Whatever comes of this, it will just be the next ineffective ratchet click... the next treating the symptom instead of the disease.
We don't have a gun problem. We don't even (to a degree) have a mental health problem perse', though I'd entertain GMO's, hormones and the like in our food supply having a correlation to the myriad of alphabet disorders diagnosed in our children, usually leading to medicating them.
There have been guns in America since forever, and there has always been "that kid" everyone knew was trouble(d). With isolated exception, the two rarely crossed. So what's changed? The internet. The internet and it's ability to shrink the world as we know it. The internet and its ability to put loners in contact with other loners or with groups that artificially empower them over distance.
Pre-WWW that kid is separated from other troubled minds by raw distance. Pre-WWW he stays a loner, maybe bullied, but largely introvert and meek. That kid usually never mustered the raw courage to confront someone about getting the wrong change let alone threaten bodily harm... he lived at home blaming the world. Things either got better or worse with time, life of crime, tortured animals, or got married and held down a job but was generally just the guy up the street that was a dick. Of course there have always been occasions of the perfect storm where they'd find each other, or seek out secret societies, or instances of pure evil. Mass murders are hardly new.
Post-WWW that kid can find anonymity and acceptance, he's a keyboard commando and finds the courage to speak his mind, because after all the people on the internet aren't really people necessarily...they're just screen names, opinions and ideas buffered and not really physically dangerous...and so you can act big without fear of physical retaliation. The keyboard and the text message have stripped the human out of most our interactions. There is no eye contact, no inflection, no tone or physical feedback. It's antiseptic and emotionally distant. Add violent video games and that kids hate has the ability to outgrow normal social taboos... like killing a stranger, because he no longer relates to others on a sensory level.
That kid now finds himself able to communicate without fear, blaming the world for his issues. He's no longer bound by the limits of moms basement, and eventually finds his way into some webpage, some forum, some discussion with like hundreds or thousands of like-minded (pick your poison: race, politics, gender, religion, it doesn't matter...it only need be the hate-dejour that has suppressed him the most). There he sits, a victim stewing in forums and building the courage. Call it brainwashing or whatever, but it's empowering. There are others out there either feeling the same or egging him on, and like it or not there is strength in numbers, even if that kid is still just one. Eventually the stewing reaches a boiling point, and the gun is just low hanging fruit...and "the cause" is bigger than his pathetic existence. There is nothing more dangerous than the human mind. If a person has the vacancy to kill another outside self defense, they will find a way. There truly is very little to defend against someone willing to die.
1990, the first webserver and
WWW...1993 Mosaic. 1994 Netscape, 1995 AOL comes into it's own with 3 million users. 1996 Harris and Klebold have an AOL webpage that evolves into information about guns, explosives and hate. They are no longer isolated and have the ability to project their hate over distance and for others to reciprocate. To egg them on. 1998 Harris is on antidepressants. 1999, Columbine..largely recognized as the beginning of an era. A competition for copycats. These once isolated loners now stew in the anonymity of the WWW, building false courage and every once in a while one of these little pressure cookers pops. No longer a kid and not quite a man can be a frustrating time.
So go ahead and institute bans, background checks, limitations whatever for the rest of us. Ineffective ratchet clicks. Mental health issues no matter the cause are rarely an issue in isolation in it's many forms. Take that kid and soak him in hate and pump up his false bravado and his despair, the rest writes itself. It'll be a knife, a bomb, a truck... The trick is always determining how far you can push the innocent in the name of putting the genie back in the bottle.
One man's opinion.
![[mg]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/036.gif "Machine Gun [mg]")
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
