The exception to the rule...

Terrorism  
ter·ror·ism [ter-uh-riz-uhm] - noun
1. The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

Why is it that we declare people who plant bombs to kill and maim people, to illicit fear, terrorists, but we call people who do it with a gun just crazy individuals? What's the difference?

We have very little information as to the motivation behind the bombing that occurred at the Boston Marathon last week. However, the information that has trickled out seems to point to extremist views that ratcheted up to the point of committing a heinous act of violence. But so far we have no actual information linking the brothers to any terrorist group or terrorist training.

I've heard talking heads throw out the fact that they used the pressure cooker bomb as evidence, because it's been used by terrorists in other parts of the world. But I counter that anyone with even a limited knowledge of the internet can get access to the anarchists cookbook. Until I hear some definitive evidence that either one or both of these terrorists have specific links to a terror organization, I don't find it advantageous to conjecture.

Which brings me to the main issue, which is what makes someone a terrorist. It seems that by media standards, one can meet the threshhold of terrorist with any of the following:
(a) any immigrant that commits an act of violence against a U.S. citizen
(b) any person that uses a bomb to commit an act of violence
(c) any Muslim that commits any act of violence whatsoever
(d) any person that commits an act of violence after traveling to a majority-Muslim country

This criteria is bullshit. The media is wrong. The Tsarnaev Brothers are terrorists, there is little to no doubt about that (unless of course the police have the wrong person). But so is the shooter at Sandy Hook, so is the shooter at the Sikh temple, so is the Aurora shooter, so is the shooter in Tucsom, so is the shooter in Fort Hood, so is the shooter at Virginia Tech, and on and on and on.

These are all terrorist acts by the definition provided above. But because most of them were committed by "normal" young, white men, they are not deemed as such. Added to the fact that our nation's obsession with guns, and the gun lobby's huge influence, diminishes the impact that guns and gun violence have on the national conscious. I've never heard someone say, "bombs don't kill people, people kill people", but for some reason our society allows the same to be said of guns.

We are a nation that lives in fear. I've heard way more times than I'm comfortable with that people are stock-piling ammunition because they want to be prepared when "stuff goes down". I'm not exactly sure what they mean by this, or what they think the government is planning, but THAT is a the threat of violence that intimidates and coerces.

It should be shocking, but…

How many mass shootings have we had this year? Maybe three, four, five…and the year is a little more than half over. While the circumstances and locations may be completely distinct, the scene is all too familiar. Young men – I’m not sure if I’m aware of a mass shooting carried out by a woman, yet – who for whatever reason are suffering from some psychological issue that never gets addressed, somehow manage to stockpile a cache of weapons without anyone being the wiser. Sometimes the guns are bought from friends or illegally; sometimes they’re purchased (along with rounds and rounds of bullets) from the local Walmart. But somewhere along the line the dangerous thoughts and plans turn into a reality. I don’t know what that point of no return is. Maybe for some of these young men it was purchasing the gun. Maybe it was just deciding one day that they were going to go through with it. Maybe they didn’t actually make up their mind until the shooting actually began.

I read a very powerful book about the Columbine shooting by journalist Dave Cullen. Cullen attempted to get more to the heart of the who the two gunmen were, rather than just paint them as mass murderers. Certainly Cullen was sensitive to the fact that the town of Columbine still had to live with the losses they suffered that day, and so did not try and justify or explain their actions, but instead tried to understand at what point they had made the decision to go through with their plan to kill their classmates and destroy their school. To use the Columbine shooters as an example, it seemed that the two boys made this decision at vastly different times. Eric Harris seemed to make the decision long before Dylan Klebold did. Harris did most of the planning, and seemed to be determined to carry through with it from the beginning. Klebold, on the other hand, seemed much less hell bent on killing his classmates and suffering the consequences of those horrific acts. But whatever the timing, this plan went into action long before the events unfolded. So it begs the question, how many other people have plotted awful crimes of this nature, but simply didn’t follow through with it? What stopped them? What didn’t stop those that did follow through with it? What happened to those that felt that way at one time, but stopped before killing someone? Did they go on to lead “normal” lives? Are they still plotting? Or are the type of people who carry out these acts determined from start to finish to follow through on them?

These are the scary questions that I think we as a society need to answer. Because the reality is that there are people out there right this minute that are plotting the next Columbine, or the next Virginia Tech, or the next Oikos University, or the next Aurora, or the next Sikh temple. Whatever the motivation, they’re planning these attacks; so the question is how do we prevent it? For most that are planning, they will hopefully just give it up, and move on. But for those that are determined to carry out these acts, what can we as a society do?

I think the problem is that our society has gone off the rails, and these people are the unfortunate culmination of a society that embraces guns and violence as a cultural norm, while at the same time repressing individualism and open expression. People are told that to be stoic is good and that showing or expressing your emotions is bad. So we have bred multiple generations of pent-up, angry teenagers who feel that their only outlet to let society know how they feel is by killing someone. Add this to the fact that young men are returning from war with terrible PTSD, but are unable to receive the treatment they require, so instead of turning the gun on a crowded movie theater are all too often killing themselves.

