Let’s make Umpqua the last one.
Heartbreaking. Sickening. Twisted. Sad.
Another mass shooting – this one, close to home. A shooter has killed at least seven and wounded another 20 or so at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon today. No reports yet explain why, or who did it, or who the victims are.
I don’t need reports to explain why. I know why.
It’s because we have a violent society with too many guns, where anyone with a gripe can load up with deadly weapons and take it out on innocent people.
We are conditioned in our society to strike out with force at institutions, or at people who represent institutions, to protest our grievances. Individuals feel powerless and oppressed by large institutions like government, schools and (to a much lesser extent) corporations. When we strike back at them, we show our power. When we kill, we shift the balance of power, ever so temporarily, back in our favor. Those institutions who have told us that we are small, that we are insignificant, that we are failures, will feel our wrath. We are no longer small. We are significant. We are not failures at dealing death.
The high frequency of mass shootings in public places in the U.S. is a by-product of twin forces at work in American culture. One is the demonization of institutions, particularly public institutions. It is not a coincidence that a preponderance of these events occur at schools and government buildings. Government is inherently bad. Therefore, it must be destroyed. It oppresses my existence, therefore I must end its existence. Or at least the existence of a few of its employees.
The second force is the worship of violence, particularly gun violence. We love action movies, crime shows, and war. Yes, war. Face it – we’ve been more or less continuously at war with at least one other nation since 1941, if not before. Iran-haters and saber-rattlers would have us add another armed conflict to our resume if we can’t force the ayatollahs to kneel before us. Gun violence makes us feel powerful.
It is a lie. Gons don’t make us stronger. They make us weaker. Besides the obvious way (killing each other), the worship of gun violence is a societal illness, a weakening of our social heart, a cowardly retreat from superior but more difficult means of dealing with our problems – an easy way out for the individual shooter that makes everything harder for everyone else. And, more painful.
We need stronger laws limiting access to guns, particularly automatic weapons. We need better enforcement of existing laws. And we need to commit, as a society, to consciously and deliberately reject violence as a way of life – a way of life that keeps people desperate, and desperately clinging in fear to their guns.
I am not an anti-gun crazy. I was raised with guns, learned to shoot (fairly well) in my teens, and learned to respect their power. I respect those who obtain military or police training and put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us. I understand the primal urge to hunt for food and connect to one’s origins.
But I reject the idea that we need a stash of guns in every household, or citizen militias equipped with high-powered automatic weapons, to keep us free from tyranny. The tyrants won’t be beaten by our guns. They’re beating us already by making us hate and kill each other – and making it easy to obtain the weapons to do it.
To those who would accuse me of “politicizing” this event, I say this: I don’t care. This has got to stop. Let’s make Umpqua the last mass murder – and the last time we have to have this debate.
