(no subject)

[vicarz]

Work has turned much shittier recently, and I'm applying for other jobs. That really makes me sad, because I like this work and the people I work directly with, and am gaining great experience in this area.

I listened to the radio on the way to work and it was filled with people giving their opinion on the V tech shootings, of crazy people, of gun laws, or the U response, and...I just wanted to thank the people on my f-list for understanding, far beyond the people I heard on the tv and radio, that their opinion doesn't matter. My list is not full of people prattling on about, with the rare and appropriate exception of people that actually know people there talking about those people, their opinions. It's something I didn't realize - even when people aren't on the internet, they think their opinion matters.

Irony is me voicing this, my opinions...but I have several problems right now and I need to vent.

I'm angry that the V Tech shooter is being described as railing against christianity. He complained about debauchery. He called himself Jesus for crying out loud. Maybe I'm missing those excerpts that show he was against the religion. Looks to me like he was taking on the role and positions of that religion, at least in his mind.

I'm afraid I'm in the unusual position, like in Columbine, that I feel like part of me understands part of the shooter.

Let me first say I'm not threatening anybody. I'm an old man now, with love in my life and a lot to lose. I feel invested in society, for all its ills. I would like to change things for the better, but that doesn't mean I forget how I felt, what I thought, or that the anger has disappeared. It's just that the anger is more likely to result in punched noses and political discussions that gun rampages today.

I am hiding this behind a cut because I absolutely don't want to offend anyone who is hurt by the V Tech tragedy. I have some very cold and controversial views on the subject, as I did in Columbine. I am not pro killing people, but I didn't always feel this way. I lived through my pain and grew out of it.

But...I had lists of who to kill. I had plans, maybe not in writing, but in mind. I still can map out groups to annihilate, and still have that reaction when I feel slighted, rejected, or humiliated. I hated the rich kids too - everyone has always hated the rich kids, just watch any geek teen movie and check out the bad guy. It's just that I see more today - I have a life, several lives, several distinct groups of friends, and the skills to have meaning and respect in many areas of life. I think a lot of the pain before was thinking my state was all there was, and that I'd be a failure forever. I remember in HS I had the fantasy about being in a job that always had me living out of hotels, because as long as I was from out of town nobody would know I didn't have any friends. You're never humiliated when you're a stranger.

I've heard recently that the kids who shot up Columbine weren't the geeks or goths we originally heard about. When Columbine happened, I associated with what they were portrayed as. I said the only reason I didn't do the same thing was that I lacked a friend and a gun. Cho proved you didn't need the friend. Damn azns always outdoing everyone else...like Alien Nation ;p

I also remember the kill scenario in college, when my former fiancé was bopping that older muscular martial arts competition guy. I remember her suite mates partied with them. I felt like I was on the verge of pulling a Rambo on the lot of them (but not the nerdy track team roommate, whom I later dated). I didn't ever go so far as to get a gun...looking back it's hard to say how far I was from that. At least that was personal, but the idea of going from that to lashing out at strangers seemed reasonable at the time. Shooting sorrority girls and frat boys was a duh. You could generally tell who was an asshole or a bitch at a glance - can't you still?

Today I realize I'm someone's asshole, my gf someone's bitch. That asshole is decent in some ways, possibly he's more good than bad - or will be. That's life experience talking. But I remember the hate, from middle, HS, and even parts of college. Frankly, for me the pain was more when I was alone, and felt it would never change. Friends and a feeling of belonging meant the difference between life and death - or was I just fantasizing. I've heard from many of my friends they had kill scenarios, lists of who would die...is that normal?

One of the biggest pains is a feeling of powerlessness. The Columbine kids had power, briefly. Cho had power. Did they feel powerless before then? The posing with weapons, the fascination, makes me think they did. I note that there are now threats across the country at various schools - other kids that feel powerless may be seeing the power that Cho wielded, and wish to have their voices heard as well. Cho is being heard, not understood, but heard. These others may wish to feel the power they feel they lack, and creating fear in large numbers, even anonymously, may give that feeling.

Gun control advocates are taking this as a battle cry. Gun rights supporters are arguing the angle that if more people carried guns, the rampage wouldn't have lasted as long.

So which problem do you address, and how? Things that come to my mind:
The targets. When you have the jocks from HS, the frat boys from college...they appear to have card blanche to be rat bastards. They have the money, physical size and ability, and the numbers. More importantly perhaps, they have the endorsement of the institution - sports in particular. This gives the impression the winners in HS will be winners forever, and the losers condemned to humiliatino forever. I remember being happy in the end of HS when the cliques faded, but noted that they reappeared in college - only with letters to identify which specific clique it was. I suspect if you focused more on other groups, provided more varied areas with which to identify, you could stop some of the anger of the kids that aren't a part of that. It's ironic that in memory of the fallen they do athletic chants. Will that make it worse?

