Some of the results of the 11-month-long investigation into the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were released yesterday. They outlined—in broad strokes, with a few horrific, unexpected, strange details—what happened inside the school and what had been happening inside the Lanza home.
The information that was released brought up questions, some new (should Adam Lanza’s mother been more concerned about his behavior? Yes.) and some old (does the media’s coverage of such shootings encourage others to commit similar acts via a “contagion effect“? Probably not). And there are, I don’t know, however many other issues that you want (or don’t want) to think about, most of them probably regarding how everything is fucking terrible. “The obvious question that remains is: Why did the shooter murder 27 people, including 20 children?” the official report says. “Unfortunately that question may never be answered.”
But here’s what we do know: For a brief time following Sandy Hook, the horrific deaths of so many people—most of them kindergartners—spurred a debate on gun control as urgent and as heated as any we’ve ever had. For a moment there—from Obama’s eulogy, to Biden’s stumping, to the NRA trying to arm teachers, to hell, even good old Gun Appreciation Day—people were actually, if clumsily, acknowledging the remarkable symbolic and physical power of America’s weapons, not to mention Americans’ throbbing, rock-hard love for their weapons.
Then, you know, shit happened. A meteor exploded over Russia. Catholics got a new pope. The Boston Marathon was bombed. Edward Snowden told every person on the planet that the NSA was reading their email. Egypt had a goddamn coup. Obamacare. Typhoon Haiyan. Everybody got real concerned about Syria, but only for a week or so. Because everything else happened, too: Work. Going to the supermarket. Doing laundry. Not getting enough sleep. Breaking Bad. Traffic. Getting sick. Boring, day-to-day shit. And whatever angry, awkward conversation that America was starting to have about gun control got pushed further and further to the margins. Until it disappeared. And here we are, 11 months later, reading about Adam Lanza’s love of Dance Dance Revolution.
Once Sandy Hook stopped coming up every day, Americans settled back into their acceptance of gun violence. While the Navy Yard shootings got attention, chances are good that the number of actual shootings in 2013 is far, far higher than you think—it’s just that, unlike the Sandy Hook shooting, they’re more in line with the kind of shootings we’ve decided to be cool with. Look at this graphic. Look at how big these numbers are. That’s what we’re used to.
And we’ll stay used to it, because shit happens—big shit, and boring, day-to-day shit—and we’ll get distracted. As the memory of Sandy Hook fades, support for gun control has been slipping; after the defeat, last April, of a bill to ban assault weapons and expand background checks, there’s been no meaningful follow-up legislation on a national level. The best that gun control advocates seem to be hoping for—despite some dismaying “chilling factors” in places like Colorado and Alaska—is that individual states might, at some point, prove to be more responsible than Washington.
So the talk about Sandy Hook, 11 months on, remains just that: talk, most of it already forgotten, and, for most, not even relevant. Until the next shooting happens—by which I mean not just any American shooting, but one, like Sandy Hook, that will be big and devastating enough to jolt and surprise and horrify even us. And then we’ll start this cycle over, because everything’s still in place for it to happen all over again.
The thing that really makes me fear the future is that even if this terrible event, or one like it, brought about some effective legislation it wouldn’t mean a damn thing because very soon 3D printers that can produce working firearms will be widely available. Torrenting an AK will be a reality very soon and this is just the way things are going to be from now on.
We live in a psycho nation, where anti social pieces of shit continue to thrive and claim that they have a right to any type of weapon their scared little heart desires. Now our psycho nation wants to arm teachers because only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Perhaps more then any other issue this is a clear sign to me that our children’s future is not a pretty one. So get used to gun violence and armed unstable people cos we live in America!
It’s become increasingly clear to me that it’s time for us to have a serious conversation about the culture of violence in our society. It’s not about banning video games or censoring media — it’s about discussing WHY we turn to realistic depictions of violence as entertainment and what it might be doing to us to be so steeped in first-person shooters and 4chan and Tarantino movies and “Criminal Minds”.
Look, banning violent media isn’t going to do anything. Same with guns (as much as I support strict gun control laws). All we can is take an honest look in the mirror and say, “Why the fuck am I watching this tenth hour of the SVU marathon? What am I getting from making this headshot in CoD?”
“For a brief time following Sandy Hook, the horrific deaths of so many people—most of them kindergartners—spurred a debate on gun control as urgent and as heated as any we’ve ever had.”
I don’t mean to be all nit-picky, but it was a first grade class that bore the brunt of the attack.
Um, as expected. I have an actuarial table around here somewhere which shows the number of deaths to political leadership toward mental health reform; not a pretty picture, and it’s only for the barely penetrable public sector. Lord knows what’s not happening on the dark side.
There is one major thing that sets our country apart from other developed nations that rarely makes it into this conversation but seems like a glaring omission. Many other countries have an appetite for the same violent entertainment that our country does but do not have the same problems with out of control violence. Some European, Scandinavian, and various other countries have very high rates of gun ownership without the corresponding violence that accompanies it in America. What America has that they do not is an extreme cultural militarization with a very large standing military that is almost always active in some capacity or another.
I’m not trying to come down on the individual men and women that become military veterans for whatever reason but more the culture of the military-industrial complex and the psychology it engenders. Not only are a large amount of resources devoted to maintaining military superiority but the rah-rah theme of war as sport and the idea that America will use its military as a political tool to keep the world’s villains in check permeates our culture. It seems to subconsciously seep out and act as a catalyst for the erosion of moral society. Combine that with the militarization of law enforcement and the oppression of a greedy ruling class that hordes the resources of a wealthy and productive economy and you have a volatile situation that leads to frequent episodes of senseless violence.