Mass Shootings & American Culture

What is it with mass shootings in our country? Why here? Now two of the most infamous incidents are in suburban Denver. Why there? What was the motivation? Why males, all relatively young. Teenagers in the Columbine event in Littleton, and now 24 years old in the latest massacre in Aurora.

And of course there were the shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. So Colorado is not alone. No region is alone in this.

Questions. More questions. Struggling to find reason and sense from senseless acts. Getting our heads around facts that seem to be non facts. How do we settle into these happenings? When do we get comfortable with them, at least to look at them, study them and come to some workable conclusions?

Not easy. So many people become enraged over issues, public discussion or bad public behavior – they lose their cool and rant and rave. We see it all the time. Hell, we contribute our own bile from time to time to such happenings – at least in unguarded moments, to blow off steam. That’s our coping skills working.

But we don’t pick up tools of massacre and hunt down people to kill. In cold blood. What gives a very small minority of our fellow countrymen the license to do that? Not really license, at least in our minds, but the unmooring of their conscience enough to do these things? How horrible. How do they rectify their actions with the loss of life, humanity and love?

Unanswerable questions really. We can only imagine the causes. Mental health scientists and practitioners will study these events for years, leaking out theories until something clicks into place.  Meanwhile, we hold our collective breath and live another day, and then another. We recapture our faith that these incidences are very few and we can be assured that peace and sanity will resume.

The trouble is causation needs to be nailed down if we really want confidence in our conclusions. In a land of free speech many people get their jollies by ruffling feathers. They feel good about doing this. They go for the juggler. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe because this earns them a living? Or makes them feel superior? Or in power? Take your pick. Those are just some of the theories behind their motivation. There are many more to consider.

We have political parties manipulating sound bites for both money and votes, so they can exercise control over Congress, or a state house, or the policy setting position at some government entity or other. We have churches, mainline and kook fringe, redefining Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and as many variations as you can dream up! They have little authority to say these things, but they say them just the same. And it is a free country, so we let them. It’s in our culture, right?

And they are listened to. And nut cakes buy guns and shoot innocent people because they can, and it makes them feel in control for a moment or two. Whether they took this drastic action based on what they heard will be open to debate forever. No will ever know. It is the unknowable.

Meanwhile we seek calm and peace. A nook in which we can think. To come to terms with who I am, and who you are, so that we can be at peace with each other. That’s the very least we can do. At a time like this.

May this be the last such time like this. We can hope, can’t we? We can always hope.

July 21, 2012