Adam Lanza and the culture of violence. Why it will continue to live on.
It took a while but the National Rifle Association (NRA) has finally come out of its comatose state of denial to address the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre and its recipe for a happier less violent America? More guns. Confused, don’t be, reach into your sturdy cupboard, take out your trusted fully loaded best friend and point this way:
dailymail.co.uk: In the National Rifle Association’s first major statement since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the group’s CEO Wayne LaPierre put the blame for mass shootings on violent media, rejected new gun control measures, and called for more security in the nation’s schools.
‘The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,’ LaPierre said as he addressed a room of press.
‘I call on Congress today to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation,’ he said.
Violent media? Stock pile guns in schools? Reject new gun control laws?
Let’s have a look at each of these assertions. The media doesn’t create violence. Society and the real world creates it, the media only reiterates it because people are curious and want to be informed. Or if Mr LaPierre insists perhaps we in the media going forward can continue not depicting or imploring legitimate discussions of what actually goes in the world (chiefly the violent and exploitive behavior of the powerful elite over a muzzled and dumbfounded majority) and just stick to kitsch stories of the next celebrity faux pas and passing up on opportunities of trying to get politicians to affect changes that will limit perpetrator’s ability to use guns to kill people.
Stocking of guns in schools? Could you imagine, children attending school forever being reduced to gun searches, living in heightened inertia and oppressive militia operatives casually wondering in the school hallway, once in a while high fiving the school principal as he gets set to give his weekly pep talk to a perpetually terrified school collective.
Of course what’s even more ludicrous is the assertion that a lone guard can go after an individual with high powered ammunitions and resolve. That is just wishful thinking. Never mind what such a plan would potentially cost, as some have pondered as high as $5.5 billion.
And here’s an option that is vehemently denied by Mr LaPierre. The introduction of gun laws. It’s worked in the UK, Australia and Canada in instances where gun terror led to the introduction of stiff gun laws which subsequently led to the dramatic reduction of gun violence, something that is always conveniently lost in the United States where the mantra that having access to fire arms is our constitutional right. Which raises the question what’s so good about a constitutional right that in the end only serves to line the coffers of entities like the NRA, the industrial military complex and is used as a pretext to coordinate more violence in society?
