Is it an American thing?

we're also puritanically uptight sexually in this country....and you know that leads to violence

I went to look at school shooting and found this page on Wikipedia. I'm afraid this does make the U.S. look bad....

Ready access to guns when someone decides to do something like this, plus whatever the hell it is about your culture that fosters it.

It certainly happens elsewhere, but you guys sadly seem to have it happen more frequently.


Again, sadly, I think that each event of this sort makes another more likely.

I am hoping to hell we don't have any copy cats from this one ANYWHERE.

Summed Caribou's link stats on school massacres since 1979:

USA 43 incidents (132 deaths)
Canada 6 incidents (22 deaths)
Germany 3 incidents (18 deaths)
UK, Japan, Netherlands, Argentina, Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1 incident each (25 deaths total)

So the toll is: USA 43 (132); Rest of the World 15 (65)

I left out both the Beslan and Thai massacres, since they were acts of political terrorism, and the death of an innocent bystander in a gang fight near a US school.

thanks, fbaezer, for the sum-up.

I was floored by the numbers and could only post the link before walking away for awhile...

given the population differences, that looks pretty sour for Canada

You guys have pretty high gun ownership, too, do you not?

Not particularly.



FIREARMS, ACCIDENTAL DEATHS,SUICIDES AND VIOLENT CRIME

oldish numbers

1995 numbers here

I think the access to guns only explains part of this phenomena in the U.S. I'm sure this kid didn't get the two guns he used legally either. And he'd find them even if the gun control would be far stricter, or he'd do something else.

I think a large role is played by the media sensationalism. The Columbine and similar shootings have achieved a status of popular culture icons.
I remember the shooting in Scotland, but for some reason i don't think the press there handled it the same way. It certainly doesn't have the stardom status of Columbine.

Here it's all-permeating. It's on your radio, TV, computer, it even seems to be in your fridge when you open it. Immediate and complete flooding of people's consciousness. It's a path dependent thing. I believe it happened (to an extend) because Columbine shooting happened. And that one happened because of similar incidents before.

That also doesn't explain it fully, but I think it's part of the puzzle.

dagmaraka wrote :



that's the way i see it too . even the business TV - MSNBC - featured it ; though i think they did not sensationalize it .
anyone want to guess what's on larry king tonight ?
hbg

The US has been in a super bravado, ergo violent, culture, and glorying in it for a long time. This travels in different ways. This is not across the board, of course, but it often seems the element of us that rises to the top is lust for violence, violence and other aspects of life that can make us sense being alive.

I know the fellow in Virginia is of South Korean heritage. Not sure how that all applies re his being a troubled 19 year old in general, beserk on his own, a culturally awash person alienated in different ways, a guy who resorted to self esteem through marksmanship?? (not that that is necessarily negative but I'd recommend, oh, never mind, other things) -

In other circumstances he might have acted all this out differently, probably also violently. But he was here now. Lot of access to a way to act out.

i have seen a number of protest demonstrations taking place in korea - i guess they are not unusual .
while they always llooked quite violent : chanting , waving of placards and flags , surging masses , to the best of my knowledge , no one gets killed . it always looks like some kind of staged fight in which neither party loses .
i read somewhere that even in baseball games - in japan , i believe - the losing team must never be humiliated . they must be given a chance to show that "they almost won" , so that they can save their face !
i wonder if this student simply could not cope/accept a western lifestyle .
hbg

I dunno. I think Dagmarka makes a good point about the media sensationalism.

When a tragedy like this occurs, it gets an awful lot of attention, as well it should. But it tends to eclipse everything else.

This is a big, heavily populated country. Out of the millions of people who live here, it's only a small percentage who commit crime, and an even smaller percentage who commit the kind of terrible act that we saw yesterday.

But every day, there are millions of citizens -- and visitors, from different walks of life, different levels of education, different religions, nationalities, and ethnic groups who manage to live peacefully with each other here.

Let's not lose sight of how remarkable that is.

I agree, Stray Cat, but the young man was twenty three and a senior at tech. His councilor had already advised him to seek help because of his grotesque writing. Dangerous anger could happen anywhere in the world, but I always thought that in America a troubled person is followed closely. This is what surprised me about the situation at VPI. That obvious psychotic behavior should have been monitored continually.

They interviewed that teacher on NPR today. Indeed, she tried to sound the alarm, but police couldn't do anything. It's hard to act on 'worrisome writing' legally, apparently.

I doubt that him being from South Korea had much to do with it. Other than perhaps contributing even more to his isolation from others. But it's likely that he'd be the same if he was born here or anywhere else. They moved here when he was 8, so he grew up American, pretty much.
It harks to the problem (also growing) of youth depression and seclusion, that is so easy to not notice in internet age. It's so easy to live your life completely alone, do everything online, relate only to people online or not at all and nobody will notice.

There is a growing suicide rate and psychotic behavior in youth (this mostly in East Asia) that are related to internet style of life. I'd have to dig up that research. It talked about youngsters being locked up in their rooms for days, refusing to come out, only being on the computer all days long, desperate parents, etc... Not sure what big a role could it have played role in this particular kid's life. just saying that mechanisms to catch it and do something about it are very weak. If they are even possible.

