By Tom KandoI wasn’t going to write about this. It’s already been overkill by the media, and there isn’t much left to say.
But e-mails and articles keep coming my way. Plus: I taught criminology for 30 years. I went to international conferences and published on this subject many times (see for example Tom Kando's publications. I covered gun control issues for decades.
The gun control arguments have been made ad nauseam, but nothing ever changes.
Marcos Breton says excellent thing in the July 22 edition of the Sacramento Bee. He reminds us of well-known NRA-sponsored clichés like - “guns don’t kill people, people kill people;” “we don’t ban spoons and forks because people are obese,” etc.
I can add to this idiotic list: “more people are killed by cars than by guns, so how about banning cars?” “If we ban guns, people will easily kill you with knives and other things...”
And the “guns don’t kill people” proponents always bring up places like Switzerland, Israel, Washington D.C., New York, Florida: The Swiss and the Israelis are heavily armed, but their murder rates are very low. New York and D.C. have some of the toughest gun control laws, yet also some of the highest rates of homicide. When Florida’s gun laws became more permissive, gun deaths were said to have declined. And so on and on, the abuse of selective statistics, spurious correlations and absurd arguments...
Breton points out the obvious: it’s not “guns or no guns?” but “what TYPE of guns?” and “used by WHOM?” James Holmes buys 6,000 rounds of ammo and no alarm bell goes off? Assault weapons in every garage? All these things have been said a million times, but don’t hold your breath waiting for significant change. The stranglehold which the NRA and a certain mind set have over politics and public opinion will never slacken. What’s the point of mentioning the obvious again?
US: 16,000 murders per year, of which 13,000 are by guns.
UK: 600 murders per year, of which are 60 by guns.
But the US is 5 times larger than the UK, so we are entitled to 5 times more murders. That would be 3,000! Not the 16,000 which we DO have!
“But if we ban guns, people will use knives, etc. instead...” See previous paragraphs. It’s a lot harder to kill with a knife or with your fists.
This guy Marc has a brilliant blog essay “Jimmy Homes, Superhero?” A lot of sarcasm, but his conclusion should not be misunderstood. He is on the same page as I am: GUNS DO KILL PEOPLE!
You can substitute dozens of other countries for “UK” in the above comparison. The discrepancy remains equally appalling - if not worse. For instance, Japan had 300 murders last year, that’s half Britain’s number and 53 times (!) fewer than in the US. (Japan’s population is twice that of Britain and a little less than half ours). Of Japan’s 300 annual murders, 10 (!) were by gun!
Actually, I am a bit surprised by the huge brouhaha about the recent Aurora killings. 12 deaths are tragic, but murder goes on unabated every day. As I open the morning newspaper, I’d say that just about every other day our region experiences 1 or 2 murders (90% through guns). We are a mid-sized city, but we have more murders annually than the average mid-sized European COUNTRY, and almost as many as Japan!
Like Breton, I’ll put in a disclaimer to show you that I am not a zealot: I own a rifle. It’s tucked away safely, and it’s not leaving my house, ever. I don’t advocate dogma, just common sense. Someone very dear to me just said it: “Gun control is a duh thing.” The NRA is wrong. Case closed.
© Tom Kando 2014
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Tom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning my blog post :"Jimmy Holmes, Superhero?"
The point I was trying to make of course, is that we desperately want to convince ourselves that events like the Batman Rising Massacre, are perpetrated by outliers -- people who are very different from we who are "normal". We want to say they are inherently evil miscreants, insane, or in the age of fMRI scans, have malfunctioning brains.
So long as we can convince ourselves that these actors are rotten apples and not a reflection of the society we have made and continue to make, we are absolved of all responsibility to try and make our society work better, e.g. regulate guns.
So do guns kill?
Of course they kill. They are designed to kill. When we gaze upon them or see them in use by others or handle them ourselves, the killing act is evoked in our social mind. Killing is the meaning of the artifacts we call guns. Some guns are designed for hunting and the meaning they evoke is shaded accordingly. Many guns are designed to kill people. They are designed for use as instruments of homicide, and the meaning they are imbued with enhances the potential for that sort of action. In other words, when we take our self-created instruments of homicide in hand, those instruments make us killers.
Think of it this way. A baseball bat can be used to kill, but when we see one, touch one, swing one, it does not evoke the act of killing. It is an artifact imbued by us with meaning about a game many love to play or watch played.
