How much public violence before we make corrections?
Richard Fulton
There are several ways to react to the senseless violence of mass murderers like we have too often seen in recent years, most recently in Orlando.
The first, of course, is to send sympathy and prayers to the victims struggling in the hospitals of Orlando and to their families and the families and friends of those killed.
The second is to wonder if anything can be done to keep assault weapons out of the hands of those vulnerable to appeals to violence and to those with dispositions that explode into violent actions.
Congress has tried and failed to deal with the problem. Even the banning of the sale of assault rifles to those on the terrorism watch list has bumped up against the NRA’s minions in Congress; especially Republicans.
Even today, the Republican majorities in Congress are blocking legislation sponsored by the Democrat leadership to institute such a ban. The demonstration of mass murders does not move Congress, even if the victims are children.
Note that most Republicans, including our senator Roy Blunt, voted against a bill to stop suspected terrorist from legally buying guns; and this was right after the Bernadine massacre in 2015. We ban these folks from flying for goodness sake. Blunt and company also voted in 2013 against a measure to require background checks for commercial gun sales.
The rifles used were developed for military use to kill as many as possible in as little time as possible. The Supreme Court has said we have the right to protect our homes, do we think that large gangs are going to try and rob us? Doesn’t happen.
It’s hard to define mass murders, how many make for a mass? Still, if you go to ShootingTracker.com you will find data that shows that four or more murders at a time have been committed five out of every six days in recent years. That adds up to 1,000 in the last 1,260 days.
If this were a disease, it would call for national emergency action.
The third reaction is to contemplate ways to deal with the epidemic of anger in our country. On all sides of the political divides, we find too many people who simply see our politics from the prism of anger. Some leftists riot to demonstrate disagreement with candidates they don’t like; some rightists spit, punch and denigrate those who disagree with them.
Anger against anyone different from ourselves has escalated in recent years as well. The target in Orlando was not random choice.
Unfortunately, angry politicians feed these impulses. The champion of angry politics is Donald Trump.
His anger projects itself as a tactic in his run to the presidency. He uses degrading names, accusations and put-downs against even his own party presidential candidates as well as Democrat opponents; indeed, against anyone who dares challenge him.
A free press is denigrated daily. He even banned some major outlet reporters from his campaign.
He can’t use civilized debate, he must accuse his opposition of being liars, criminals, or worse, while misrepresenting facts and history. In so doing, he plays to the anger of many Americans stuck on the wrong side of historic developments in economics and demographics. President Obama is a key target, has been since he led the “birther” movement.
He has attacked the President, accusing him, in his sly off-center manner, of being complicit in the Orlando attack because, he hints, he is secretly a Muslim. Despicable.
Some researchers have given a medical name to excessive anger —intermittent explosive disorder. Roxane Gay reports in a NYTimes article that the Harvard study speculated that up to 16 million people suffer from this malady. There may be some room for skepticism here, but undo anger surely is endemic in America today.
We all get angry at times, of course, but Gay says rightly that “the challenge is knowing the difference between useful anger … and the useless kind that can tear us down.”
Too much of our public discourse is fueled by useless anger that distorts public political discourse while encouraging a vicious cycle of politics.
And yes,it leads to violence too.
