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Adam Lanza: Crying out for help in a privileged sphere, you become invisible. (photo: NBC Today)
“Are new gun laws really the answer? Mass killers do not need guns…but they sure love gun free zones. Pot has been illegal for almost a century, but any kid can go out a find weed.”
by Donald Allen, Editor-in-Chief – The Independent Business News Network
Minneapolis, MN (IBNN/Editorial Opinion/December 17, 2012)…There are 200 million guns (legally purchased) circulating in the United States (minus military bases and personnel). If new gun laws were passed to band some weapons, it would take years to get the already purchased and circulated weapons off the streets. The senseless killings in Newtown, CT show a need to address the many issues surrounding what makes people kill and more importantly a social science profiles of who these people really are.
It sickens me to turn on the television and see out-of-touch left-wing political pundits claim that they can solve the challenges of mass murders in America by enacting new gun laws. This just isn’t true. In looking at the profiles of whom it is who kills in mass shootings, America’s researchers must come up with a plan to strategically focus assets to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
From an article titled, “The Facts about Mass Shootings: It’s time to address mental health and gun-free zones,” author John Fund says, “Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools.”
But what type of person kills at a school?
Another article, “Why Most Mass Murderers Are Privileged White Men,” by Hugo Schwyzer lays some significant insights on this person: “Perhaps the greatest asset that unearned privilege conveys is the sense that public spaces “belong” to you. If you are—like James Holmes last week, or Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people on the University of Texas, Austin campus in 1966—an American-born, college-educated white man from a prosperous family, you don’t have a sense that any place worth being is off-limits to the likes of you. White men from upper middle-class backgrounds expect to be both welcomed and heard wherever they go. When that sense of entitlement gets frustrated, as it can for a host of complex psychological reasons, it is those same hyper-privileged men who are the most likely to react with violent, rage-filled indignation. For white male murderers from “nice” families, the fact that they chose public spaces like schools, university campuses, or movie theaters as their targets suggests that they saw these places as legitimately theirs.”
In a way, it seems absurd to suggest that middle class suburban white men are more susceptible to hopelessness, despair and depression than others. But for those in an oppressive, violent environment, the source of distress is fairly evident. But if you live in an environment where you’re supposed to be happy and content about your life, and yet you’re not, who is to blame? Such internalized hatred can turn into internalized violence, which, then, can be expressed outwardly.
This brings up several interesting points. If mental illness is at the forefront of addressing people that might go on a misguided shooting spree, then how do we as a nation address the symptoms? If upper-middle class white males are profiled as being the ones who kill, how will they be identified, treated and monitor?
While America grieves for the victims of last week’s shootings, we must also be mindful of the mainstream media’s attempt to guide this conversation while exploiting the families of slain children.
Every week in America hundreds of men and women of color are killed by senseless acts of gun-violence in poor neighborhoods: Chicago, New York, Detroit and Minneapolis. To enact new gun laws, is not the answer.