Give a group of people baseball bats and they will probably play ball. Give them semi-automatic weapons and they will be more likely start killing others or each other.
July 23, 2012
Yes, excellent, of course.
ReplyDeleteAs an afterthought:
I just saw portions of the new blockbuster "Dark Knight Rises." That’s the movie during whose premiere showing James Holmes did his rampage.
The film gets rave reviews. The website "IMDb" gives it a score of 9.2 - the highest score given to ANY film, EVER.
I, on the other hand, found it repugnant (at least the part I saw). The usual computer-generated Armageddon-like destruction of New York City.
For many years now, Hollywood has produced, every few months, a movie depicting the end of days, the destruction of our planet and our world cities (usually New York or Los Angeles) - as in "2012," "Independence Day," "Deep Impact," "The Day After Tomorrow," now "Dark Knight Rises," and many others.
All I want to say is that I deplore the public’s perverse fascination with these apocalyptic tableaux. They are meaningless and unrelated to reality.
Nor am I resurrecting the simplistic “monkey see monkey do” theory about the impact of media violence - another topic researched to death (inconclusively) by social scientists.
It is impossible to determine whether "Dark Knight Rises" played any role in James Holmes’ behavior, and what on earth could we do if it did?
However, I do deplore the cultural fare we are served up time after time. Most of us are not imbeciles. We get it. With the help of special effects, New York and Los Angeles can sink into the ocean.
But there are plenty of 24-year old guys running on a 9-year old maturity level, who confuse these stupid “science fiction” movies with reality.
July 23, 2012
Geral Sosbee has left a new comment on your post "Learning from Colorado Mass Murderer James Holmes?...":
ReplyDeletehttp://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/profiles/blogs/law-of-physics-divine-nature
LAWS OF PHYSICS & DIVINE NATURE !
23 Sep 2011 @ 13:46, by Geral W. Sosbee
A nation and its people who deliberately engage in the systematic conquest, subjugation, torture, imprisonment and killing of others must by the laws of physics and divine nature have the same calamities delivered upon themselves.
Human beings have "no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man." Sigmund Freud
(Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930)
July 23, 2012
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI think that you would agree that the stories we tell amongst ourselves, movies included, are both reflections of, and contributors to the mythic weltanschauung that constitutes the fundament of our taken-for-granted reality.
Apocalyptic themes have permeated the lore of many, though not all, cultures. There are stories of grand beginnings and calamitous endings but there are also stories of what has always been and will always be, as well --- stories of our immortality by way of continuation.
Grand beginnings and calamitous ends figure prominently in our Scientistic age, thanks in great part, according Burtt, to its metaphysical origins in Pythagorean and neo-Platonic reduction and Judeo-Christian doctrine.
We need to understand that apocalyptic myths are not built into our brains. They are stories we construct in the service of particular kinds of practical relations amongst ourselves as we go forward in the world.
Scientism, born during the Enlightenment, in which the endless and industrious reduction of everything and ourselves to elemental particles in a unified field, bouncing around pointlessly, reflects and enables our current hi-tech M.O. for acting forward in the word. This reduction reflects and contributes to our preoccupation with a cold and heartless end-time -- a darkness rising.
But if we know this is how we work -- that the stories we tell make us what we are and what we are becoming, then we can aim to become better story tellers. We can teach our young how story works and how to tell stories that work better. This is not much different than teaching ourselves that the work of singing and dancing together is at least as important as work we do that is aimed at reverse engineering the clockwork of the universe. (For the latest, see Higgs Boson mania)
July 23, 2012
thank you for your comments.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like Marc's words.
Very well said!
July 23, 2012
Tom:
ReplyDeleteI am so happy you are sharing your knowledge with us. Your professional work is impressive -you bring up good points. Of course I feel this way as a mentee of yours :). I plan on reading some of this. I never thought that I would have to watch my back while in the move theater. Is anywhere safe? I guess not.
I may comment more on this tomorrow. This tragedy has shaken us all up.
July 23, 2012
Tom, I agree largely with what both you and Marc have written.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the concept of cultural norms and perhaps wider acceptance of violence in films, I think films have always been a way to discuss these issues. Even Shakespeare's plays were very bloody, although did not use assault rifles.
