This WILL make you uncomfortable, and I do not apologize for that.
A few people disagreed with my statement that the United States, and the world as a whole, has gone through several decades of increasing peace. I don’t believe that I can convince those who simply don’t believe me that this is so. However, I encourage you to look up the information yourself. A couple pointed out that while violent crime in America has gone down over the past couple of decades, the number of school shootings has been increasing. I agree that is the case, but not to the degree that most people believe. Unfortunately, I do not have the data to back it up. You see, the CDC and other governmental agencies did not start compiling data on school shootings until after 2011 and did not mandate that schools report the data until after the tragedy at Sandy Hook. While part of the reason for this lack of data is because schools had incentive to underreport school violence as they wanted to make their schools look safe, most of the problem simply comes from how the data was reported and aggregated. It still is a question. For example, do drive-by gang shootings (which are way down from the 90s) count if the shooter wasn’t technically on school property? More so, many instances of school violence (including shootings and bombings) simply weren’t reported during the “golden years” of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, because the incidents were focused on segregated schools for African Americans or other minorities. Thus, statistics in this case can be misleading. Sure, in my personal experience, I have seen school violence decrease—fewer school fights, fewer staff members attacked—but that is anecdotal evidence only. However, let us assume that school violence is on the rise.
The problem is not guns, nor their availability. There have been no gun programs or laws over the past two decades which correlate with--what I believe to be--a rise in school shootings (or even mass shootings). Many of these guns have been on the market and accessible for decades. In fact, there is a greater correlation between calls for gun control and increases in gun sales. From a statistical point of view, calling for gun control leads to more guns to be out in the public. I do believe that we need better safeguards in place when it comes to purchasing guns and ammunition, but without the complete removal of all guns and ammunition, such steps will not stop these sorts of shootings from happening.
The problem is not with our mental health system. While our mental health system, and our health system in general, has a great deal of issues and could certainly be better, we are better at identifying and appropriately treating mental health conditions than we have ever been in our past. By placing the blame on mental health, we decrease the chances that people will seek mental health services due to the stigma associated with it. And while I might argue that being responsible for the deaths of human lives suggests that these shooters might have some mental health issues, the fact is that the statistics do not support this idea either. The diagnosis of mental disorders for these shooters normally comes after their acts. Many of them did not show any signs, even in some cases where they were tested, of a mental disorder.
The problem is more complex than any political statement (or blog post) can fully explain. However, I feel that it comes down to three main problems:
1. We are failing to build empathy for other human beings. I feel that a part of this is due to cuts to arts, humanities, and trades in our educational system, part of this is due the heightened level of political divisiveness, part of this is due to social media sites that allow people to unfriend those they disagree with and thus only exist in an echo-chamber filled with people who support their beliefs and hate the “other,” and part of this is due to media of all kinds that desensitize us to the plight of our fellow humans. Empathy is inherent within each of us, but it wars with our selfishness. It needs to be cultivated by exploring other ways of thinking, by working with people from other walks of life, and by allowing one’s mind to be open to more than its selfish desires. I feel I need to stress again that all of us are capable of violence, of bringing pain to others, and of even enjoying it. What stops most of us from acting on those desires is empathy (well, that and a fear of punishment). However, there are times that our desire to inflict pain and suffering outweighs our rational or empathetic reasoning. This usually happens when we find ourselves threatened in some way.
2. That leads us to the second problem. Who are these shooters? A) Almost all of them are male. We’ve long known in society that male aggression needs avenues of expression--this is why we have sports teams in our major cities. Yet men have been feeling more and more lost in our society. Their role models have fallen, they are portrayed in media most often as imbeciles (especially married men), and while they are told many things that they are not to be, there has not been much about who they ought to be. B) These shooters have been disproportionately white. Now, many people will no doubt mock the idea that white men have been feeling more and more disenfranchised, but those same people didn’t expect Donald Trump to become President, and probably still do not understand how that happened. More than just men, white men have been under continual fire with little in the way of “politically correct” means to defend themselves. If they try to bring up an opposing viewpoint about race inequality, they are labeled as racist. If they try to bring up issues of gender, they are sexist. They cannot discuss their own personally disadvantaged situation without being mocked or shouted down. A person falsely called a racist or a sexist or any other derogatory term (such as deplorable) over and over again may choose to embrace it.
3. And so, where do these white men, many of them young, turn? The Internet. I am continually amazed at what can be found on the Internet. The Internet can provide validation for nearly any belief. It leads some people to conspiracy theories. It leads others to paths of religious extremism. It leads others to places that build on rage and violence. Worse, it provides a means to acceptance and even fame. In some ways, the growing shooter trend is similar to the Tide Pod challenge (or the other iterations that came before). People want acceptance, and if they can’t have that—fame. Especially if they feel they have nowhere else to turn, and have lost their empathy to other humans, people will resort to violent acts to get attention.
Where does this leave us? Well, it certainly doesn’t give us the quick and easy solutions that we all desire. I would like to say that we could legislate this problem away, but we can’t. This issue requires societal change, which itself requires communication and understanding. Yelling at people who don’t agree with you might make you feel better, but it has the opposite effect.
Well, this post is MUCH longer than I (or you) wanted, and I still don’t feel that I have adequately expressed my thoughts on the matter. However, this has taken several hours to write, so I’m going to put it out there anyway.
Be excellent to each other.