What’s really behind mass shootings?
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After a mass shooting, some come out swinging on gun control. Others come out swinging on mental illness. Then they knuck it up for about 4-5 days on social media, grandstanding and politicking.
All y’all trippin’
Our mass shootings are neither primarily about guns or about some individual’s mental illness. Our mass shootings are about the sick part of US. We have a culture obsessed with violence.
Sure, the kind of gun increases the “mass” part of the mass shooting. But that doesn’t address why we want to kill each other. Neither does mental illness, when the vast majority of those have whatever diagnosis gets blamed this time commit no such crimes.
What we have is a civilization in which people think guns are really cool, that solving problems through violence is really cool, people are and feel isolated from one another, and in which people routinely hate.
Automatic weapons and mental illness are but amplifiers.
They are not the beat.
The beat is our view of people as “us” vs. “them”. The beat is the way we vehemently exclude and isolate the different, the “less than” the “other”.
The beat is our love of force and violence. Look at our movies, video games, and some of our music.
The beat is our collective impulsivity. Whatever it is, I need it NOW. The people that hurt me or I don’t like to go away, a sandwich, a date.
The beat is also our refusal to acknowledge the created and inherent complexity of human kind. The beat is us trying to boil everything down to one factor, when it cannot be boiled down to that.
The beat is our obsession with fame, position, and adulation.
People often have different reasons for doing the same things. If we are to solve it, we need to truly understand the reasons.
We need gun control, which also doesn’t mean just one thing but several. However, if we do not address community factors, personal factors beyond the spectacular spectacle of severe individual mental illness – we will not solve this.
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This article originally appeared at The Neighborhood Neuroscientist . Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Getty Images
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the popularity of pro wrestling. Think about it. You have a problem with someone. You don’t call in lawyers. You settle it in the ring and if it’s a huge problem a street fight or hard core match. Look at the attitude era. How many people wouldn’t want to lay the smack down on their boss? We don’t or at least aren’t supposed to handle things that way IRL.
John, but think of the colorful outfits we could all wear….
Thank you both for your comments, and taking the time out of your day to read the article. Richard: “we” references how our general societal structures and priorities create broad societal memes which stand at the root of behaviors and attitudes. It references conceptually how we can all play a role in contributing or solving the root problems. Automatic weapons have figured strongly in many mass murders. They are factually amplifiers because they increase kill totals. That is not debatable, but of course they are not the root cause. Diz: Of course, bullying can be one risk factor, but does… Read more »
Who’s “we”? Who’s “us”? And where’d you come up with automatic weapons?
The common thread with most of these shooters is that they have been bullied or otherwise abused by society, and this goes all the way back to Columbine. There is a reason that this behavior is becoming more common and links to anti femnism have been established. A lot of these people keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed until they finally snap, when reports from people who know them say that they were otherwise decent and keep to themselves. We need to take a big step back and re evaluate how we discuss masculinity and rag endlessly on men… Read more »