Shootings, Sex and Reason
Every so often we get a spate of these massacres in which someone takes a gun into someplace he has worked or gone to school or worshipped, and sprays the people there with gunfire. What to make of these and why is it that they seem to occur in bunches. Copy cats? Phase of the moon?
For years I have believed that making guns less accessible would cut down on the numbers of people who are shot in this country every year. I still believe that, but recent studies raise questions about whether our high murder rate is due entirely to the number of guns we carry, or to some part of the American character. Or both. There are countries that permit guns as much as we do and yet have far lower murder rates.
I can understand violence. I have felt angry enough to hurt someone, though I never have. I have had my share of near misses with what is called imulse control. That can refer to sexual urges, anger or even over the top excitement and celebration. What President Clinton was caught at is not hard to understand. Just about everyone has urges. What is hard for a well controlled adult to understand is giving in to the urge when it is liable to be so destructive. It only partly explains to say that a man can have blood in his brain or in his penis, but not both at once.
Not that killing and sex are equivalent, but they both have to do with passion and control. We ask soldiers to put aside the taboo against killing. We ask (allow?) actors to put aside the taboo against public sex.
Perhaps there is something about the blurring of fantasy and reality, entertainment and normal life, that accounts for people doing the sorts of things that make our common life sometimes seem unsafe. Since we are not likely to see that change, what with the power and money associated with entertainment, and the proof in our political life that slick advertising persuades us way more than words like these, we need to find ways to quell the damage.
Sane gun control that does not misuse the 2nd Amendment would be a start.
For years I have believed that making guns less accessible would cut down on the numbers of people who are shot in this country every year. I still believe that, but recent studies raise questions about whether our high murder rate is due entirely to the number of guns we carry, or to some part of the American character. Or both. There are countries that permit guns as much as we do and yet have far lower murder rates.
I can understand violence. I have felt angry enough to hurt someone, though I never have. I have had my share of near misses with what is called imulse control. That can refer to sexual urges, anger or even over the top excitement and celebration. What President Clinton was caught at is not hard to understand. Just about everyone has urges. What is hard for a well controlled adult to understand is giving in to the urge when it is liable to be so destructive. It only partly explains to say that a man can have blood in his brain or in his penis, but not both at once.
Not that killing and sex are equivalent, but they both have to do with passion and control. We ask soldiers to put aside the taboo against killing. We ask (allow?) actors to put aside the taboo against public sex.
Perhaps there is something about the blurring of fantasy and reality, entertainment and normal life, that accounts for people doing the sorts of things that make our common life sometimes seem unsafe. Since we are not likely to see that change, what with the power and money associated with entertainment, and the proof in our political life that slick advertising persuades us way more than words like these, we need to find ways to quell the damage.
Sane gun control that does not misuse the 2nd Amendment would be a start.
posted by Blayney at 2:00 PM
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