The question of what to do is not an easy one to answer, but the fact is that an answer needs to be found. The issue of guns is part of it. The second amendment (in fact NO CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT) gives carte blanche to carry any type of weapon, anywhere, at any time. All of the amendments to the constitution have limitations; so limiting access to handguns, assault rifles, huge magazines, rocket launchers, landmines, tanks and nuclear weapons are all perfectly within the scope of the legislature (I guess unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise). But limiting access to certain types of weapons won’t do it alone; the problem is much larger than that. We need to allow our society as a whole to express their feelings in an open, non-judgmental way. It’s not unusual for young men to have homicidal fantasies, but when they’re being treated as freaks or murderers for expressing these fantasies with words or pictures (instead of violence), this turns them off to talking about how they’re feeling; which is something that might potentially prevent them from carrying it out. As with all generations before, we have a lot to learn, but the only way to learn about why people are feeling a certain way, or why people do certain things, is to listen to what they have to say.

I leave you with a quote from The Dark Knight that I think is apropos:

“Nobody panics when the expected people [get] killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds!! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.” ~ The Joker

I think the rationale is a bit unclear...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/code-on-shell-casings-sparks-a-gun-debate.html?ref=us

This just proves that the gun industry and the gun lobby care nothing about law and order, but only care about profits. Not that it was ever assumed before, I guess, but individual advocates of the second amendment and supporters of gun rights often use the argument that upstanding citizens should have no fetters on their rights to own and carry a gun. Okay, so let’s assume that gun owners keep them for going to ranges and shooting targets and/or for self-defense. I guess I’m not really sure how this law “would unfairly focus on legal gun owners when most crimes are committed with illegally obtained guns.” A rational person would say that this is the precise reason why this microstamping would be necessary, because it gives police detectives a starting place to look for the weapon used in a crime. Just because police come to your door asking about a weapon used in a crime does not mean they’re implicating you in the crime, it simply means that a gun that you once owned (or still do, but has been stolen) was used in a crime. This could be very helpful in tracing the gun to the last legal (or illegal) owner, and eventually help to solve the crime.

So why are the major gun companies and gun lobby against this legislation? Hard to say… Some say that it is a money issue; the gun industry says that it would add as much as $200 to each gun, but the State of New York – who is trying to pass a law requiring microstamping – not only says the price would be much lower, the law they’re attempting to pass would actually mandate that the increased cost would be no more than $12 per gun. I guess another reason why they’re opposed to it could be because the gun manufacturers are away that their products are purchased by criminals and/or stolen and used for nefarious means, but they would rather make massive amounts of money than actually protect the lives of the citizens of this country – or at least make it easier for police to find the guilty party when a crime has been committed.

FYI - The US gun and ammunition manufacturing industry includes about 300 companies with combined annual revenue of about $6 billion.

Senseless...

I know everyone in the media is talking about it – and I think that is a good thing – but I just had to comment on this as well. The shooting death of Trayvon Martin is tragic. It isn’t just tragic because of the fact that the police have yet to arrest George Zimmerman, the known shooter. Please note that I didn’t say charge, I said arrest. I don’t know the facts, none of us do, but the fact that they haven’t even arrested this man for killing an unarmed boy is outrageous. But the fact that Mr. Zimmerman has not been arrested is more of a statement to a culture of violence, fear, vigilantism, and gun worship than anything else.
The Florida “Stand Your Ground” law essentially allows a person to attack someone (overruling previous supreme court rulings, which declared you should try to flee first) if he or she “reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." This is pretty ambiguous language (deliberately), and essentially gives anyone carte blanche to murder anyone in the area, as long as they can show that they were scared for their life. It seems odd that Mr. Zimmerman, larger, older, and carrying a weapon, would be scared of a young man walking through the neighborhood, who showed absolutely no intent on hurting or killing him. Trayvon Martin was responsible for nothing more than WWB (walking while black) in a neighborhood that Mr. Zimmerman felt that he shouldn’t have been in. And now Trayvon Martin is dead, and George Zimmerman walks free (in a new neighborhood – he’s since moved).
After the incident, it was reported that George Zimmerman was the “neighborhood watch captain”. This was a volunteer position, for which no official selections or elections were held – so basically the guy took it upon himself to be the “captain”. The guy is a vigilante. And why was the made possible. Because we now live in a society based upon fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of illegal immigrants, and fear of a young black man walking in a gated community. We’re told that we should be scared of these things. And Florida tells you that you not only should be afraid of them, but if you feel threatened by them, you have the right to act upon your suspicions and kill them.
Gun obsession and violence in this country is out of control (well highlighted by Michael Moore’s film, Bowling for Columbine). People keep guns in their homes, their cars, the desks at work, behind the bar, behind the counter at work, on their person, and anywhere else you can think of. Why do we have all of these guns all around us? Are we in constant danger of being killed? Reality and statistics will tell us no; violent crime has actually been steadily declining in this country for the past 40 years.
So why do we have so many guns floating around, and why are we so scared? There are several reasons why, but the most potent reasons are that the NRA wants to promote gun ownership (regardless of the consequences or type of gun), the companies that manufacture guns want to sell more guns, and the media wants something to sensationalize. It is time to ban handguns in this country. Handguns are made to kill people, and that is exactly what they’re doing. People are not only being empowered, but being encouraged to use them. “Taking back the streets” does not mean killing everyone. It means building a real community, so that neighbors know one another and watch out for one another, not kill one another. Let’s hope that the senseless death of Trayvon Martin will at least start a dialogue about the culture of fear and the stupidity of laws such as Florida’s (and several other states’) “Stand Your Ground”.