An explanation for why we have more mass shootings

My husband and I had a heated debate about guns last night. It didn’t turn into a full on fight but he has some passion about this topic. We both think there should be some regulation on guns – he’s not a hard core 2nd Amendment guy – but he feels pretty defensive about them and is generally skeptical about “blaming” guns for anything. And I have sympathy for that argument.

We are gun owners who live in a red state. Hunting to us is a necessary fact of life that enables us to be more self-sufficient, not 100% dependent on grocery stores and confined animal operations that pollute some far off waterway. And if we share a philosophy about life, it is definitely about being more part of, and out in, nature.

Recently the New York Times published an article called What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest An Answer. It shows that social issues like mental health, racial divisiveness or rates of violence cannot explain, statistically speaking, high rates of mass shootings in the U.S. The only factor that correlates across the board with high rates of mass shootings are high rates of gun ownership. Yemen is the only country that competes with the U.S. on rates of mass shootings and gun ownership both.

So the question is, how can there be a connection between an object and violence? It is the person who commits the crime, no doubt about it. A gun is not a magical object.

I would argue, though, that humans have attributed magical qualities to guns. We have imbued them with a fantasy of what they represent to us, perhaps power, strength, or control.

Humans do that, of course, with objects. I see a cult-like following of marijuana, especially lately with numerous states legalizing it. I could even be considered one of those cult members, although I’m not really. To me, it was always simply a path to relaxation and happiness. I don’t hang up pot leaf tapestries and read High Times or anything like that.

It’s not that different with guns. You see guys with their big trucks and a sticker reciting the 2nd Amendment in cursive on the back windows, or some other bumper sticker shining their opinion out in to the world, at least if you live in a rural area. I probably don’t have to name the ways men and women in this country express their reverence for guns and gun rights. It’s kind of a cult, like with pot or anything else that takes on elevated status for long periods of time.

So in this way, using guns can go viral, because they are ideas as much as they are objects. And using them for mass shootings has been trending it seems like.

So imagine a man, young or old, stewing over an argument, or a grudge, or simply fantasizing about the ways he can get revenge on a person, or group of people, whoever they may be. The fact that there is a gun available stimulates a line of thought that may have gone a different direction if the gun wasn’t readily available.

Like the guy who recently killed 8 people in Manhattan with a truck. He did not have access to a gun, I’m assuming, so his revenge plot involved a different object that can be used in a lethal manner, like a hammer, or even a pair of hands. My husband points out that if the man had had a gun he could have climbed out of the truck and proceeded to kill a lot more people, and why wouldn’t he if that’s his overall goal.

So the New York Times does not explain per se why there are more mass shootings, because connecting it to higher gun ownership rates is kind of obvious. The question is how gun ownership can turn into mass shootings because we all know that objects can’t kill people unless used by humans to do so.

The answer is simply, guns are not just objects, they are “ideas”. The idea of shooting tons of people at a time is an idea itself that is inextricably linked to guns. Ideas that get attached to objects can spread like viruses, and I would argue this is what is happening with mass shootings in the U.S.

And yes, I told my husband about this theory. He’s thinking about it.

Men & Mass Shootings

I want to share a fascinating article on the possible root causes of mass shootings:  “What is it About Men That They’re Committing These Horrible Massacres?” by Meghan Murphy on AlterNet.

As the article points out, hardly anyone is talking about what is going on with our young men that leads up to these tragedies.  It’s always guns and the broken mental health system.  While those conversations need to be had (and they have been had – to some extent – after major mass shootings for the last 40 years), no one is talking about how our society socializes young men into empathy-lacking individuals.

Of the 62 mass shootings that have occurred in the US since 1982, only one has been committed by a woman.  See this excellent Mother Jones chart for more information.

The AlterNet article points out that if 61 out of the 62 had been committed by women we’d be talking about that.  Here are a few important excerpts:

In the U.S., where health care is privatized, it’s true that many people don’t have adequate access to mental health services. Racial and ethnic minorities are even less likely to have access to health services, as well as, more generally the poor and unemployed. But not only are these mass shootings committed largely by white men, but by middle class white men. If this were primarily an issue of people not having access to mental health services, it would stand to reason that far more mass shootings would be perpetrated by poor minorities, particularly women of color.

But we’re talking white, middle class men — the members of this society who have the most privilege and the most power. The question everyone should be asking is not: “Where did he get the gun?” or “Why wasn’t he on medication?” But: “What is happening with white men?”

In general in the US, men are not taught to express themselves through sadness or sensitivity, but instead they are taught that vulnerability is bad and that anger and violence are their only modes of acceptable expression.  In my view, women take their anger out on themselves more often than on others.  But it’s different for men.

According to Jackson Katz who is quoted often in the article, militarism is the projection of force and power of the national manhood in the US… “Men are rewarded for achieving certain goals and for establishing dominance through the use of violence.”

We’ve all heard the saying “Shut up and take it like a man.”

Through media, authority figures and other societal messages men learn that they are entitled to certain things like power, women and money, and when they don’t get them they sometimes retreat into revenge fantasies.  Seeing this ad by Bushmaster, how can one argue that gun manufacturers aren’t preying on this masculinity issue?

“As a white man, the assumption is that you are the center of the world. Your needs should be met. You should be successful,” Katz says. When that doesn’t pan out men will often end up seeing themselves as victims. “This explains the cultural energy on the right in this past generation – so many of these men see themselves as victims of multiculturalism and of feminism,” he adds. “It’s undermining the cultural centrality of male authority.” Katz points out that we can see this worldview manifesting itself in the Men’s Rights Movement. “They are at the front line making the argument that men are the true victims.” All this isn’t to say that all men who feel they are losing grip on their perceived entitlement to power and authority will become perpetrators of mass shootings. But these broader patterns are something to consider.

Are these shooters psychopaths or sociopaths? Maybe. But what’s a sociopath? It’s a person who lacks empathy. “Well,” says Katz, “we socialize empathy out of boys all the time.” If we aren’t allowing boys to experience and express vulnerability, pain, and fear because that’s somehow connected to weakness (a feminine quality), then how are they going to be able to relate to the experiences of others? “Sociopathy is the extreme manifestation of the way we socialize boys in our society,” he says.

It’s true that in the US it’s estimated that 1-2% of people are technically sociopaths, and that in collectivist cultures it is a fraction of that.  (See “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout.)

These arguments make me think of what Carl Sagan said in his book Cosmos.  If I remember correctly, he said there is a correlation between violence in a society and how that society restrains its young boys from having sex during early puberty years.  Basically, when young men can’t have sex, yet it is all around them, they tend toward violence.  So… more sex, less violence.  Strangely enough, that might be a change for the better.  Imagine a young man who doesn’t fit into his school, is bullied, who plays violent video games and has revenge fantasies.  Most likely that kid ain’t getting laid.

This is a complicated issue, I know, but we should talk about it and not hide from it.