Clay Bennett suggests.
I have long defended little boys' games of war as a make-believe way to practice working within social heirarchies. And little boys are more overtly heirarchic in their play than little girls, but it's just two sides of the same coin.
That is, Deborah Tannen notes that little boys play with an ostentatious braggadocio that says, "Look what I can do! I'm the best!" while little girls play games that begin, "Let's pretend …"
But, while little boys' squabbles over "I got you!" and "You missed!" are resolved in favor of the boy with higher social standing, I haven't heard a lot of little-girl games of sharing and cooperation that began with "Let's pretend that I'm the ugly one and you're the beautiful princess."
In both instances, the kid with higher standing prevails.
And there are certainly major industries based on catering to little girls who grow up and still want to be the beautiful princess.
But little boys who never outgrew their childish needs also represent a hugely profitable demographic.
Rob Rogers touches on the appeals to machismo that permeate our culture.
The ideal of the beautiful princess has become so engrained that "feminist" is a dirty word and the same person who excoriates Barack Obama for not being as decisive as Vladimir Putin can, in the next breath, condemn Hillary Clinton as a bitch for taking any sort of stance on anything.
We prefer manly men and girly girls, and if you disagree with Rush, it's because you're a wimp. Or, as we like to say, a "pussy."
But here's the thing: At least Rush is putting it in our face. He's an anarchist working a mob that wraps themselves in the national flag while demanding states rights, and he is happy to play upon both sexist and racial stereotyping to build up the elusive fantasies of his audience.
However, just as the pressure to be a beautiful princess is not confined to fashion magazines and weight-loss programs, so, too, the appeal to paranoia is not confined to the macho blowhards of Fox and the Blaze and Town Hall and other purveyors of anarchy and privilege.
We — not all of us, but not just Tea Partiers, either — are obsessed with cop shows that exploit and promote the paranoid notion that the world is a hostile, dangerous place and that our streets are full of psychopaths and killers.
And we lecture our kids on bullying, but then watch "American Idol" on which bullying is glorified.
And we complain that they don't learn in school, and that kids today have no manners, but only during the commercials, because we're busy watching reality shows that make heroes out of societal misfits, and that repeat the message that, despite what scientists say, Bigfoot and ghosts and UFOs do exist, and that, despite what the authorities say, JFK was shot by multiple gunmen as part of a conspiracy, and that "they" are all either fools or are deliberately lying to you.
Is it any wonder then, if somewhat sane, normal, responsible people can be attracted to this paranoid nonsense, that when someone does have an imbalance, they cling to this platform we have so painstakingly constructed to cater to sociopathic impulses?
There was another time, years ago, that I asked this question that nobody wants to address.
If you don't recognize the faces in this video, click here and see one more example of what we seem completely unwilling to challenge, much less change.
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