Jochen, et al -
I think that both of the issues you describe (gun access and surrogate
violence in youth) are significant risk factors but neither are
necessary nor sufficient to explain (or prevent) these kinds of
incidents. I am fairly confident that limiting either or both of these
factors would likely reduce the number and/or severity of these
incidents. But I think this is *barely* the beginning... and may be as
much symptoms as causes.
The next dozen paragraphs are more of my anecdotal rattlings framing the
basis of my opinions. For the impatient, you might jump to the
punchline at the end. Or 2/3 of the way in for my musings about
individual vs group rights and responsibilities.
I come from a culture deeply steeped in the ownership and use of
firearms. I do believe the sincerity of many of those who wish to and
believe they have a right to (at least in most of the US) own firearms.
I also believe that despite that sincerity, there are others whose
sincerity is not even a little informed... they are at best "aping" the
convenient explanations and excuses for why *they* need to and deserve
to own as many guns (and more importantly as much ammunition) of as many
types (focusing primarily on concealable, high capacity, rapid firing,
human-stopping or armor piercing examples). While these folks will
insist that their firearms are "tools", they have all the qualities of
"toys", and in many cases, have few qualities of tools. So while I'm
sympathetic with the underlying "right to bear arms", various concepts
of individual rights and self-defense, I know through extensive
experience that most contemporary gun ownership is a self-indulgent (and
potentially risky) behaviour. But I also understand that the Pandora's
box of personal gun ownership has been open for a very long time and
closing it is never going to be easy or without collateral harms.
I also have spent decades developing tools and systems for synthesizing
experiences (computer graphics, scientific and information
visualization, virtual reality, etc.) and believe in the power of
inducing new states of understanding and awareness through synthetic
"experiences". Watching movies or even reading stories about extreme
violence can be very risky, but the immediacy of a computer game makes
something that can be experienced in the third person a definite first
person experience. That is the very point of it, naturally. VR has
been used by the military effectively in everything from skill training
(flight/driving/weapons-systems) to mission familiarization/planning
(providing perceptual and even kinesthetic memory of a location and a
sequence of events) to after-action, debriefing and even PTSD
treatment. So it should not be surprising (to anyone?) that first
person shooters can make it *much* easier (technically, socially, and
emotionally) for someone to carry out the kinds of massacres that we
have seen in the last 20 years or so
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#School_massacres>. The
US Government Sponsored first-person Shooter "Americas Army
<http://gamepipe.usc.edu/%7Ezyda/pubs/ShillingGameon2002.pdf>" was
overtly designed as a recruiting tool, but was also designed to provide
a strong "socialization" element, to not only identify potential
"soldiers" but to help lead (or even train) them into the desired
mentality/emotional-state long before signing up or arriving at boot camp.
A classmate of mine, on the Thanksgiving weekend of 1972, shot and
killed his elderly parents in their home with his "varmit rifle", a
single shot .22 that they had given him several years before to "plink"
at the ground squirrels, rabbits, coyotes and bobcats in the rural areas
near our homes. This shooting required that he reload several times
(manually) to kill them as he did. This was neither high caliber nor
high capacity or rapid-fire. I happened to be in the mountains hunting
for deer (with a Bow) with a friend while this was happening, and heard
about it when I returned. It was a small town and probably all anyone
talked about for months. Everyone was very shocked. Bernie was a
amiable, well adjusted, thoughtful young man. He was a year older than
me and he was in national honor society, played in the school band, and
on the school baseball team and worked as a lifeguard at the local
public pool. He was neither an overly aggressive nor overly shy young
man. He seemed well adjusted. He had two somewhat older sisters who
were high performers in many ways, and Bernie was raised somewhat as an
only child, at least through his teen years. The best understanding I
have of his actions were a consequence of the (relative) stress he
apparently felt to perform up to his older sister's standards. His
parents were in their 60's which separated them somewhat from our
generation, even more than the 30 or 40-something parents the rest of us
had. There was no indication of abuse, physical or emotional.
Bernie called the Sheriff himself and waited quietly for them to
arrive. He described his actions as if he were a third person
watching. He described in detail what he did, but claimed he did not
know "who that was" who was doing it. As a juvenile (16 years old) he
was put into a juvenile detention facility and released when he was 18
with closed records. He apparently passed the mental health standards
of the time or else he might have been put into a mental health facility
which does not distinguish adolescent from adult in quite the same way
as the criminal system. I knew several of our peers who had contact
with him after he was released who reported that he was quite normal.
30 years later I encountered someone who had been in limited contact
with him who said that he was rather strange but not obviously out of
normal range. Unfortunately he had also taken to collecting guns
despite his history and apparently being considered by legal standards
unfit for gun ownership, even by the US fairly liberal standards. I
suggested to the person who gave me this information that it might be a
good thing to alert someone in authority. I'd not be terribly shocked
if he ended up on the front page of the paper again. Bernie can't be a
lone example. He very likely has a growing gun collection and a growing
estrangement from his peers. But I could be wrong, I have very little data.
Several of the mass shootings have been close to me in one way or
another, so they are not abstract to me. When the Columbine thing
happened, my girlfriend at the time had a brother with kids just a few
years too young to be at Columbine, but lived in the community and were
nearby when the shootings occurred, knew some of the victims families,
etc. A good friend of mine had a son going to school at Virginia Tech,
my daughter lives 1/2 mile from the Denver theater and could have as
easily been at the theater that night as not, and I have cousins who
live between New Haven and Sandy Hook, I do not know if they have any
personal connections with the victims.