But there is also wider acceptance of this type of violence in our government forces, whether it be Bush's violation of just war theory in Iraq arguing a "preemptive" war, Obama's assault of Bin Laden as a planned assassination in a foreign country without any due process of legal justice. Add the "Fast and Furious" to this mix and you end up with a Federal government that seems to sanction this behavior if you are in a position of power.
July 23, 2012
Gail,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your support.
Gordon:
My my, you are in danger of sounding like a liberal!
Just kidding. I know that it has never been possible to stereotype you politically. You just call them as you see them. You make good points!
July 23, 2012
Thanks for your comments, Chad (good web site, too):
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote, I am also opposed to a facile “media violence made me do it” defense.
When I deplore the enormous amount of gratuitous violence in our popular culture, it’s almost as a matter of personal TASTE. Just like I don’t like the taste of beets and I don’t like to listen to Neal Diamond. I find it distasteful, meaningless, stupid.
And there is also the oft noticed contrast between the uncensored media and videogame violence, on the one hand, and the absurdly puritanical censorship of even the most harmless sexual things (nipples, 4-letter words, etc) - in contrast to Europe, as many have noted.
Yes, things are screwed up. You list other very true factors - disassociation, drugs, corporate economic incentives. Absolutely, these are every bit as important as the more familiar factors, such as easy access to lethal assault weapons and a violent popular culture...
July 23, 2012
Thanks for your comments, Chad (good web site, too):
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote, I am also opposed to a facile “media violence made me do it” defense.
When I deplore the enormous amount of gratuitous violence in our popular culture, it’s almost as a matter of personal TASTE. Just like I don’t like the taste of beets and I don’t like to listen to Neal Diamond. I find it distasteful, meaningless, stupid.
And there is also the oft noticed contrast between the uncensored media and videogame violence, on the one hand, and the absurdly puritanical censorship of even the most harmless sexual things (nipples, 4-letter words, etc) - in contrast to Europe, as many have noted.
Yes, things are screwed up. You list other very true factors - disassociation, drugs, corporate economic incentives. Absolutely, these are every bit as important as the more familiar factors, such as easy access to lethal assault weapons and a violent popular culture...
July 23, 2012
The key word is Common Sense. We do have a right to bear arms but we do not have a constitutional right to bear semi automatic weapons. Strick gun control laws need to be made and enforced. It will take decades to flush the system but it needs to start.
ReplyDeleteJuly 24, 2012
Pieter and Paul
ReplyDeleteThank you for your excellent comments.
I’m afraid I don’t have the answers to Paul’s questions - or any observations that would shed more light on the issue than those provided in some of the comments, above. See for example Gordon, Chad and especially Marc: He does touch upon some “cultural” factors. I find his analyses quite meaningful.
But I am often reminded of something written by “Maarten!” - The publisher of a fine Dutch magazine that often talks about America: He said that The US is basically just another European country - somewhat larger, and on the other side of the Atlantic, that’s all.
About half of us here are not very different from Western Europeans. For example most of us in places like urban California and New York.
But there are regional sub-cultures in America which are quite different - rural, Southern, etc.
That’s where anthropologists could do the most interesting research.
July 24, 2012
And on the other hand from the Denver Post: "Colorado gun stores are seeing a big jump in demand for firearms since last Friday's massacre at a midnight movie showing in Aurora.
ReplyDeleteBackground checks for people wanting to buy guns in Colorado reportedly increased more than 41 percent after last week’s Aurora movie massacre. The Denver Post reports that firearm instructors have also seen increased interest in training needed for a concealed-carry permit." (An armed society is a polite society)
July 24, 2012
Good food for thought by anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI am not surprised.
With or without periodic mass murders, public opinion has become more and more pro-gun and anti-gun control over the years. I realize that pro-gun control people like me are slowly but surely losing.
The armed-society-is-a-polite-society argument is a familiar one. People sometimes use Israel as an example allegedly supporting this argument. It is said that if in Israel a terrorist pulled out a weapon and started picking people off, there would usually be an armed citizen who would kill him before he had a chance to kill too many innocents...
I am not aware of such a scenario having taken place anywhere, ever, and I wouldn’t bet on it.
Statistically, the more fire arms there are in general circulation, the more people will die from them. Think of the Old West for example.
I used to pose the following question to my students: “Right now, I assume that no one in this classroom is packing a concealed gun. But what if all or nearly all fifty of us did? Would you guys feel safer or less safe?”
July 25, 2012