Newtown Shooting Reaction

I started typing this ten hours after first hearing about the school shooting in Newtown, CT and have worked on it the last three days. Over that time, I’ve listened to hours of news report about the tragedy and have read several articles, blogs, and tweets. The majority of the comments dealt with the need for more gun control laws in the United States. As you read this, please don’t infer that what I’m about to say is me saying my viewpoint is 100% right and anyone who disagrees is completely wrong. What I’m about to type is simply my thoughts and I hope I can be open minded enough to realize a flaw in my thinking if someone justifiably pointed it out to me. I am struggling to understand the events of today just like a lot of people. But I also feel the knee-jerk reaction is very short sighted. Also, I’m typing this as a stream of conscious thought. There are bound to be typos, grammatical errors and probably some lack of focus. That’s why I’m not a professional writer.

If I thought stricter gun laws would reduce the amount of gun violence, I’d be all for it. Unfortunately I think stricter gun laws would result in more violence. I have the scene from “Pulp Fiction,” where Tim Roth’s character says a restaurant is a good place to rob because there’s less of a hero factor involved, running through my head. People are there with their families so they’re more likely to give in to the robbers in order to keep the family safe. Growing up in the Midwest, I saw more than one bumper sticker with the saying,  “When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.”  Perhaps being raised with that mentality has affected my look at the situation, but I think there’s a lot of truth to that statement.

Let me ask you this question, if the US banned alcohol would people stop drinking? What if drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin were deemed illegal? Would people stop getting high or overdosing?  For those that don’t see my point, prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking, and led to a rise in crime. Drugs are illegal, but I’m guessing I could go out right now and within fifteen minutes find someone who can hook me up with any substance I wanted. So then why does the thought of stricter gun laws make people think gun violence will vanish?

Two weeks ago a player for the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend before killing himself. The following night during halftime of the Sunday night game, Bob Costas made reference to a gun culture as an reason for the murder/suicide. A week later a member of the Dallas Cowboys was involved in a car wreck that killed his passenger. The driver’s blood alcohol level was reportedly .18, more than double the legal level. Did Bob Costas go on TV and claim that a culture that endorses drinking or a culture that relies heavily on driving was to blame for the wreck and death? I’m guessing he wouldn’t want to say anything that could implicate two of the NFL’s biggest sponsors (Budweiser and Ford) for the loss of life.

According to stats from 2008, there were 11,493 gun related homicides and 37,261 vehicle related deaths. Even though there were over three times as many deaths due to vehicles, I don’t recall ever hearing anybody say we need to have stricter vehicle laws or ban vehicles.  And yes, I understand that vehicle accidents are more times than not, exactly that, accidents while guns are used in premeditated murders. What I’m trying to understand is why even though they’re both inanimate objects, one gets blamed for being used improperly.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.  That saying may be clichéd or corny but it’s the truth. Blaming a gun for a murder is like crediting a pen for writing the songs on the Beatles’ White album. Neither one had a choice in the way they were used. I am a big supporter of personal responsibility. Sadly, I see a society that tries to excuse all negative behavior by shifting the blame to anyone or anything besides the person doing the action.

Since the shooting, I’ve heard and read numerous people repeating “gun control” like it’s some sort of new mantra. What I haven’t heard is what is meant by “gun control.” It’s easy to say two words and expect them to mean something. It’s another thing to actually offer suggestions on how to rectify a problem. I don’t have any suggestions. Without eliminating all guns from the face of the world, no amount of laws will prevent senseless violence. On the same day the Newtown shooting happened, a man in China knifed 22 people. When deranged people want to commit acts of violence they will find a way.

Because I work in television and have grown up immersing myself in the magic of the movies, I’ve often dismissed the notion that the products of Hollywood have any barring on society’s decline. I remember a conversation with a friend in college about a movie inspiring violence. My friend said, “Movies don’t make psychopaths. They just make psychopaths more creative.” His point was a person is going to commit violence anyway. The only role a film plays is the possibility to showcase them a new way to commit the crime. I don’t know if I agree with that statement anymore.

In the 2012 fall TV season, there were 46 drama or news shows during primetime on the major networks. Of those, by my estimates, 35 featured murder or violent crime of some sort on a weekly basis. Most often the bad guy gets caught and receives punishment for his crime but we rarely see the aftermath. We don’t see the victim’s family trying to make sense of crime or living with the pain and suffering. If a victim isn’t killed, we don’t see them trying to return to their normal way of life. At the end of the hour the bad guy is in jail, the heroes comment they don’t understand why bad things happen and then we go on to the next show. 