The small town I grew up in is the county seat of the infamous Catron
County, NM where a Countyordinance <http://www.hcn.org/issues/19/550>
was proposed *requiring* all heads of household to own a firearm. For
the most part they were acting in the spirit of local celebrity legend
Elfego Baca <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfego_Baca>. It seemed to be
an annual occurrence during hunting season for one or another of the
local badass elements to end up in a shooting accident, often at the
hands of their own family... a cousin or an uncle... maybe not unlike
southern Sicily? Frontier Justice well into the second half of the 20th
century? I don't glorify gun ownership (or use) but do recognize it as
a reality in most of the rural USA and much of suburbia (especially
people coming from rural experiences). As wrong-headed as those who
have little or no direct experience with gun-ownership or use may find
gun-culture, it is painfully clear how deep and wide gun culture is in
the US. I feel badly and responsible for our culture exporting this
kind of culture (through movies and video games) to other cultures who
have a much better literal relationship with their firearms (e.g.
Canada, Europe, etc.)
I do believe that the depiction and practice of gunplay, especially in
the context of killing other human beings (is there much other
contemporary use of guns except to either kill or threaten to kill other
humans?), is an obvious and huge contributor to the gun violence
(singular or massive) in the United States and I presume the rest of
Western culture. Yes I know "hunting"... but even in a semi-rural
environment in the heart of the old west I find that to be less real and
relevant than some might think (not to be entirely dismissed, but maybe
discounted somewhat?). Of my friends who hunt, I'd say 3/4 prefer
archery over firearms. The licenses are more available and despite
modern compound bow technology, it *is* a bit more sportsmanlike than
rifles with scopes with ranges on the order of hundreds of yards).
The kicker, in my opinion, is twofold: First, how do we draw a line for
the implied censorship, whether it be censoring gun ownership or
censoring "speech" in the sense of the creation, publication,
purchasing, and playing of computer games; Second, even if we figure out
what the "there, there" might be, how do we get from "here" to
"there"? I'm not saying we don't have to try, and I'm not saying there
might not be a path... just that it is much more subtle and hard than
many would like to imagine.
This may seem academic to those of you who live in Western Europe where
the problem of private gun ownership has been mostly settled long ago.
It may also seem academic to those who have never lived amongst a
gun-culture and who believe it is simply a matter of changing some laws
and jacking up the enforcement of them.
The USA and I think most of Europe has settled the question of
censorship on the extreme liberal side... it seems to be (almost?) never
appropriate to limit speech, especially when the speech is "passive" or
third person or fictitious or descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Perhaps we do use peoples' direct incitement to violence and sedition as
an indicator of their intentions or a surrogate for their actions, but
it doesn't take much to make such things indirect and therefore only
subject to (legal or social) suspicion, not direct reaction. The
neo-nazi skinheads might be the best example of groups who have learned
how to play right up to that line without going far enough over to get
their asses handed to them by the rest of us. In this spirit, I don't
know how we can get the violent games out of the hands of teens...
perhaps the same way got alcohol, drugs, and tobacco out of their hands
(not so effectively)? The movie rating systems already try to deal with
this and I would claim to a fairly ineffective level. 80's action-drama
TV series such as the A-Team in the US are examples of glorifying
contemporary gunplay, even if the bad guys were always very bad and also
bad shots.
- Steve
Footnote to James' response: I think I agree with your point that
there is a much deeper problem exposed in this kind of violence. However
I still think that there are *qualitative* if not quantitative problems
with the US Gun Culture, whether exhibited in our fetish around handguns
and assault and sniper style rifles, or in the violence and gore and
cold-bloodedness of our movies and our computer games. The arguements
(which I think you only reference but not necessarily endorse) about
various forms of violent activity (contact sports or computer games)
being an important way to redirect or sublimate otherwise natural
violent instincts are at least misleading if not very wrong. mil
Footnote to Eric's response: I also know lots of young people who were
trained in the use of and have access to guns who are also exposed to
violent movies and video games. Statistically I feel fairly safe, you
are correct that despite the high profile and tragic nature of these
events, they are fairly infrequent (but on the increase?), but that does
not mean I am not disturbed by the potential in every one of those kids
to blur the line between their fantasy lives and their real lives. Oh
yeah... and the adults born and raised to this as well... it's not like
turning 18 or 30 necessarily removes the risk... though maybe some of
the more questionable hormones.
The recent shooting at Sandy Hook, Conneticut,
reminded me of the shooting in Winnenden 3 years ago.
In 2009, a teenager killed 15 people at a School
in southern Germany. It turned out his father owned
many guns legally and took him occasionally to a shooting
club. The son played frequently shooting games like
"Counter Strike". The combination of learning to
kill people in virtual worlds and learning to shoot
in the real world was toxic for the young troubled
teenager.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting now
seems to be similar: the mother owned many guns
legally and used them, she went through target
shooting with her son. The son apparently liked
violent video games (probably first-person shooter
as well). Again the combination of learning to kill
people in virtual worlds and learning to shoot in the
real world was toxic for the young person and
certainly contributed to the disaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
If we want to prevent these shootings happening
again, then we must either make it much harder
for children to go to shooting clubs and to
participate in shooting sport, or we must make it
much harder for underage persons to get first-person
shooter games. Or both. What do you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_sport
-J.
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