Predictably, the next reaction after grief was a desire to find the root cause of this terrible tragedy. And just as predictably, every party which could be considered at least partially complicit in the equation put their head down and with great indignation, pointed the finger elsewhere.
The gun industry.will actually do even better than blaming everyone else. They'll actually use this as an opportunity to insist this is why we need to equip everyone with a gun. The argument will go something like this: "If James Holmes walked into a movie theater heavily armed and began to shoot people, he'd be dead after the first shot because twenty people would pull out their Glock semiautomatic pistols and put him in the ground." Really? I think what would be more likely is that Holmes would have gotten shot after the first killing, and then there would be an orgy of people tragically killing each other as a dark theater full of armed individuals without police or tactical training would gun each other down unsure of which person was the aggressor and which was acting in self-defense. Wouldn't our 2nd Amendment rights be honored without high-capacity magazines and high-powered assault rifles?
Hollywood and the media will blame the others, but mostly the gun industry and with a touch of "the guy was just nuts" (mental health system). It sort of reminds me of that old Simpsons episode when Marge Simpson tries to take on the violence of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, and the Roger Meyers, the CEO of the cartoon goes on the a Nightline-like show to defend his show:
Roger Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing...There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Reporter Kent Brockman: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance. Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went on for thirty years.
Kent: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
Nobody doubts how visual media influences minds and shapes behavior, but Hollywood won't touch this one with a ten-foot pole. The argument goes that the vast, vast majority of people who view violent materials can separate fantasy from reality and will not duplicate or imitate the violence which is depicted within the artistic media. I agree, but the vast, vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens, and they shouldn't get a pass in the same way, right? And using Roger Meyers' point, mass murders occurred before the days of high-capacity cartridges and automatic weapons. Does that mean that guns get off the hook?
The mental health system with blame others, but mostly the gun industry. Of course, this fails to acknowledge that we have a woeful support system for those who are mentally ill. If you walk in any major urban center and you encounter those who are willingly homeless and suffering from some sort of substance abuse, you'll also fine a alarming frequency where these people are actually mentally ill. The system is unable to accommodate them due to cracks in the system and unsustainable financial costs, so what happens? These individuals are released into the public, with the hope that they never have the opportunity to hurt someone or themselves. Even if this doesn't fit the mold of James Holmes, a doctoral candidates, isn't every violent offender who is ultimately found insane an indictment of the failure of a mental health system which should have institutionalized him or her in the first place?
An of course, we need to look in the mirror as a society, even though our own society will blame everyone else except ourselves. Why not? Everyone else is doing it. Could we be society where there is no glory or fame in the mass killing of innocent people, even as one pundit noted the irony is that the mass murderer gains fame, and the victims are quickly forgotten? What if we were a society where people like James Holmes could preemptively find more healthy outlets to vent his anger? What if we were a society which found no appeal in destruction and death, or the media depiction of such? What if we didn't engender a gladiator culture of violence, where hard hits in sports were considered manly, and our movie heroes are frequently those who tote guns and bandoliers?
What it comes down to is this: Each party can argue that if they did X, Y and Z in isolation, it would not prevent a similar tragedy from recurring. That's fair. But why wouldn't each party act independently to mitigate the risk and minimize the scale of such tragedies?
What if everybody took a portion of the responsibility and acknowledged that there was something that they could do to prevent tragedies such as these from recurring? What if each party raised their hand, even if maintaining "You can't blame this whole thing on us" and announced, "We're going to do what we can to reasonably reduce the probability of something like this happening again." Is seems to me that this is the only way that complex and multi-faceted societal problems gets solved.
That would be nice. But I'm not going to hold me breath.
What it comes down to is this: Each party can argue that if they did X, Y and Z in isolation, it would not prevent a similar tragedy from recurring. That's fair. But why wouldn't each party act independently to mitigate the risk and minimize the scale of such tragedies?
What if everybody took a portion of the responsibility and acknowledged that there was something that they could do to prevent tragedies such as these from recurring? What if each party raised their hand, even if maintaining "You can't blame this whole thing on us" and announced, "We're going to do what we can to reasonably reduce the probability of something like this happening again." Is seems to me that this is the only way that complex and multi-faceted societal problems gets solved.
That would be nice. But I'm not going to hold me breath.
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