Sandy Hook's aftermath: Why so many mass shootings?

The debate over gun control was well under way before the massacre Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn.

It gathered steam in the hours after the shootings that claimed 28, most of them children under age 10.

But aside from guns, what else is at the root of the violence that’s becoming more common?

How common?

Well, a timeline published Friday by The Associated Press starts at the bottom with the infamous 1966 slayings of 16 people from the clock tower at the University of Texas. The shooter, Charles Whitman, became a household name.

Then several years pass before you have a couple more mass killings: one at a McDonald’s in California, 1984; and then the Killeen Luby’s massacre in 1991.

There are a couple more in 1996 and then — BAM! — in 1999 we get the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo.

The list grows tremendously after the turn of the century: Virginia Tech in 2007; Fort Hood, 2009; the shooting in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, 2011; The Aurora, Colo., movie theater last July; and now Friday’s carnage in Connecticut.

And to all this, we ask, why?

Why do we have so many people — most of them young men — who haven’t enough soul to decide right from wrong and act out in violent and unrestrained manners?

Too many video games?

Mental illness?

Absentee parents?

A society that has trouble with absolutes?

Easy access to guns?

All of these? None?

See the AP’s timeline here.

Then weigh in.

-- Bill Miller

 

Comments

[Beverly Kurtin, Ph.D.]

Guns are NOT the problem. The taboo of mental health MUST be overcome in this country. If one breaks a leg, they will see an orthopedic doctor, if they are experiencing problems with an internal organ, they see an internist. Well, when a person has an emotional problem, they see an EMOTIONS doctor. But if one does see an emotions doctor, there are two problems: first is the embarrassment seeing a therapist can cause and insurance companies still do not treat mental treatment on par with medical treatment.

The absurdity of that fact makes seeing an emotions professional too expensive for many people but they do not realize (or care) that many emotions doctors can be seen gratis or are willing to accept way less than their normal fees.

How do "I" know? I have chronic high level pain. At times, it is difficult to bear. Rather than lash out in anger from the pain, I see an emotions doctor who helps me adapt my way of dealing with the crushing, intransigent pain. Consider that nothing other than intravenous morphine can give me SOME relief, but even morphine does not eliminate all of my pain; I have to use my brain to block the pain. Get the picture? I live with extreme pain 24/7/365. However, the only times that I get morphine is when I finally have to be hospitalized.

Thankfully, I am stable, I have no wish to harm others because I am hurting. I am very grateful that my emotions doctor does not charge me her full rate as I am on Social Security only because my life's savings were destroyed in the '08 disaster.

BOTTOM LINE: Stop treating psychological help as something to be ashamed of. Make insurance companies treat emotional treatment on a par with medical treatment. Unfortunately, the tragedy we saw in Connecticut is going to be repeated because another mentally impaired individual is planning a massacred as these words are being typed. Heaven forbid!

[Beverly Kurtin, Ph.D.]

Something I failed to mention in my previous comment was that UNLICENSED gun dealers at gun shows need to be licensed and simultaneously have to have the individuals to whom they sell weapons, be investigated the same way that every licensed weapons vendors must do.
Yes, the National Rifle Association is going to do their worst to block that kind of legislation. Fibrous mammary gland said the feline, but the lactate solution is still nutritious.
I have nothing against the NRA as they have protected our right to keep our weapons and for that I appreciate them, but they consistently fight any restrictions on who can sell weapons. They have the most important thing that Congress is interested in: Cash money, they buy their favorable decisions. Hopefully, this tragedy may change even their minds.

[balanced]

"Absentee parents?
A society that has trouble with absolutes?"

Without these to guide, provide boundaries, and teach those boundaries, none of the rest can be helped.

[Jerome Almon]

1) Despite what "experts" are saying, the tragedy could have been stopped once it began by the teachers if they knew 1 fact and took 2 actions upon realizing there was a gunman in the school.

2) Despite what the "experts" are stating this situation was/is COMPLETELY avoidable. These mass shooters are actually serial killers that "bloomed to early". That is they don't have the patience of serial killers, but have the same make up. Facts about serial killers:
-America is 4.5% of the world's population BUT 85% of the world's serial killers.
-Serial killers are an American cultural export (where there is American TV and military bases the serial killers are created.
-90% of serial killers are perfectly SANE.
-Serial killers are not natural, but manufactured by the society, therefore completely avoidable.

Without addressing this issue along side with the ridiculous amount of guns in the US, these incidents will only grow geometrically. There are simple steps that can be taken to eliminate these shootings, but it requires us to look at the problem as Apple and Google (the people) would rather than the old, slow way IBM and Xerox (the politicians) would. (IBM and Xerox would say the IPAD and IPHONE can't be built, yet they do exist. This is not the complex problem people are making it out to be, it is just difficult to believe we are cut from the same cloth as Americans that built this country and won WWII. This generation is the parasite generation, we are sorry as hell.)

Thank you-

[G Parker]

Why hasn't prescription medication's potential role in these horrible events ever been discussed? Is it $$?

[David Newman]

In my opinion, the violence is rooted in societal, or human, reasons, and framed by one's knowledge of the day; and will occur irrespective of which weaponry is available to conduct it. Here's what I mean:

It's plain that the first and foremost reason for each shooting case in the United States is the gunman is mentally off, emotionally disturbed at the time. That's the biggest feature. And I don't know any more laws to prevent that from happening, than we already have.

Seen in that context, and the timeline context, one asks what are the ages of these now-more-numerous gunmen in the United States - what generation are they tending to be? And the answer of course is, these are tending to be the young men, the children and grandchildren of the flower child generation, which has had so much impact on the country's society.

So one asks, 'okay, what is different in their world today than before - why are the disturbed shooting, now, when we didn't see this from their counterparts in earlier times?' Is it that there are more cases of mentally over-the-edge young men today, or is it that they are no more numerous now, but they act out much worse today than they did in the past? I don't know the answer, but I do suspect on the one hand that with all the broken families today, there are many more emotionally broken youngsters growing up.

But then I think you have to widen the aperture. When you say "why so many shootings", you also have to consider the shootings in Mexico and along the border; the shootings in Syria by the government there. All the shootings - and bombings - by the terrorists in their own and other lands. These are the events that populate our knowledge of the world. These are "what happens", in the world as we know it today. So when someone in the United States is mentally off and emotionally disturbed, this is the knowledge of "the way things work in the world" in his mind. Along with the knowledge that others before him in the US are rampaging this way.

I don't know the solutions. But in the end, in my opinion, the violence is rooted in societal, or human, reasons, and framed by one's knowledge of the day; and will occur irrespective of which weaponry is available to conduct it.

[Kevin]

Its our diet period - nothing else. Chemicals in the food and NO nutrition=depression