Opinions re Mass Shootings, based on Tulsa shooting, 2022-06-2

In My Humble Opinion
1

Michael Moore made a very incisive point in Bowling for Columbine. Canadians have guns all over the place (relatively speaking). They aren’t at all an anti-gun society. And yet they don’t have these mass killing incidents at anywhere near the rates that we do in the US. (I have not challenged his statistics, nor looked at whether or not that has changed, so I admit to coasting here).

What causes gun violence in America in ways that it doesn’t occur elsewhere?

Nowhere else is the rate like it is here.

It isn’t just the availability of guns (see the Canada thing).

Are we uniquely a combo of vast oceans of lightly inhabited land where guns make sense and dense urban zones where they don’t? (Canada has some urban zones but not to the extent that the US does, I think? And there have been mass shooting events in Canadian urban environments. Ecole Polytechnique.)

Cultural stuff? Do we have more of a cultural push towards asserting yourself no matter what that mixes with the gun availability and the notion of a person with a gun making it all happen?

Why male? Assertive women arm themselves, sometimes as a response to male violence or the threat of same. They don’t seem inclined to wipe out plural numbers of people in a shooting event.

Masculinity? It’s elsewhere too. Lots of chest thumping and bellligerence and seeking out fights and stuff. Other locales don’t have our phenomenon of way high rates of mass shooting events.

It itself, the Mass Kill Spree Event, as an element of specifically American culture? A notion that’s out there, something to perhaps aspire to, in a way that doesn’t permeate other comparable societies? Can’t make your name otherwise but go down in history if you do this? I can’t dismiss this, although I’m dubious that this is why.

I myself don’t know. I don’t have a theory. I find it bewildering.

2

Never too early to offer thoughts and prayers … can even do it pre-emptively.
Just as effectacious. :upside_down_face:

3

The conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey argues that the United States is failing its young men:

That’s the one commonality in the vast majority of mass shootings. It’s not race or ideology. They’re young males. We are doing absolutely everything wrong when it comes to promoting healthy masculinity, purpose, & goodness for these boys and men. If we really cared, we would be doing EVERYTHING we can to promote fatherhood, hard work, & honor. We’d be getting these boys off the internet and into hobbies and jobs and communities where they can channel their strength. We’d be desperately pushing them toward meaning.

Our denial of innate gender differences, coupled with the demonizing of masculine strength, don’t help. There is nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to do and no one to live for. There is also nothing more beneficial to a community than a man with purpose and love. It’s much easier to offer meaningless political talking points than it is to reckon with the societal, spiritual ROT that’s eroded our foundations and connections. And most people don’t see it, because they are contributors to the moral deficit our country faces.

Maybe we should all ask—what are our churches, schools, organizations, neighborhoods doing to address this problem? How are we helping fatherless, purposeless boys? Many are already doing good work. We can all do more. There truly has to be a moral revolution—a radical recalibration of our values—a great awakening—for anything to change. Impossible without the grace of God and a whole lot of effort on our part.

My bold.

Here’s the link:

4

Thoughts and prayers.

5

I’ve sometimes thought of that point made by Michael Moore when I hear of yet another mass shooting. What is different between the U.S. and a country like Canada, which also has a very high rate of guns per capita? According to Moore in Bowling for Columbine, it’s a culture of fear that’s perpetuated in the U.S. Canada’s news media doesn’t have the same ‘if it bleeds it leads’ mentality. Also, of course, many politicians use fear-mongering as a standard tactic to get votes. I don’t know if ‘a culture of fear’ is the explanation, or even a partial explanation though.

I’ve also wondered, could it be the terrible state of our health care system preventing people from getting the mental health care they need? Not that everybody who commits a mass shooting has textbook mental illness, but at the very least they have serious emotional issues not being dealt with.

Also the growing isolation of society can’t be making mental and emotional issues any easier. Years ago many more people lived in smaller towns where everybody knew each other and there was stronger community support. You knew your neighbor. Not nearly the case nowadays. And now with much face-to-face interaction replaced by the virtual equivalent, we’re more connected in some ways, yet in others more isolated than ever.

I don’t know, maybe those are naive ramblings. I don’t have any answers either.

6

Just a speculation but it may be that while there are other countries where gun ownership is legal, there aren’t many (any?) other countries where it is a right.

Gun crimes may be one of those situations were a small percentage of people cause a larger percentage of problems. Let’s say, for example, that one percent of people who own a gun are responsible for ninety-nine percent of gun crimes.

Other countries may have laws that allow the average person to own a gun but prevent the problematic people from owning a gun. And by preventing one percent of people from owning guns, these laws eliminate most gun crimes. In the United States, by contrast, those one percent of problematic people have a constitutional right to own a gun.

As an analogy, look at our laws for owning and operating a car. Most people can get a driver’s license and own a car. But we have a legal system that can regulate driving and car ownership. This system can weed out the people who would cause a problem with a car by doing things like driving too fast or while drunk.

Now suppose owning and driving a car was a constitutional right. We might be asking why the United States has a traffic fatality rate that’s so much higher than the rest of the world, even though other countries have cars.

8

Conversely gun culture is not one of those situations were a small percentage of people cause a larger percentage of problems.

{oops posted at same time as thread was split}

9

She seems nice.

10

That makes a lot of sense. Actually, I don’t think it’s just the guys that are adrift. They are just the ones who run amok and harm others. Young women tend to turn it inward and harm themselves. We’re a sick society. Not really a society so much as an ocean of exclusive cliques.

