The news of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech just seems to get worse as the day wears on. There aren’t words to describe it.
After the grisly scene in Blacksburg is cleaned up and the bodies are buried, we’ll once again switch on the TV and watch programming glamorizing gun-toting tough guys and violence. Not a night goes by on television where some plot isn’t based on the menacing of women by crazed or angry men, most with guns. Some people will solve problems with guns and others will cause problems with guns. The message is that guns bring satisfaction and command respect. Just look at the very title of the series The Sopranos and listen to the lyrics. “Woke up this mornin’ and got myself a gun …”
Maybe there is no causal connection between entertainment and what this shooter did. But I cannot help but believe that the more or less constant exposure to violence in our entertainment doesn’t dull our sensibilities and lower our threshold for what constitutes acceptable behaviour. Regardless, we have to start somewhere and cleaning up our tastes in entertainment is relatively painless. We need to create less demand for this crude stuff.
Obviously, the shooter is responsible for the murders, not the inanimate steel mechanism. But the common fascination we have with the gun and it’s stylized, even mythical, application means that this mechanical device has some kind of hold on us. Its ease of use and its ability to deliver death from a great distance makes it possible for anyone to deem themselves a “warrier” for a few minutes.
We are horrified by such violence when it is real. But we entertain ourselves with painstakingly elaborate dramatizations of it. We are gratified to watch fictional characters engage in gunplay with bad guys. We cheer as fictional cops rough up suspects because, as we all know, bad guys really shouldn’t have rights.
There is no mysterious or complex phenomenon to sort out here. Our American culture has a form of fragmented personality disorder with respect to gun violence. I don’t know if it’ll do a damned bit of good, but we need to come down from the saturation level of violence in our entertainment and recreation. The first thing we must do is to remove a bit of the glamor of gunplay.
We don’t have to give up our guns. But we do need to develop a new viewpoint or an advanced ethos about them. We need new icons and archetypes. It is time to retire CSI and The Sopranos as popular iconography. We must find better ways to fulfill our self image and need for power besides being handy with a gun. How do other societies do it? Any suggestions??
Here is an interesting link to a rebuttal in the Daily Kos written by someone said to be from VT.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
I have two suggestions. I live in the UK and I’m absolutely terrified of guns, I’ve never held one nor do I want one. I can’t think of a possible cause for owning one; and I’d class myself as a ‘hardcore’ gamer (even though I prefer Katamari to Quake).
Sorry to contradict you, but I think the best answer is to remove the acceptability of owning firearms. On my few forays to the US I’ve been absolutely apalled by the fact that guns are sold in Wal Mart, only metres away from children’s toys. An environment where guns are commonplace and accepted, seems to me, to be dangerous.
On the other side of the argument, I think that any entertainment that promotes firing a gun should show the repercussions of firing one. Most often in movies firing a gun creates an instant transition from someone being alive, to someone being dead. This simply isn’t the case, and should be represented.
Rant over!
Maybe any display of a shooting on TV should be limited to 5 minutes and the remainder of the hour should cover the resulting funeral, surgery, physical therapy, and counseling.
Quick response on the shootings, Gaussling.
(1) I do not agree with the media’s focus on how quickly they chose to shut down the campus.
You just can’t move that many people that fast – it is not feasible and parading about the fact that it wasn’t done will only make it worse for those of us at other university’s, because they will introduce a number of rules of limited use in preventing violance but defiinitely limiting freedom – especially freedom of expression. It will mean everyone has to watch these kids and what they say and will be held responsible for “not reporting” it.
(2) I’m no gun fan. Don’t own one, shot one long ago when visiting a cousin in Ms. (over 40 years ago – he was aiming at some poor rabbit) TV and mass media simply reflect a very deep seated cultural association with violance. imho. There will be no simple solution – other than to slowly nudge our culture away from violance. (was going to use directed, but I’m afraid all violance is at play here). I don’t think guns are the problem.
Just because I sing/read/watch some medium in which violance occurs does not mean I glorify it. Jut means it has a good tune, tells a good story, it connects.
peace.
Hi Bill- I think that the VT administration is going to take a lot of heat over not closing the school after the first shooting. The university president’s head will probably roll over this.
I’m struggling to put into words my dismay with our culture and its fascination with violence and weaponry. Guns are just one of the machines that we express our violent nature with. I happen to like to shoot guns. I also like nuclear science and chemistry, and while I may be competent to handle radioactive materials or hazardous chemicals, I am convinced that their use should be restricted to certain narrow contexts in society. We’re only too anxious to prevent people from collecting explosives or building a fine collection of gamma emitters- two other things that can be hazardous at a distance. Somehow the notion of a large population accumulating handguns doesn’t seem to alarm many people. Evidently, events like the one at VT are acceptable losses in the cause of the freedom to brandish firearms.
Maybe we should ask the local NRA chapter to volunteer to clean up the mess.
I don’t agree with most of your post. I highly doubt guns are truly romanticized to the extent your saying by the youth. My question is how a foreign visa holder get a hold of so many guns?
Mitch
Hi Mitch, Thanks for your comment. I find that this event at VT really bothers me- it has triggered some deep seated issues I have. You made a comment that made me think. You suggested that it is not the youth who romanticize guns. I think you are partially right. But I also think that my writing skills are inadequate for the task of describing what I’m feeling. There is something distinctly wrong with our culture and its facile acceptance of violence. I hope to be able to put it into a few sentences one day.
2 thoughts:
1) You questioned what other societies do? I’m not sure that that is relevant, as the gunman is now reported as being a chinese student, only in this country since August.
2) It is possible to spread word rapidly across a wide geography. My son’s high school uses a service that will notify parents in the event of a school closing, snow day, … We signed up and gave every phone number and email address that we possibly could. The few times that the service was fired up, it worked really well. Univsersity students are highly wired these days with cellphones, blackberries, laptops,… and then there is always word of mouth to fill in the gaps. This service obviously would not have prevent all of the deaths, but it would have gone a long ways towards shutting down the campus extremely quickly — assuming that the administration had the guts to fire it up. After 9/11, you would think that everyone’s motto would be “Shut it down first, ask questions later.”
Hi John, Evidently the VT security people thought that the earlier shooting was the end of the event, so they didn’t shut down the campus. But it seems, as you suggest, that at least a campus wide email alert might have made people more alert.
My wife is a teacher at an elementary school. They just completed a complete changeover of classroom doors with smaller windows based on some theory about intruders. It is pitiful that the design of elementary schools must now take into account such things. They have protocols now for what to do if an armed intruder appears.
An update:
I was at the U of Minn yesteday to give a talk at a SPE conference. Sure enough, there was a bomb scare resulting from a threatening letter found in a restroom in the one of the chemistry buildings. The U took the threat seriously, evacuating all of the threatened buildings, and the police set up yellow tape to keep people out. Emails were sent out to all students although it took a number of hours for everyone to receive them – (more servers needed?) . I was just a campus visitor and did not find out exactly what was going on until I got back to my car and turned on the radio, but the police were taking the necessary steps to keep me out of (potential) harm’s way.
I think the whole scare was handled well, no doubt as a result of the criticisms already being launched at Virginia Tech.
Hi John,
Holy cats. So the level of vigilance out there is quite high.
Man, I haven’t been to an SPE conference in 5 or 6 years. I think the last one I attended was in Houston.