My emotions are as low today as ever I can remember as I work through the tragic news born in Newtown, Connecticut. Another slaughter of innocent lives, this time little children, at the hands of a youth with guns, ammo, a damaged mind, and a confused soul.
For me, this isn’t like 911. Then I was angry; someone from some far-away land was going to have to shoulder the blame and pay for what they did to us. Today, I simply feel lost because we, the American culture, are the ones who must shoulder the blame for what happened and begin paying back.
- 1998: 13 and 11 year olds kill 5, injure 10, Jonesboro, Arkansas middle school
- 1999: 18 year old kills 13, injures 24, Columbine, Colorado high school
- 2001: 15 year old kills 2, injures 13, Santee, California high school
- 2005: 16 year old kills 9, injures 7, Minnesota, Red Lake Indian reservation
- 2006: 32 year old kills 5, injures 5, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania Amish high school
- 2007: 18 year old kills 5, injures 4, Salt Lake City, Utah shopping mall
- 2007: 23 year old kills 32, injures 17, Blacksburg, Virginia university campus
- 2007: 19 year old kills 8, injures 14, Omaha, Nebraska shopping mall
- 2008: 27 year old kills 5, injures 16, Dekalb, Illinois university lecture hall
- 2010: 34 year old kills 8, injures 2, Manchester, Connecticut family business office
- 2011: 22 year old kills 6, injures 11, Tucson, Arizona shopping center
- 2012: 24 year old kills 12, injures 58, Aurora, Colorado movie theater
- 2012: 40 year old kills 6, injures 3, Oak Creek, Wisconsin Sikh Temple
- 2012: 22 year old kills 2, Clackamas, Oregon shopping mall
- 2012: 20 year old kills 28, Newtown, Connecticut elementary school
What exactly has happened to our society where a list like this is so overwhelming, further punctuated by the thousands of nameless inner city and gangland murders perpetrated by our youth that are not considered rampage killings?
Laying it at the feet of some psychological disorder diagnosis housed in the mind of the gunman is pure intellectual cowardice. The only thing that does is allow the rest of us to feel better because it becomes someone else’s problem, another family’s responsibility. Americans would do well to acknowledge the insidious decay in our cultural values where they continue to collide with what many interpret as their own set of personal freedoms. Freedoms are great but become worthless and detrimental to society as a whole if they are not exercised with maturity, restraint, and responsibility. We seem to have lost sight of all three of these requirements in the American freedom equation.
Personal and moral failures at any level don’t carry the negative stigma they once did. Breaking society’s laws, even those little, seemingly inconsequential ones, mean nothing anymore and is routinely modeled by parents to their young ones. Breaking little rules leads to breaking larger norms as one gets older. The end result is a perpetual diminishing of cultural values. At the end of the day, what value does a human life have?
Even as a constitutional originalist and Second Amendment supporter, I believe a rational gun control debate has become necessary. One where the debaters recognize that guns have evolved greatly since 1791. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition that neuters the NRA, our Bill of Rights, or the American hunting tradition. But it does have to somehow find a way to keep us from lamenting that victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is high time for our judicial system to do its job with a little less compassion and much heavier hand. Our culture has lost its fear of the consequences of breaking societal rules. Gen X and the Millenials have become the No Fear generation. Minds that consider crime no longer consider the consequences that go with it because plea deals, suspended and reduced sentences, and early parole mitigate a criminal’s uncomfortable future. Cable television’s offerings even depict a macho glorification of penal life that has found a twisted audience in our society that actually aspires to doing time. Our society must put fear back into a criminal’s mind with hardcore sentencing that has intractable teeth. Watch the 1973 movie, Papillion. In our present light, there comes with it a desire to dismantle the death penalty, buy some islands, clean out the prisons, and remove two strike criminals from society forever. Compassionate, yet final. Bad actors shouldn’t be allowed to have three strikes.
What effect did Hollywood, video games, and the internet play in the minds of the 16 killers previously listed? My guess is pretty significant if one dissects the age demographic of the killers. What are we, as a culture, allowing the next generation to be exposed to for the financial gain of those who exploit their immaturity and under-developed moral sense?
My guess is that in the immediate days following the Newtown massacre, most Americans would welcome such a review and find it easy to connect the dots. Sadly, the short attention span of Americans has shown that this too shall pass. And our culture will continue to slide as we await the next horrific homegrown event.
12.14.12 was a tough day for me. My heart breaks for the families in Newtown. But my angst really comes from seeing that America, the shining city on a hill, is losing its sheen; and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Scott Ruppert lives in Harpswell, ME and is a freelance writer for The Basicman Perspective and The Western Center for Journalism.
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How many of these case was the shooter legally the gun owner??Was the gun gotten from someone else??
