Saturday, May 28, 2022

Our greatest public health crisis is the angry young American male

Of course gun control works. It worked in the 40's, when the guns were at war. It worked in the fifties, when gun responsibility was taught and enforced--by parents, no less. The same in the sixties and seventies and eighties, before video games. How riled can you become at pinball? But then society began shifting. The NRA emerged, the country began dividing, children were not taught to respect boundaries. Hate increased. 9/11 happened. The country became more intolerant. Now we need real gun control, like the Brady Bill, the Clinton ban on automatic weapons. The Right and the NRA won't have it, for all the reasons mentioned. And so children and loved ones die, and I see no end.

I wrote this paragraph last night, on Marty Damon's blog, Welcome Words. Grasping straws and hoping some leader would step up and solve the problem. Wanting, like all of us, that currently impossible solution, gun control. Today I read a New York Post column, which is the title of today's blog. The author is Maureen Callahan.

We are continuing to create, she says, more than 20 years after Columbine, young male mass shooters who target schoolchildren. Only in America are we cultivating young men hellbent on killing our children.  "...it’s probably only another week before another random mass shooting, another round of national outrage and sadness, another collective shrug of hopelessness."

The profile is young, male, angry. Online threats made openly, not on the dark web. Obsessed with guns, violence and first person shooter video games. He is a lone wolf no more, not since the internet. "Now any disaffected young man can become, with anonymous encouragement and advice, a killing machine."

Boys and young men, whose frontal cortex is not mature until age 25 plug into online groups and share grewsome fantasies to rape, kill or commit mass shootings.

After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security began tracking online chatter to disrupt planned terror attacks, as did the FBI, which began proactively working up profiles of future terrorists. Why can’t the same be done here?

These young men are visible long before they are old enough or strong enough to carry out a mass killing. Teachers see them every day, bullied, friendless, badly broken homes, no support, little parental guidance.

Before the shout of violation of personal rights goes up, why not monitor these on-line conversations and in the end keep the young man under surveillance. If he leaves home armed to the teeth, intercept him at the school, the movie theater, the church, the supermarket. 

This is a blogger note. I believe the first two paragraphs may have a white or yellow or grey background. I believe it's because I used copy and paste.


28 comments:

  1. We have to try anything and everything.

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  2. The angry, white, American male profile is spot on. How is it that they slip through the system? Clearly, this is part of the problem. The easy access to guns and ammunition supports their intent for mass shootings at schools. Columbine forward shows the ongoing sad and horrific history of events.

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  3. I wish. How I wish. And I am also convinced (which makes me sad and very angry) that nothing is going to change.

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  4. Yes, it's a deadly combination and too many want to ignore the connection. Nothing happens--no help for the angry young men, no gun control, not even any acknowledgement that easy access to military grade weapons could be a huge part of the issue.

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  5. Hari OM
    There's nothing I can say that will add to this; it just confounds me that that there are those who think arming teachers is the answer... YAM xx

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  6. I think, like with every complex social issue, there is not just one solution but a whole variety of strategies and policies which need to be implemented. I don't see any of those happening anytime soon in today's USA.

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  7. Nothing good will come of this...it is America after all.

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  8. Re first paragraphs-If you don't want special formatting to show up in your post click over to the HTML view (on the far left side) and do the pasting there. Click back to Compose view and adjust text accordingly.

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  9. All common sense seems to have left us. How do you discuss guns when the guy you're talking to has a gun. Common sense goes out the window.

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  10. I just do not know...anything. I wrap myself in the cheerful soft and well woven yellow towels that you made and suck my thumb. They really are a comfort, I will likely order more because, you know, a dozen is just not enough- besides every time you change colors I WANT!

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  11. It boggles the mind how something as horrific as a mass shooting of children fails to bring about change in our country. Seems we're not as upset with our elected politicians as we should be. Come time to vote, I'll make my voice heard by not voting for incumbents.

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  12. Thank you for this Joanne. Good words. There are many things that can be done that I believe would make a difference. The sad fact is too many politicians are bought by the NRA and our country has become so divided that we can't get anything done anymore. We lost our priorities a long time ago. How in the world has it gotten to the point that people are willing to pay with our children's lives. We cannot keep living like this.

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  13. I saw Trump speaking on the news - illogical - "an argument for more arms not less". Perhaps he could justify more security, but not more arms for ordinary people. "Arm the teachers". How long before a teacher loses it?

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  14. It is just so terrible that this killing of children is accepted as a part of gun owning. How can gun stores sell assault rifles to an 18 year old, there is no morality in their action.

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  15. It’s difficult for us in other countries to comment without sounding like ‘know it all’s’. Nobody knows it all - we’ve learnt it takes a lot of concentrated effort to change things - hopefully your country will manage to make changes to your gun laws - sometime soon

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  16. The NRA hold so much political power - more than they should be allowed to. The big difference between U.S. politics and U.K. politics is money, I believe. Here we are limited as to how much money we can spend on our campaigns and - of course - handguns and assault rifles are illegal. Ownership of sporting guns such as one-shot rifles and maximum three-shot shotguns are strictly controlled. We still have the occasional mass shooting but the difference is that they are always carried out by people who have automatically turned into criminals by acquiring the weapons. Their mental health is a secondary consideration.
    Here, you receive a mandatory 5 year prison sentence by just having a handgun. The idea of reaching the age of 18 and being able to walk into a shop to buy 2 assault rifles and 400 rounds of ammunition with no checks at all is asking for the inevitable.

