I hate guns. If I had one, I’d probably find a reason to use it, and no one needs that.But I’m not afraid to talk about guns or gun culture, or the NRA. Of course, I’m not running for office, and I don’t work for a media company, so I've got nothing to worry about.
So... hey, let’s talk school-shootings. Our latest one, in Chardon, Ohio, fits the usual pattern. Male loner/weirdo is bullied, snaps, obtains gun, brings it to school and either targets specific people or else shoots randomly into the crowd.
Or, to distill it even further: TROUBLED CHILD OBTAINS GUN; TAKES IT TO SCHOOL, SHOOTS OTHER CHILDREN.
And the outcome is that children end up being shot to death. In their school. I don’t think much more can be said about that.
Let’s talk about bullying, since everyone else is. Is bullying worse now than it used to be? I don’t know. I know that children have more access to each other during non-school hours than they once did, and that small incidents can become huge when they're spread via technology.
But let’s really talk about bullying. Let’s reach back into our souls and remember our own experiences of bullying, of being bullied, or of standing by -- or even joining in -- out of fear for our own safety.
I was bullied consistently in eighth grade, September through June. I won’t go into great detail here, because to do so would require about twelve more blog entries and a level of analysis (of family dynamics, money, religion, and other issues) that would prevent me from talking about GUNS.
My bully and her cohorts did not physically injure me (much) but they pretty well shattered my sense of self, my sense of safety, and my sense of freedom. I was terrified to go anywhere alone. I don’t even want to consider how many years it took me to shed the feeling of being watched, assessed, and mocked by others everywhere I went.
The weird thing is, I didn’t even feel angry at the time. I suppressed my anger. It took me a long time to realize I needn’t have. I don’t suppress anger now, and if that bothers anyone, I invite you to get in my face and tell me about my lack of enlightenment or whatever.
What I didn’t do then and what I won’t ever do is shoot anyone. Oh, I fantasized about it. Years later, when we were all lined up in the high school gym in our caps and gowns about to go outside for our graduation ceremony, I thought how neat it would be if I could swing down on one of the gym ropes and spray everyone with gunfire (sparing the ten or twelve people I liked or respected.)
But of course I didn't do it! I don’t even kill spiders!
I didn’t have access to a gun then, and I don't now. I don’t like guns and I don’t believe that anyone outside the military or law-enforcement needs one. Not in America, not anywhere. Angry people with guns kill people!
BUT WE MUSTN’T TALK ABOUT THE GUNS!
We are permitted to ask where TJ Lane's parents were. We are permitted to wonder why no one saw this coming. That's fine. Just don't ask WHERE THE HELL HE GOT THE GUN, because it wasn't the gun's fault that he shot it.
But PJ, you’re thinking. You were bullied. I was bullied. Everyone we know was bullied. And some of us did have access to guns. Why didn’t we go to school and shoot everyone?
—
Do you remember the first school shooting? Or, more accurately, do you remember the first school shooting that didn’t involve ethnic minorities in an inner city? Columbine was the first pre-meditated mass shooting carried out by troubled white boys in a white suburban high school.
But it wasn’t anything new. Not exactly. Terror at the hands of troubled people with firearms has been part of the American landscape since at least 1966, when a gunman climbed into the bell tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 15 people dead.
But the numbing frequency with which mass shootings now occur didn’t begin until the 1980s.
Here’s an incomplete timeline:
- 21 people at a McDonald’s in San Diego, 1984.
14 people in an Oklahoma post office, by an ex-coworker, 1986.
“Going Postal” enters our lexicon, late 1980s.
7 people at a laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, by an ex-coworker, 1988.
23 people at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, 1991.
Let’s throw the Oklahoma City bombing onto this list, because I believe it’s relevant. 168 people, including children at a daycare center, 1995.
And then Columbine.
And now several incidents every year. College campuses, high schools, middle schools. Companies from which someone has been let go. Beauty shops at which someone’s custody dispute ends in a hail of bullets.
BUT GUN CONTROL IS NOT THE SOLUTION, AND WE MUST NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT IT.
Is bullying worse than ever? I don’t know. Are we more resentful after being unfairly fired from a job than we were in 1950, or in 1930? I can’t answer that. Are people’s divorces any more painful than they were in 1970? Probably not. Life is sometimes very difficult, very painful, almost too much to bear. This has always been the case. If anything, a lot of us have it easier than anyone living at any other time in human history could possibly have imagined.
So why are we shooting each other?
Because we are awash, every hour and every day, in violent, paranoiac rhetoric. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that mass shootings have become commonplace since the advent of the modern Republican Party, with its enablers in the world of Talk Radio, and its adherents in the most geographically or psychologically insular corners of the country.
And let us not forget the deep pockets of untouchable National Rifle Association and its extremely powerful Political Victory Fund.
The fact is, we live in a society in which for the last thirty years the paranoia and fear of the white working class has been intentionally ratcheted-up by opportunistic politicians, organizations, and media outlets. Fox News was launched in 1996. Think about how the tone of our political discourse has changed since then.
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly will tell you that if you're white, male, and just barely squeaking by, there's always someone to blame. The feminazis are coming to take your job. The "illegals" are coming to take your job. And the Black people? Let’s face it, they get everything handed to them. (Even the presidency.)
The “jack-booted thugs of the federal government” are coming to take your guns away. The college-educated elites on both coasts are laughing at you. The abortionists didn't even want you to be born. And the Muslims? Don’t even look at them cross-eyed. They get everything. (Even the presidency.)
Add to all this persistent myth that America is the last great frontier, and that the descendents of the original white settlers all pulled themselves up by their bootstraps without the slightest bit of help from anyone. And now all these newcomers and women and gay people and non-Christians want to get all that good stuff for free? On your dime?
White guy, you’re being bullied. You gotta protect your stuff.
Sharron Angle, the delightful former assemblywoman who lost the Nevada Senate race to Harry Reid in 2010, said the following on Bill Manders’ radio show:
You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.
I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.
Yes, that’s the way to deal with people we don’t like. “Second Amendment remedies.”
This attitude is the source from which adults in small-town America -- whether geographically small, like Chardon, Ohio, or small like Staten Island, New York City’s most conservative outpost -- take their cues. And children take cues from the adults around them.
If the adults are frightened, angry, and arming themselves to the teeth, what should the children do?
So wring your hands at each new school shooting. Blame the school, the parents, the therapists, the people who should have noticed that something was wrong.
BUT FOR GOD’S SAKE, DO NOT SPEAK OF THE GUNS.








