<p>The shooting raises a lot of questions. I am loathe to use the term “nuts” because we don’t know if these two were truly mentally ill or were just two angry people. It is sad that people so young could have that kind of hate and anger in them, and I suspect if they lived to stand trial they would not have been found mentally ill. Put it this way, these two to me appear to be two people left behind and were angry at a number of things. It doesn’t help when you have those feeding into this anger, the demagogues of talk radio, with all the anti government rhetoric that bordes on the violent. The whole Patriot movement, with its claims to the right of armed resistance and so forth hasn’t helped much. </p>
<p>This is nothing new, the radical fringe on the left in groups like the SDS and such claimed the same right, and were inflamed by a different group of demagogue. More importantly, the language of the demagogues help feed this, the whole idea of the ‘us’ versus ‘them’, where people like these two are being told that their problems are caused by ‘them’, doesn’t matter whether it is the government, immigrants, ‘elitists’, doesn’t matter, the whole discourse (or lack there is) helps feed people like these two. When people like Rush Limbaugh rant about “Feminazis”, when people like Sean Hannity yell and scream about how people who disagree about certain things are traitors, the tone and the rhetoric is so heated that it hasn’t exactly helped, either.</p>
<p>As far as gun control goes, not sure if it would help in this case. Would these two have failed a background check? I haven’t seen where either of them had a criminal record or mental health issues that would show up, so would it work? I am not a fan of the NRA’s policies that anyone should be able to buy a gun, anytime they want, and any kind, but not sure anything would have stopped this. Fortunately or unfortunately, their rants would not disqualify them from gun ownership, freedom of speech would make such bans problematic for simply words…I think personally there are things that could help with some mass shootings, like limiting the refire rate on semi automatics and limiting magazine size and also how fast clips or magazines can be switched, but with something like this it wouldn’t help all that much. </p>
<p>The real problem to me is that there are so many people who think that they have the right to use violence, and there are a lot of the ‘gun nut’ fringe whose beliefs about weapons is they are arming themselves for their eventual fight against the government (our corporate headquarters is down south, where a number of the people I work with are hunters and active shooters, and they are scared of these clowns, the Patrior movement and such…), they really think their stockpile of weapons is going to hold off trained soldiers with the kind of firepower the military has…I think there needs to be some soul searching, that the kind of hatred that has flared, where advocating violence and such has become tolerated in far too many quarters, and where people are using rhetoric that is far beyond hyperbole, where they turn other people into enemies, not to disagree with,. not even to call names (which is bad enough), but rather into something needing to be ‘eliminated’, and it has been magnified by the internet and talk radio and so forth. I don’t hold any one person or group accountable, politicians who embraced the loony right are part of this, the media, like Fox News and talk radio, that find huge ratings in these ranters is to blame, and I also blame those who in the face of all this, might sit and shake their heads but say “whatever”. </p>
<p>Demonizing people to the point where they aren’t human should have other people come right back and make clear that isn’t tolerated, same way with politicians and media people who encourage this rage, fan it, etc…it is kind of like smoking, in that the biggest change in the fight against it was to make it socially a lot less accepted that has led to rates plumetting. Treating ranters as ‘nuts’ and rolling our eyes ignores the fact that said ‘nuts’ have the ability to cause real danger. It is easy to say “get the government after them” but freedom of speech says the line there is pretty hard to overcome, and in the end, the answer to this craziness or whatever you call it is for people around them making sure it is unacceptable. Maybe if people around these two, family, friends, made clear their views were unacceptable, or maybe if they saw it as being a sign of problems and got them help, this wouldn’t have happened. </p>
<p>Again, I am not an NRA absolutist, I don’t own guns, I have no use for them, but I also think gun control is a simplistic answer for a complex problem, and while easy access to guns, especially the wrong type,plays a role in some of these shootings, the real problem is that there are too many people out here that think that violence is the answer to their anger, that in turn has been fueled by media and politicians who not so subtly push the idea of revolt and ‘us versus them’, and the more sensible people ignore these types as ‘nuts’, rather than treating them as the problem they are. </p>