Re: Is it an American thing?



Cost of doing business, pure and simple. The price which other nations pay for having governments in sole possession of weapons is vastly higher. For instance, between about 1938 and 1945, Germany lost something like seven and a half million people not including Jews.

Both Osso and the Bear have mentioned the "culture" of the United States and a glorification of violence, and especially gun violence. I think two things are going on here, and i'll mention the more obscure one first.

Gun lobby proponents are always on about the right to bear arms, which in the Second Amendment refers to participation in the militia. They don't like to talk about that, and many of them claim that part of the amendment is irrelevant (as if lawyers ever write laws with irrelevant language, yeah right). However, there is this culture of the "embattled farmer," like Cincinnatus with a hand on the plow and a hand on the sword. The reality, however, is very different. When the English marched to Lexington and Concord, they didn't meet any resistance until they got to Concord and crossed the bridge north of town. There, the light infantry drove off the Americans at first, but then militia officers with war time experience (French and Indian War) got control of their men, and drove the English back over the bridge. It was on the march back to Boston that things really crazy. Estimates run from 3000 to 7000 militiamen showing up to take pot shots at the redcoats. The figure of 4000 is probably the most accurate. But if you just do the math, you'll see that they weren't very effective at all. If you have 4000 men shooting at a tightly packed column of men for a space of several hours, and they inflict fewer than 300 casualties, that doesn't say much for their effectiveness. At what is known as the battle of Bunker Hill (the battle was fought for Breed's Hill, to the south of Bunker Hill), Israel Putnam had upwards of 7000 men available (out of about 12000); but of those. most of them milled around on Bunker Hill or Plowed Hill to the north, and didn't fight. Prescott, Glover and Stark managed to lead about 1500 down to the southern end of the Charlestown peninsula, and they were the ones who actually fought the battle--that's not to say they didn't do their job, they did inflict horrible casualties on the English. But about three quarters of the available militia simply didn't fight. The number of times when militia actually fought well in our history can be counted on one hand--and that includes the overrated minutemen. But on Long Island, the militia ran away. At Kipps Bay, the militia ran away (and Washington, enraged, threw down his hat, rode back and forth over it, and pulled out his sword and charged the Engish--his aides pulled him up short in time and the English were so surprised, they forgot to shoot at him). At White Plains, the militia ran away. At Princeton, the militia ran away (but Washington was able to round them up and convince them to go back into the fight). After that terrible first winter of 1776-77, during which time Washington's army almost melted away, but he still managed to win at Trenton and Princeton, Washington avoided using militia at all if he could; he despised them.

That was just the Revolution, and just one army. The record of the militia in American history is miserable. American volunteers, however, under the command of American professional officers, have done wonderfully well. The entire basis for "the right to bear arms" is to defend the nation. If ever we have no one left to rely upon but the gun nuts, heaven help us.

**************************************************

But then there's the bigger cultural myth, the bang-bang shoot 'em up myth of the cowboy, the gunslinger. Bear and Osso are right on the money with that one, we glorify that in the most ridiculous manner.

"Billy the Kid" (Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney) seems to actually have been an ordinarily decent sort of man. The most reliable accounts show a young man who worked hard and greatly admired his employer, and Englishman who ran a ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico. When his employer was killed, he joined "the Regulators," and he was not even the leader of the band. The "Lincoln County War" was a classic range war, and eventually, the people against whom Billy and his companions fought were put out of business by direct intervention of the Federal government and the President, who ended the corrupt territorial government which was in league with Murphy and Dolan, who ran a banking and mercantile operation which was trying to put all the competition out of business, and using their friends in government to help them.

Billy Bonney didn't even kill very many people, and it can be alleged that he did so in self-defense when he did--none of the killings laid at the door of the Regulators can necessarily be directly attributed to him. He was acting as member of the Regulators who were "at war" with Murphy and Dolan's gang. Billy Bonney became the leader of the Regulators after Dick Brewer, who was the original leader, was killed in a shoot-out with an old buffalo hunter. He is only known to have killed one man for certain up to the point that amnesty was given by Governor Lew Wallace, and that was during a shoot-out after a five-day seige in a house which their enemies had fired to drive them out. He may have killed more, but the image of a deadly killer shooting men down in the street just isn't supported by the records, and all of the Regulators, not just Bonney, were indicted for the killings before Wallace attempted to end the "war" with an amnesty. Bonney is known to have killed one other man who was bragging that he would kill "the Kid."

Billy Bonney did not become a "hero of the Old West" until after he was killed by Pat Garrett. Bonney and his gang had been captured by Garrett, and he was tried and convicted for the murder of Sheriff Brady at the beginning of the Lincoln County War. It is not certain that Bonney actually killed him, but by then he had a reputation (deserved) as an outlaw. He was sentenced to hang, but then Bonney really did become a killer. He managed to get a gun (either smuggled into the privy for him, or taken from one of his guards) and killed on guard, got a shot gun and killed the other. Garrett tracked him down, and while sitting talking to a friend of the Kid in that friend's house, Billy entered, asked in Spanish who was there (Quien es?), and Garrett shot him dead on the spot.

