Before all of us who are outraged about NSA spying demand
that the whole apparatus be flushed down the toilet, maybe there’s an overlooked
beneficial application.
The shooter in the UC Santa Barbara incident telegraphed his
murderous intentions by posting them on the Internet before he carried them
out. Maybe an intelligence whizbang could figure out how to flag such
pronouncements instantly so that the authorities could step in to prevent these
tragedies (and then, of course, the authorities have to act). Allegedly, the
system was set up to catch foreign terrorists. Wasn’t Isla
Vista a form of domestic terrorism? Is a twisted romantic passion
any less dangerous than a twisted religious one?
Gun control is a wonderful idea, but crafting legislation
that plugs all the loopholes immediately is virtually impossible. Richard
Martinez, whose son died in the Isla Vista
shooting, called Congress and the national leadership a “rudderless bunch of
idiots.” Wrong. They are not rudderless at all. They know exactly where they’re
NOT going. Maybe this time, they will be prompted to do something, but we have
to accept that it would likely be largely symbolic. Still, we have to start
someplace.
As many observers have told us, the problem is cultural. You
are not going to take guns out of the American psyche with a few pieces of
legislation. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end the love of slavery, and
we’re still not through with discrimination. It just takes time.
The unbalanced young man who carried out the Isla Vista shooting apparently never learned that a sense
of entitlement when it comes to women doesn’t lead to success in that sphere.
Where did his sense of entitlement come from? And where did his conviction that
the use of a gun would make him feel better come from? Movies? TV? The
Internet? Bad parenting? A chemical imbalance?
As for Congress, a female religious leader from the 19th
century, Mary Baker Eddy, speaking about women’s suffrage, felt that a reasonable means of making it happen would
be to raise a “nobler race for legislation” and that it would require an “elevation
of society in general.” That takes time, and she was speaking about women’s suffrage
more than 50 years before it came along.
If I may put it very bluntly, the holders of outdated views
have to die off before a full cultural change can take place. In the meantime, it’s
up to young people of child-bearing age to start raising that “nobler race,”
and demand that those profiting from the gun culture change their ways. That
means everyone, Hollywood
included.
But we have to do what we can when we can. If you hit the Congressional
mule over the head with enough logical 2-by-4s, will it eventually get the
message?
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