GUILTY MEAugust 9, 2019
Not to demean or dismiss America’s recent mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, but I want to point the finger at the next culprits: me and my family.
You can take President Trump’s word. Last Monday, he cited several factors contributing to the nation’s wave of mass shootings: the Internet and social media, “gruesome and grisly video games” and mental health laws. True?
I use the Internet, although I limit my social media to Facebook where someone I know occasionally re-posts vile stuff. So maybe social media doesn’t make me a threat.
Video games? My son Seth works as a hard-surface modeler for a New Orleans studio supplying visual elements to major video game publishers. He’s also a big gamer. Violent? No.
I don’t play video games, but I read books and watch TV. I recently finished The Thirst by the Swedish mystery author Jo Nesbo. Grisly. I’m concluding another Swedish mystery with a historical setting, The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt Och Dag. More grisly. Carolyn read them too.
TV? We loved The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Also, we just finished season three of Stranger Things: a monster, gruesome deaths and legitimate killings by a police chief using a machine pistol. Are Carolyn and I candidates for mental health intervention? I don’t think so.
Yes, I believe hate posted on the Internet and violent media may stir those with mental-health issues to commit violence. Online white supremacy and anti-Semitism can, too. Do the latter represent forms of mental illness? They’re abhorrent, but I’m not sure. Either way, I support red flag laws and background checks. But consider this . . .
Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries, according to The American Journal of Medicine. Yet our rates of mental illness are about the same. Moreover, people in other countries play violent video games and see violent movies as much as we do. So why are their gun-death rates so much lower?
Per capita, Americans own far more guns. These include military-style weapons designed solely to kill other human beings in war. What reason is there for civilian ownership? Military-style weapons have nothing to do with the Second Amendment—or the Second Amendment needs repealing. Such weapons, using high-capacity magazines and clips, deliver high rates of deadly fire that overwhelm the muskets and single-shot, ball-and-powder rifles and pistols of 250 years ago.
Will we get rid of all military-style weapons? Alex Kingsbury in today’s New York Timesdoesn’t think so. Many will be hidden away and, if cared for, remain functional for a long time. But criminalizing ownership along with the manufacture and import of these weapons can make a difference.
The NRA opposes this, and they exercise clout. Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell snuggle up together in the NRA’s pocket.
I don’t suggest that removing Trump and McConnell from office, while highly desirable, should involve violence or insurrection. That’s wrong morally. Also pragmatically. Federal law-enforcement professionals would be knocking on my door with their AR-15 rifles and similar weapons
And yes, the FBI’s weapons are similar to those we let anyone purchase in much of this nation.
Talk about mental health issues—that’s crazy.
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