11

One of the things I’ve always thought of is:

Forget the usual, exceptionally narrow view of many in the majority (ie, straight, white, Christian males) about replacement theory or “the other” and the zero sum game that inures to the majority’s economic harm.

People are falling behind. We are really living in (former) Senator John Edwards’s “Two Americas.”

As wealth and income inequality grow, and as economic factors (chief among which is inflation) push those at the bottom ever further underwater, a sort of desperation permeates parts of society.

And it’s not really the luxury items and keeping up with the Joneses, necessarily. Probably in part, but not exclusively.

Most of us are aware of the increasing cost of food, clothing, shelter, and health care. And decent schools ? Pffft. Know your place.

I’ve often invoked the treadmill analogy. It keeps getting steeper and faster.

But the rather obvious thing is: those getting flung off the back do not just go gentle into that good night. They do not willingly just curl up into a ball and die. Certainly not all of them.

Lacking the skills to compete in our new-ish, and fairly globalized, economy leaves them languishing – absent the tech, management, entrepreneurial, or STEM skills to compete with those folks, and – candidly – being outworked and underbid by lots of folks, including the immigrants they often excoriate and pillory for their (the benighted majority’s) economic plights.

It sucks to be poor in the USA. It’s Elysian to be rich.

But there generally isn’t a path from the former to the latter anymore (if there ever was).

The frustration must be unbelievable.

So there is unlimited misery. And there are intoxicating substances and there are guns – a shit-ton of guns.

What could go wrong ?

I am, however, surprised that:

  • Thoughts and prayers keep coming, but the slaughters proceed apace, and
  • ~400M guns in private ownership and we’re still not a “polite society”

Next one.

Next one, for sure.

#Murica !

12

Let’s find out, there was another one today in a Wisconsin cemetery.

13

I’m willing to entertain this theory, but what, specifically, are we supposed to do that we’re not doing? How does she propose getting these boys and men off the internet in into jobs and community engagement?

14

Excellent question.

I’m 67, and retiring in about 6-8 months. My wife and I are moving into a suite in a large new house being built for our daughter and son in law. It’s in a neighborhood that looks at first glance to be an affluent suburb but has a large undocumented population.

I just googled volunteer tutoring opportunities near there. It looks like there is a shortage of volunteers willing to teach English one on one to immigrants. And that sounds less overwhelming than trying to teach math to a boy whose mother wants him to get help, when the idea may not seem attractive to him.

15

Oh, I definitely have thoughts and a prayer on this issue. It’s quite likely, though, that the Republican flacks who are in the thrall of the NRA won’t like what I think about it and they certainly won’t appreciate my prayer.

16

I can’t check it at the moment but I believe that we’re also unique in our number of serial killers.

17

My daughter lives in Tulsa so I was made aware of the incident a few hours before it broke nationally. She has a friend who is married to a doctor… and news travels fast.

I think there are lots of angles to the problem, and it’s likely unique to the US because of the 2nd Amendment, but the fact that the shooter could walk into a store an hour before the attack and purchase a military-style rifle, without a waiting period to coll off, and not trigger a red flag warning, is astounding to me. If he had to wait 3 days to pick up his rifle, and if local law enforcement had been informed, things might have turned out very differently. It seems incredibly easy in the US to become a mass murderer if that’s what you really want to do.

18

Well being a non-merkin my thoughts on an American issue patently don’t count and being agnostic any prayers would be highly disengenous but curiously enough I am making a near identical contribution to ameliorating the broader issue as the average American.

19

I don’t think “Our denial of innate gender differences, coupled with the demonizing of masculine strength” or a “moral deficit” is the problem here, but it’s tantalizingly close to the truth. What Allie Beth Stuckey is really describing is toxic masculinity, which acculturates young men to repress their emotions, deny any sign of weakness, and expecting a certain birthright simply for being a man. They find online communities that teach them to hate other people, be they women, or immigrants, or “the libs.” They’re told these others are holding them back from the love and respect they deserve simply for being men.

I absolutely agree with her sentiment that America needs to change this culture and find ways to help people find meaning in life. I’m sure she’d say the answer is going to church and kicking out all the gays. I think a better answer is, for starters, free and accessible health care and a robust social safety net.

20

I would be willing to bet big cash that the guns in Canada are NOT equivalent to the guns in the USA. In other words, the proportion of Canadian guns that are semi-automatic/assault-weapon-style is probably vanishingly small.

All the talk about what’s wrong with American young men may simply boil down to: young men everywhere get angry. But only in the USA can a young man walk into a gun store and walk out with a military-style assault weapon. A weapon with which he can easily gun down dozens.

The “no waiting period” would be a problem even with a single-action handgun. But it’s a MUCH bigger problem with the “kill dozens easily in a couple of seconds” style of weapon that is so fetishized by the right.

Canadian men get angry, no doubt. (Women, too!) But it’s less easy for them to slaughter several fellow humans at a time. Whereas it’s REALLY easy for Americans to do so.

21

You’ve seen those impressionist paintings by Claude Monet of poplar trees, but did you know that they were planted as windbreaks by Napoleon’s army between his wars, because the Europeans had known for centuries the dangers posed by an idle population of young men? We knew it in the US in the Great Depression, when the thousands of young men were shipped out to the hinterland to do public work’s projects in the CCC. Voluntarily, yes, but without much of an alternative.

Do young men have the absolute right to do nothing but stew on their own juices? And is all our crumbling infrastructure just waiting for only a few dozen skilled technicians to perform with the most advanced Korean or German equipment?