He would not have been known at all if Garrett had not published a sensational and lurid account of his life and his alleged crimes. The truth is that he was a kid who got in trouble for some stupid pranks when he was young, and who ran off to become a cowboy. Even then, he might have lead an uneventful life is his employer had not been killed in the range war. After that, he only gradually became the outlaw he was justifiably described as being, and the hardened killer which it is not as certain that he really was. In many respects, he was just a coincidental victim of his circumstances. One thing is certain, though, and that is that he doesn't deserve to be thought of as a hero. After the Governor's amnesty in the attempt to end the Lincoln County War, he did become an outlaw, and it was thereafter that he developed an apparent casual attitude to killing. There is no good reason to assume that all cowboys had the same attitude, and in fact, "gun slingers" became nortorious precisely because their acts were exceptional.

Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil Earp were simply two "shootists" who happened to have badges, and were in a position to shoot down their enemies with relative impunity. Accounts from the time suggest that their enemies, known simply as "the Cowboys," were more popular in Tombstone than were the Earps, described by the Cowboys as "pimps with badges." They were very much like the enemies of Billy the Kid in Lincoln County--they were the "law" which protected local, established business interests. Of course, there were two sides to that story, as with any other--but the fact remains that the Earps shot down their enemies at the OK Corral, and are implicated in "bushwacking" and killing others of their enemies.

"Wild Bill" Hickok (James Butler Hickok) was a former army scout in the Civil War, who became a buffalo hunter, lawman and gun fighter, and who was a constant gambler with a very short fuse. He is on record in the only actual shoot-out in the street, the only actual "quick draw" killing for which there is an historical record, when he killed Davis Tutt over a gambling debt--in the "Old West?" No, he shot him down in the street in Springfield, Missouri. As a "lawman" in Kansas, he shot two members of the Seventh Cavalry who were drunk and disorderly, and one died. He also disarmed John Wesley Hardin, and ran him out of town. He killed a saloon owner in the stand-off with a mob in a saloon, but thanks to his poor eyesight, he also shot and killed a deputy who was coming to his aid. Some say that Jack McCall, who shot and killed Hickok from behind while he was playing poker in Deadwood, did so because Hickok had killed his brother. After McCall was tried and hanged for murder, it was determined that McCall didn't and never had had a brother--it is likely that Hickok had wounded McCall's pride somehow.

John Wesley Hardin was perhaps the worst. He killed more than 40 men (most likely, it's hard to be certain), and started early in life. When he was 14, he attempted to kill a classmate with a knife after the boy taunted him about a girl. Hardin would be a fugitive from the law for the rest of his life. Hardin later killed a black man by shooting him repeatedly after brawling with the man the previous day. He was just 15 at the time. He soon after killed three Yankee soldiers who were pursuing him, and bragged that he was only 15 at the time.

Hardin tended to stay around Texas, where an extensive family connection and many friends meant he could be sheltered from the law, then seen by Texans as being a tool of "Yankee carpetbaggers." He was accused of a murder which he did not actually commit, and was held in a crude lock-up, where, incredibly, he managed to buy a pistol. While he was being taken to Waco, Texas for trial, he killed the deputy while the state police captain was away from camp, and escaped.

Hardin was only 17 then, and he subsequently spent 17 years in prison after participating in a Texas range war. Although he got a law degree, and began writing his memoirs when he got out of prison, he apparently remained a vile tempered man, and became a drunkard. It was said that if he lost at cards, he would retrieve his money at gun-point. He was finally killed while shooting dice on the floor of a saloon in 1895, in El Paso. The "town marshall" who killed him shot him three times in the back. That man was later killed by a Federal Marshall whose friend he had killed. In "the Old West," you couldn't tell the bad guys from the good guys without a score card.

There was a television ad once narrated by Jack Palance, in which he delivered a line about Hardin, who was " . . . so mean, he once shot a man for snoring." What kind of courage did it take to shoot a sleeping man? Hardin was at least a sociopath, if not actually a psychopath. He certainly doesn't qualify for the description of a Robin Hood-like hero that Bob Dylan talks about in his song "John Wesley Harding."

************************************************

Most of the "heroes" of the old west were either ordinary people caught up in events beyond their control (like Billy Bonney), men who were hired to bring "law" to the West who became the law unto themselves (like the Earps or Hickok), or they were just plain psycopathic killers like Hardin. None of them deserves to be considered heroes. The real heroes were the men and women who took all the risks, lead hard lives, and often died unknown and unheralded. But we have made heroes of violent men with guns in their hands, and we were spoon-fed this on television for the last fifty years.

I was wondering about that. Speaking as a former English major, I read LOTS of "worrisome writing." I'm afraid that there is a certain subset of young men who soak their writing with blood and gore. The fact that the teacher was concerned enough to contact the police probably means it was really severe, but I don't know how authorities would realistically draw a line between that and the violent creative writing of my classmates. (I don't remember enough about them to look them up now, but it was at least a dozen different people and I really doubt that all of them ended up actually committing any violent acts.)

I forgot to add to my post that credit is due to Wikipedia for giving me the opportunities to check my facts, and get the names and dates straight.