I'm not sure how that applies to college, or when I'm realistic to HS. Both institutions have many types of clubs, including chess, band, and other nerdy places. You can have a sense of belonging, but invariably some don't. In HS I hung out with stoners and talked about violence, collected weapons, and had minor behaviors that if amplified seem to be in the news today. My nerdy home in college was the college radio station, and the feeling of belonging there made a large difference in my life.

The shooters. What makes them outcast in the first place? Cho had a pretty girlfriend, at least once. Not sure why he went ballistic when he had a reason to hope, experience being a part of something. Feeling alienated has a lot to do with this, so how do you stop that? It seems a lot of effort is being put forth trying to identify which geeks will strike out, and intervening. I suspect that will make the problem worse, though I suppose being targeted as a threat will give many rejects the feeling of power they crave. If angry glares could kill, geeks would never be harassed.

Culture? Do we blame the internet, games, or music? It used to be movies and books, particularly after airing a movie about a girl being raped in a girls reform school by other girls with a broomstick. The copycat crime led to lots of movements to stop portraying violence. I think these issues are just a side effect of being social animals, and am not at all sure how you prevent these types of attacks. The sad fact is I have to concede that without weapon availability, these crimes would not occur. I can't ignore the equipment makes those mass killings possible.

I'm not pretending I'm presenting a coherent series of thoughts. I'm just kicking out some unformed things that I have in my mind.

What do you think?

Comments

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree, and don't :)
A car on average will only kill 1-4 people at a blow. Some record numbers involve killing up to ten people on a crowded sidewalk, but these are rare.

Explosives sound cool, but the Columbine kids tried to make them and failed. They wanted to be anything but "another school shooting," they wanted to do the unfulfilled promise in Heathers. They had equipment, and time to practice, but were unable to get the explosives to work as planned. They wanted a body count in the hundreds. It seems explosives, while very possible, are harder to implement than it might appear. On the other hand, Iraq is showing the power of amateur efforts in that arena.

I'm mixed on gun control myself, but it still seems to me that this one person was able to take that many lives reliably because of guns. I don't think we can really ban them effectively though. If we make them illegal, they'll just come in across the border - though perhaps in smaller numbers.

[transentient.livejournal.com]

Though I'm generally for gun ownership rights, I tend to agree with you on this. However, it is still surprising that he managed to kill so many. A key contributing factor was his chaining of the doors to prevent escape, and the layout of that building likely had something else to do with it tactically. Even then, he had to have a lot of ammo on him. That gun he points at the camera in recent photos is a full-sized Glock 9mm, which I think has 16-round magazines, and I don't think he could have done what he did if he had *only* a dozen of them, fully loaded, on his person. The weight and bulk starts to add up, so I still don't get how he did that. It's like he had movie handguns that don't run out of ammo.

In other words...no, he couldn't have done this in a country where you couldn't purchase a handgun. But on the other hand, most deranged shooters would not be able to pull off what he did. It points to this guy being really intelligent and methodical and applying his abilities to about the worst thing you could imagine.

[sakiko-ito.livejournal.com]

>no, he couldn't have done this in a country where you couldn't purchase a handgun.

Yes, he could have. Depending on preparation, ones can kill more than 30 people without firearms.
I say it's not the gun to be blamed for mass murders, although I don't like guns in general.

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

He may have had the potential to, as everyone has said, if you're determined enough, you can find a way to do it.

The problem with that sentiment is that it's assuming he was determined enough to jump through all the hoops stricter gun control would require. He might have been, he might not have been, we'll never really know. But, this is just one case and stricter gun control isn't about preventing an individual case. In this context, it's about lowering what has unfortunately become a statistic: school shootings.

I definitely agree that it's not the gun that is to blame, but its availability makes this kind of tragedy far more accessible.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I think that's where I was heading with this line of thought. You never prevent 100%, but you choose a level of regulation where the benefits outweigh the costs. Problem here is he met all the screening criteria for the guns.

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

True, and none of the criteria for commital, though changing those would worry me more than anything else.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

I'm just unclear why, when it was obvious the guy intended to kill everyone in the room, the students didn't pile on him. He couldn't have shot everyone if they'd made an organized resistance.

For the record, there are no countries where you can't purchase a handgun. It's harder in some than others, but that has more to do with demand than supply.

[transentient.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the fact that the students were in class, where they were participating in a hierarchy where there was a teacher who was in charge, worked against their brains developing a "fight" response to the stress stimulus.

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

Probably because he burst through the door and immediately started shooting. It's not like he was shouting orders and taking hostages, giving the students time to group together and formulate some semblance of a plan, even one as simple as a dog pile; he was just killing and moving on to the next room. I doubt any non-miltary person's fight or flight response sees that as him vs us. It would just be guy with guns vs me, and a few seconds to decide.