Moving to the big screen, 11 of the top 20 films of 2012 feature excessive violence. Again, violence is treated as a normal day-to-day occurrence. Even though good often times triumphs over bad, bad guys are presented as cool. In the wake of the Newtown shooting, Jamie Foxx, star of the upcoming ultraviolent movie “Django Unchained” made a comment saying violence in film does have an influence.  After the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado during a screening of “The Dark Knight,” Warner Bros. postponed the opening of “Gangster Squad because there is a scene in the movie that involved a shooting in a theater.  After the Newtown shooting, Paramount cancelled the premiere of the new Tom Cruise movie “Jack Reacher” which was to take place in Pittsburgh. Episodes of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” which were scheduled to air on Sunday were pulled as well.

I can understand the reasons given for the delays in releasing the movie or showing the episodes, my question is obviously the studios and networks didn’t have any issues with the content of the shows or movies before Friday even though murders are a daily occurrence. Maybe as I get older and my cynicism grows I see moves like these postponements as nothing more than empty gestures. Studios release a statement expressing sympathy for the victims and families yet after a few weeks when some other event happens and takes the attention away from the last news event the studios continue to release the same type of content as they were before the tragedy.  All the cynical blame can’t be placed on the studios. The public will continue to go see violent films and watch violent television shows. It’s almost as if the public either doesn’t care, or feels they have to accept whatever Hollywood churns out instead of speaking with their wallets and demanding change.

Add in the realistic videogames based around war scenarios as well as music that glorifies violence and you have to really question what effect it has on the population.  Should we ban all movies, music and videogames simply because they are not G rated and project a world of unicorns and lollipops? 

Then there’s the news media that seems to salivate at the prospect of any major catastrophe. I admit that during the initial hours after the shooting, I listened to the Yahoo/ABC News live stream for a couple of hours. During that time there were few details available so there was lots of speculating and grasping at straws to try and come up with information to pass on to the viewer in order to justify non-stop coverage. It was in this time the shooter was initially identified as the brother of the shooter. Going back to the Aurora and Tucson shootings, some news personalities tried to tie the gunmen to political parties or used politics as a means for the reasoning behind the shootings. In both cases the initial suspicions were wrong. You’d think at some point these news organizations would wait to verify facts before passing them on to viewers.

Not only was there some initial misinformation passed on, there were also reporters interviewing kids from the school. Where is the line drawn between reporting news and being sensationalistic entertainment?  Does the wall to wall coverage of violence inspire other people to commit violence so they can become household names and get their pictures plastered all over TVs and newspapers?  As Jon Bon Jovi sang in the song Santa Fe, “it’s this world that turns a killer into a hero.”  Not hero in the sense of the normal definition but hero as in someone everyone knows.

What I’m about to write may be the most controversial part of this blog. During the lead up to the Presidential election there was a lot of talk about how Romney/Ryan wanted to abolish abortions and take women’s rights back to the 1950’s. Now, I know I said at the beginning that I like to think I’m open-minded and will listen to opposing viewpoints. However, there is nothing anyone can say that will make me not believe abortion is the murder of a human being. We can argue over when life begins and whether a fetus can feel pain.  What we can’t argue is whether the fetus or embryo is human or not. At no point during the nine-month gestation is there a chance of anything other than a human being coming out of the woman’s uterus. Now, while I don’t approve of abortion, I do not support making abortion illegal. I am not naïve enough to believe that outlawing abortion would stop women from having abortions so abortions should be kept legal so they can be as safe as possible.

Back to the point I was getting at with the election. The fear mongering threat of losing abortion was a major issue during the election.  In 2008 there were approximately 1.21 million abortions in the United States. That’s 1.21 million people who never got a chance to live. In the Newtown shooting, 18 kids lost their lives. I don’t mean to sound crass but how can we as a society mourn the loss of 18 lives while we do nothing about the million lives that are legally killed each year? When we’re conditioned to believe lives aren’t meaningful from the beginning, is it shocking some deranged persons see others as expendable targets?

I realize I haven’t offered anything in the way of solutions or answers. Are there any solutions? Maybe there is something that can be done but I fear instead of looking for sensible answers we’ll fall into a knee-jerk reaction and go to far in one direction. What happens when another situation comes along that shows the new rules and laws didn’t work out the way everyone expected?  

I had some other points to address, mental health and turning schools into police states, but I have no answers or suggestions for either of those as well. I don’t know what would possess a person to commit any act of violence. I’m not a big people person and often have contempt for society as a whole based on where values and goals are set, yet I could never imagine intentionally inflicting harm onto another person. I go through my day and try to be polite to anyone I meet. My feeling is there’s enough hate in the world without me adding to it. Maybe it’s simply time we stop being concerned with ourselves and focusing on what differences we have with others and start trying to be more friendly and actually take an interest in other people.