Don’t be a sell-out….!!!
It is not about “rational gun controls”…………. it IS about “SELF-CONTROL” ….. which IS available through the instructions of the “Moral Codes” found in the “natural laws of the Laws of Nature”, the 10 Commandments of the Judeo-Christian Religions and MOST other civilized Religions …….. however, cults that glorify death and/or apply moral relativity in personal actions are the anomalies that manifest into the EVIL acts civil societies are and have always been faced with.
I don’t believe that gun control is the answer. Good people don’t kill and bad people will have guns anyway. Then there will be no way for the good people to defend themselves. Schools and churches are sitting ducks for a killer with guns because they are known not to have any defense.
Another lame, “time to talk about gun control” from a helpless coward with no valuable solution to the problem. Look at the list. All of the shootings at “gun free” killing zones. Time to arm teachers. If the simpering principal at the school had some backbone and modest training and skill with a handgun, she could have protected the children. When will the weak look at the obvious solution to this problem for it is simple: eliminate gun free killing zones by arming responsible people with the resolution to protect and preserve.
Gun control didn’t stop the killings in England. March 13, 1996: 43 year old using four (4) handguns killed 16 children and one adult (at Scotland’s Dunblane Primary School) before killing himself. This happened at a time when Great Britain (GB) had gun-control laws. However, because of this horrific act, GB got really tough and outlawed all handguns (even 22 cal). But it didn’t stop mass-murder killings in GB. June 2, 2010: 52 year old killed 12 people and injured 11 others before killing himself in Cumbria, England.
And, Mexico has some of the toughest weapon-related controls in the world. If they catch you with just one bullet (but no gun), they throw you into jail. Yet, Mexico has one of the highest rates of gun related crimes in the world. Switzerland is one of the safest countries yet almost every household has an assault weapon.
It’s easy to blame the gun and it’s easy to blame “society” but such an attitude is a cop-out born from ignorance or motivated by someone with an agenda to take guns away from U.S. citizens.
Man has been killing long before firearms were ever invented and man will continue killing, even after every single weapon has been melted down. Taking guns away from U.S. citizens will not stop murders. If you believe it will, you’re living in a fantasy world. Cocaine is illegal; yet, it and other illegal drugs is the number one crime-related problem in the USA. As with illegal drugs in the USA (and as in Mexico with guns), take away guns from the USA citizens will result in disarming only the law-abiding citizens. Criminals will still have them and the ones that don’t will be able to get them.
You can pass a million laws but you cannot legislate morality nor can you stop the killings any more than stopping the illegal drug activity in the USA.
Does anyone of sane mind really think that factors common to all the listed fatal events is restricted to firearms simply because it’s what they were served by tyrants and the TV media? Do they really think that recurrence of such atrocious acts can be avoided by giving full consideration to an inert factor guaranteed by an irrevocable guaranty in the second amendment and ignoring all the influences of things that they can affect in concentrated effort by simply identifying them as common factors of consequence? Will the general public continue to blindly accept the reality of diminished parental supervision and voluntary correction of their progeny struggling through their formative years as necessary to maintain selfish social status? Why has watchdog media not called for and demanded compiling and publication of any medical and psychological factors found in the fourteen year history cited for consideration? Is conspiracy at risk?
Expert testimony revealing that there has never been mass murder without warped psychotic inclination rooted in some form of mental decline commonly ignored out of either social embarrassment or political risk. Such characteristics can only be skipped over at the expense of it’s ensuing consequences exhibited by those that develop full blown psychosis from it’s parent neurosis. Abuse in either childhood experience or mental degradation brought on by dietary deprivation or exposure to brain altering chemicals whether prescribed or illegal seems to be a taboo subject from fear of the tsunami of risk involvement Will “mad hatters” of fiction be forever lost in prose composed to subtly expose the truth behind psychotic madness of an era of history?
Has the full spectrum of government succumbed to mass neurosis where peer pressure from those advanced to psychotic status dictates the meaning of “moving forward” so ofter pledged?
Until blanket obsession demonstrated by the electorate continuing to skip to the melody played by their Pied Piper of Media without any question of half truth and omission of fact, neither patriotic constitutional adherence nor honor can be expected to flourish in any branch or agency of government elect. Is yet another Boston Tea Party required to awaken an armed and alerted electorate? While there seems to be little sanity siphoning down from the top of any government branch protected from whistle blowers by executive privilege and “fainting memory loss syndrome” can fear of dishonor or death ever be be recovered from the violence of virtual reality of computer software imagination? No hope for a better future can be expected from psychotic repetition guaranteeing same result. Somebody somewhere has to authoritatively question all congressional action subject to treasonous intent lest we “move farther forward” into oblivion.