Guns are not the answer

School shootings have been a topic of serious interest in America for quite some time. It seems that the number of school shootings increases every year despite the increasing amount of safety regulations and guidelines. Including the massacre on Valentine’s Day, there have been five school shootings this month, almost twice the number of shootings in all of last year. As the number of shootings increases, it becomes abundantly clear that more safety regulations – more guns – are not the answer.

What causes these massacres or, more precisely, what creates these killers? Do we blame psychosis or mental illness? Do we blame parental neglect or extreme bullying? Maybe we should blame ourselves.

While they were once unpredictable and isolated instances, school shootings have become much more frequent and deadly. Psychosis and mental illness, while still definitely a factor, no longer seem enough of an explanation. Parental neglect and extreme bullying are present in many of the shootings, but still don’t seem to be the root of the problem. The source of the problem must be deeper, in the structure of American culture itself. After all, this is not a problem in the rest of the world. There have been more than twice as many school-related shootings in the U.S. than in the rest of the world.

One common theme in most, if not all, cases is the idea of the “outsider.” Every killer feels they’ve been a victim of some injustice or another and somehow comes to the conclusion that violence and/or suicide is the only solution available. This feeling of outsider-ness is something that everyone faces at some point and is not itself the problem. The problem is the cultural norms that create, prolong and intensify this feeling of outsider-ness and the way it is romanticized and idealized by the media.

Cultural norms are exactly what they sound like, behaviors and reactions that are normal in a given culture. In America, the norm in most settings is to be as polite as possible while respecting everyone’s privacy and personal space.

This can create a pervasive feeling of isolationism for individuals or small groups without means to directly interact with other people. If you don’t think this is true, try to start a prolonged conversation with a stranger in an elevator, sitting in close proximity to a stranger on a bench or make steady eye contact with someone you don’t know.

If this doesn’t make you feel a bit awkward, then you have not completed the socialization process. Now imagine if you had a speech impediment or social disability.

Some people are unable to cope with the isolationistic tendencies of our culture. They find it hard to make friends or speak to people they don’t know.

When small conflicts arise, these people are unable to solve them without confronting the person or turning to someone else for help, both of which would seemingly break a social norm.

Confronting the person they have a problem with or asking someone else to mediate would require them to invade someone else’s privacy and possibly break the polite-as-possible norm. For a person that is already adverse to social interactions this is nearly impossible. When this person is faced with a conflict that they cannot solve, they take the same escape we all do: fantasy. “I should have said this!” For the social adverse, this soon becomes, “I should have done this!” In the extreme cases of isolationism and social anxiety it goes beyond this to, “I should do this!” This progression is only made worse by the media.

Looking at the media, specifically the media directed at teenagers and young adults, a few common themes seem to permeate everything. The idea of the outcast standing up suddenly and making a name for himself is one of the most utilized of these theme. In cinema, you have “Revenge of the Nerds,” a movie about a group of losers and outcasts form a fraternity and then through a well-formulated series of events make their way to the top of the food chain. In “The New Guy” a loser who is shamed before his entire school changes schools and puts into action a semi-elaborate plot that begins with beating up the toughest kid in town to make a good impression on everyone. In addition to these teenage movies, there are the classic westerns in which the quiet antihero rolls into town and kills all the rich jerks that prey on the poor.

In music, you have My Chemical Romance, with lyrics like “I spent my high school career, spit on and shoved to agree . Bring out the old guillotine, we’ll show ‘em what we all mean.” There is an online comic based on lyrics by the U.K. band Bullet For My Valentine about a person who was victimized his entire school career. He captures the person that beat him up and murders him.

The protagonist states that killing the bully makes all the childhood scars “disappear.” Even more disturbing than the comic was the stream of comments praising it.

These media stereotypes are dangerous and, in conjunction with anxiety disorders, may lead directly to violence.

MARCUS HELEKER
Opinion Writer

Related Posts:

1. Guns are not the answer, Part 2
2. Violent video games don’t kill, guns do
3. Media attention contributes to school violence
4. Please, no guns on campus.
5. Guns on campus