Mass Shootings

[anvi]

I've been mugged at gunpoint before, and I work at schools, where a number of these have happened for decades.  I've also had a number of friends and one uncle commit suicide with guns, which in the U.S. counts for about 50% of all annual gun deaths.  So, when I see another one has happened, or even when I see stories on the news about individual murders or gun-related crimes or accidents, it does bother me.  I don't know the people involved, so it's not normally gut-wrenching or anything, though sometimes when parents of murdered children are interviewed. that does get to me.  But I know at least enough to realize that the feeling we often carry around that it could never happen to either us or others we care about is quite a false comfort.  But what bugs me about it most is that it doesn't seem to bug us anymore.  I understand why people are numb to it--there are probably lots of different reasons people become desensitized that are perfectly understandable, from the commonality of all of it to the predictable media dramatization to the even-more predictable back-and-forth of the gun debate to the need just to block it out so that one can do what one has to do anyway to get through the day.  But still, our conditioned lack of concern for other people who have suffered terrible misfortune doesn't seem good to me.  When we care about one another as fellow human beings or fellow citizens so little, then what's the point of talking about human rights or patriotism anyway?

[anvi]

Well, like I said, I think it's understandable, Grumps--I understand why people tune it out when it happens. 

One other thing your comment about animals brings to mind is that there was a society for the protection of animals in the U.S. before there was a society for the protection of children.  Could be something deep-rooted in the culture about it, I'm not sure.

[anvi]

Poor Dodd.  Had he been tougher and able to desensitize himself to German brutality, he could have, enjoyed a whole lifetime helping America, per his instructions, continue to do business with the Nazi regime.   

No need to worry about folks like me, angus.  I personally am far more likely to die of a gunshot than I am from the effects of oversensitivity. 

[anvi]

I understand your point, angus.  Sorry for my smart-ass reply, maybe without the smart.  Anyway, I certainly agree that both being desensitized and over-indulgence in empathy can incapacitate us, make us unable to help others.  Bertrand Russell always used an example that stuck me as Buddhist-flavored in a way.  He pointed out that sympathy unaided by knowledge could prompt people to do things like call immediately for a village mass when the plague broke out in some area, only causing the plague to spread that much faster, while knowledge without wisdom could cause things like WWI.  Well, WWI was caused by lots of stupidity too, but the point stands.  Empathy by itself ain't enough, and too much of it can be quite counter-productive.  The magical balance between them that can empower people to really help one another is that elusive thing.

[anvi]

Not all tragedies like this can be prevented, of course.  And while better mental-health practices would generally be desirable in the U.S., it seems to me that 1.) if anything, this kid was getting over-indulged and 2.) in my own experience with therapists, I sometimes have felt that they actually encourage people to dwell on their own preoccupations rather than be more attentive to those around them.  I don't know that either of these was the case in this instance at all.  In any case, I think it's probably folly in the end to hope that we can nurture 300 million plus people enough to prevent them from doing crazy things.  I think it's probably more reliable to regulate gun ownership for everyone.  I don't know enough about the subject to say exactly how, though, and I won't pretend that I do.  But even if we had more sensible regulation, violence in our society has lots of causes, some historical, some social, some economic, some personal, some caused by extreme forms of illness, and they differ in varying degrees in every case.  The more we go round and round in circles in search of the right answers, the right incentives and so forth, the more many of us do get desensitized as these things keep happening.  I just meant to say that increasing desensitization will also only make the problem worse, more pervasive, and we'll only be able to stay that way until, one terrible day, it hits closer to us.  Intuitively, it makes more sense to me to keep the most deadly weapons under lock and key than our compassion for one another under lock and key.  But I don't have the answers on this one.  People more knowledgable than I am about it need to have a real, prolonged discussion about it without accusing one another of inhumanity and treason.  What do we do?  Engaging more and not less has to be where it starts.

[anvi]

Yeah, I don't know about the movies and video games argument.  There may be some cases in which watching violent movies or video games increases the likelihood, the psychological ease, with which people act violently toward others.  I just gravely doubt even in those cases that it's the major or inciting cause.  What percentage of people who have watched lots of violent films or even played violent video games have committed violent crimes?  I don't know if there is such a thing as a reliable empirical answer to that question, but whatever the number is, it probably falls far short of establishing correlation.  That means that most people who watch violent films or play violent games can easily resist turning to violence against others.  Hell, I played lots of shoot-em-dead video games at arcades and on Atari when i was a kid, and for a long time I was a huge boxing and martial arts fan too, and I have no criminal record.  All that being accepted, there are probably innumerably better things a kid can do with their time than indulging in lots--not none, but not lots--of violent entertainment--even if it doesn't make one a murderer, it probably almost never helps one improve one's outlook on life.  But another thing that occurred to me today was how much of a gender issue this may be too.  How many mass shootings in the past two decades have been perpetrated by women?  I ask because I don't know the number.  It might not be zero, but I guess it's pretty rare.