I'm still going to come up with my own essay on it, probably for Medium, just because I think this whole area is ripe for being mined more deeply, but, in answer to the question of, "If it's not guns themselves, or even some kind of gun subculture, what has changed culturally and spiritually about this nation over the past three-plus decades that makes for this undeniable uptick in mass shootings?"
But Adams starts into where I want to go:
What changed? The mainstreaming of nihilism. Cultural decay. Chemicals. The deliberate destruction of moral backstops in the culture. A lost commonality of shared societal pressures to enforce right and wrong. And above all, simple, pure, evil.I was thinking about this earlier this evening. Why wasn't this trend in these bloody massacres even a remote possibility in 1958? 1918?
It isn't the guns. It's something way more fundamental. Something to do with the whole notion of why we should bother to organize ourselves into a society in which people feel safe.
As I say, I'll be looking further into this, here and perhaps elsewhere, but I wanted to get the conversation started.
Look for more in the near future.
Don't know.
ReplyDeleteSurely somebody dead or somebody alive there that day, day before yesterday, prayed to Our Father, give us this day, including delivering us from evil. I'd venture to say, given the worldwide population increase since 1908, since 1968, more people than ever before on the only human-inhabited planet that we know of in the known cosmos prayed that prayer. Why did it not work? That day, that place, this time? Don't know.
ReplyDeleteI was so shaken by the 20 second sound devourment I heard on The Chad Benson show on the car radio (came on as I was just half-listening) that I immediately dialed my wife 800 miles away. She answered the phone and soon said, "what's going on down there in Florida?" As if it's a weird Florida problem. I dunno, I doubt if it's a problem in a state everybody wants to come to for the sunshine and chemicals (still mostly booze which'll wreck a family tragically slowly as any chemical), then leave for the illusory security of their domains elsewhere, knocking the crazed humanity gathered on the beaches and in the bars. These things only happen in weird sinful places, right?
DeleteHere. Click here. The horror...
"Chilling videos from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Florida placed viewers inside bloodied classrooms as we heard gunshots and screams for help in real-time, making this a very different mass murder."
http://chadbensonshow.com/
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/grandmother-foils-teens-plot-to-carry-out-school-shooting/ar-BBJc9GA?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=SL5JDHP
ReplyDeleteIt IS the guns.
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ReplyDeleteI'm sticking with 'don't know,' but everybody knows by now that 2 law enforcement agencies were notified of the killer's red flag behavior. He appears to be a largely unloved product of a pregnancy, like many before him and more and more all the time, but likely on the psychologically sick side. He had been expelled you know. Let the witch hunts accelerate and the psychobabble proliferate. I have never owned a gun and don't plan to now, but I will defend the freedom of sane Americans to own guns for hunting and personal protection.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it with "un loved product of a pregnancy." That is what needs to change on the cultural level.
ReplyDeleteI see a burgeoning swath of the country that's aimless and largely unloved. All the lonely people...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/sheriff-says-office-got-20-calls-about-suspected-school-shooter-in-recent-years/ar-BBJepWG
ReplyDelete