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  17. I don't think I can add much to what has already been said on blogs and in editorials over the past few days. Sadly, it has all been said before, and nothing has changed. It will be said again and nothing will change. Give it a few more weeks and we will be going through this again. It has all become part of every day American life.

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  18. And still, the local paper is full of people writing in to say it's not guns, it's the lack of God, it's not guns, it's evil, it's not guns, it's mental health, it's not guns, it's...whatever.
    Why, why, WHY are people so afraid of the idea of making guns whose sole purpose is to kill human beings efficiently and instantly off the market?

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  19. I read another blog, The Gods Are Bored. She likens it to smoking and the tobacco lobby. Everybody smoked everywhere and nobody thought a thing about it, 'studies' from the industry claimed it harmless. Then people started dying from lung and mouth cancer and emphysema, then lots of people started dying, then everyone had someone who had died from cigarettes. Slowly they were banned from public transit and then movie theaters, then restaurants and finally bars. She figures that nothing will be done about guns until we reach the saturation level of everyone having been touched by gun violence. She figures by 2050 politicians will finally bow to pressure and start serious regulations of guns.

    The other thing is the angry while male teen. Other countries have the same first person shooter games, the same violent hero movies, and access to the internet and angry disaffected young men and they don't go shooting up someplace. The difference is access to extremely lethal weapons. Are out angry young men that much different? Perhaps. Maybe because this country was founded on genocide and slavery, suffered a war that split us in two after which hate has simmered until it has infected the nation as a whole. This place sucks.

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    1. I also compare it to the smoking problem. Big money influencing young people to buy their goods. It was cigarettes. Now it's guns. Buy a gun be manly. Also buy a gun to protect yourself from the "bad" guy. I sure hope it doesn't take until 2050 for better control. I do understand "this place sucks" but would suggest "too many places and ideas in our nation suck". Once in awhile I'm hopeful.

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  20. Well said, Joanne. There are so many tendrils of this problem, and some of them run very deep. The gun culture is still embraced by too many voters, and ultimately it's voters who decide who represents them at the top. I don't know how you change a culture like that.

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  21. Sad…just sad. And politicians lack the will to make changes if their political futures are at stake.

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  22. I just returned from an overseas trip thoroughly jet lagged to hear about the Uvalde tragedy. As a retired teacher who many, many years ago had to do drills with first graders about what to do if a gunman or gunwoman (it was Laurie Dann in our area) entered our school.... I'm speechless. Thoroughly disheartened, angry, tired, and feeling hopeless.

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  23. I hate the NRA. They help market dangerous weapons. The NRA before the 1970's focused more on gun safety and even supported gun laws. They were not very political back then. Wow did that change.
    Many others are responsible for allowing this mess to grow. The politicians, gun manufactures, some in the news media, all at times add to the problem.
    We need to change our gun culture. Violent people will always exist but weapons that provide the means to quickly kill 10s of people in 10s of minutes are not needed for common citizens.
    I've heard the argument that those killing machines are needed to protect citizens from their government. I don't know what fantasy they live in to believe they could really go up against the federal government with guns. I guess a few of the rioters at the Capitol back on Jan. 6, 2021 believed they could.
    These assault style rifles are marketed to the young males you describe in this post. They are told to own one so they can be a man.
    There sadly too many cases/examples of our gun violence mess. You might recall the young man from Illinois that went to Wisconsin "to help the police" when there were street riots. He was apparently attacked and then he killed the attacker. He should have never thought to go there with a gun in the first place. What made him believe in this fantasy? He was probably too young to have watched Dirty Harry movies.

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  24. "Guns don't kill, people do." I am sick of this simplistic platitude spoken by smug, ignorant gun lovers. If people kill WITH guns, why not remove the instrument? These spouters of simplistic thinking offer no solutions, just spouting about their "rights". I am sick of people!

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  25. I read a post: "A well trained militia attacked an elementary school, killing 19 children and two adults. If you want to argue that it was not a well trained militia, but an individual who attacked the school, then you already understand the difference between what the constitution says and what you want it to say."

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  26. I was astonished to read that there was no security whatever at the school entrance, and the killer was able to just walk in without challenge. And yes, it's the young, angry males we need to be nipping in the bud before they cause havoc. And politicians need to be facing down the gun lobby instead of shrugging their shoulders. Or are they being bought off?

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  27. Young violent males, yes, Misogynistic (note in the last mass killing, the predominant victims were female including his grandmother) and a massive component IMO is the prevalence of violent porn on the internet including snuff. And hell, the answer is "arm the teachers" when the cops were helpless and downright terrified in the face of an AK47.
    It's abominable and downright evil to have pols under the sway of the NRA and do nothing.
    XO
    WWW

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