Seeking Answers

The answer is:

We are allowing mentally ill people to kill our children.
We are supposed to keep our children safe.
Forever-- if necessary!



We are so smart, the answer stares us in the face and we won't address it. Guns in the hand of the wrong people kill people.

Punishment is not a deterrent in these cases.

WE NEED BACKGROUND CHECKS AND NEED THEM BADLY. ONE IN FOUR AMEIRCANS IS MENTALLY ILL.

Good analysis, Ann. The more we discuss the problem, the closer we may come to finding a solution. And I agree, it begins with us.

Well done!

I might pretend to be our principal, Mr. Norman, and suggest you begin with something simple and specific - actual behaviors for immediate tasks, with a specific, doable time limit.

What am I doing?
Reading and responding to Alice.
What am I supposed to be doing?
Cleaning my kitchen.
How long can you maintain that behavior?
For the next 30 - 45 minutes once I manage to get my behind out of my desk chair and head for the kitchen.

Mundane? Yes, but the procedure works better when you start small.

Annie

Furthermore," Guns don't kill people, people do." has lost its charm.

Guns make it easier, and by a whole lot. Let the mentally ill work for their fun.
Let the criminals toil to further their ends.

We are aiding them by making it too easy.

Now just go to Walmart and order, online, an assault rifle and start blasting--INSANE!

Other countries have poor people, violent video games, movies, books and mentally ill people. They don't have easy access to guns.

Machine guns are totally inappropriate in a civilized society. They are for wars. We don't need war at school.

Americans had best dress their children in bullet proof vests and helmets with face guards and drive them to school in armored tanks if they wish to preserve them.

Seems easier to limit the type of guns and who has them to me.

I hate to see the rights of grown-ups supersede the rights of children.

After the kids are gone, what do we have?

N0THING OF ANY VALUE.

A bunch of old folks with their rights!

alice wrote:

Americans had best dress their children in bullet proof vests and helmets with face guards and drive them to school in armored tanks if they wish to preserve them.

Seems easier to limit the type of guns and who has them to me.

I hate to see the rights of grown-ups supersede the rights of children.

After the kids are gone, what do we have?

N0THING OF ANY VALUE.

A bunch of old folks with their rights!

Alice, you have described it well.

Abe,
It doesn't need to be that way.
We are Americans we can solve problems when we want to.
We need more "want to" here.

We lack courage to face the problem head on. Once we do that the problem will be history.

Lots of ways to start.

It's been a while since I retired from teaching in public schools, but I'm pretty sure that school board meetings are still open to the public.

We can get to know our neighbors.

Most neighborhoods have associations that meet regularly.

City councils have public meetings, too.

We can write to congressional representatives and senators.

We can blog.

We can smile at the people who are out shopping in the same places we shop. It might be the only smile that person gets all day.

We can find out ways to volunteer a little of our time at schools, libraries, and other public places. Elementary schools and public libraries have programs where area citizens can come in and read to small children who have no one to read to them at home. If yours doesn't, see if you can start one.

Having safe neighborhoods and schools begins at home.

Being involved helps.

Good ideas, Ann.

12/23/2012

As I said on another thread all assault weapons and tons of

ammunition and none of these items should be allowed to be

sold at guns shows either, anyone caught should be fined

$100,000.00 and 5 years in federal prison !

Cheers.Joe......

Joe,

I agree! Do everything! It would stop!

Victor D. Lopez wrote:

Abe,

Count me as an old codger too! I think I became one at the ripe old age of 13.

Ann,

We often frame the issue of violence in the context of social justice. certainly that context cannot be ignored and may well be an important contributing factor to the problem. But "It's what inevitably happens when the rich separate themselves out and turn their backs on the poor and underprivileged" is not the root of the problem here. The root of the French revolution, yes. (Although we all know what happened when all the privileged "rich" were beheaded and the rabble took over bringing about a reign of terror that only a despot like Napoleon could finally control.) The root of the violence in America's streets, no. One need not travel far to see true poverty, squalor, and insurmountable divisions of class--but we do not see that here. The problem is not the downtrodden expressing their righteous indignation, but the lawless and fearless whose only moral compass is the nihilistic pursuit of their own selfish interests--and the rabble-rousers that egg them on for their own political ends, and the guilt-ridden people of conscience who excuse the inexcusable antisocial, violent and criminal behavior of people the choose to see as victims in order to reconcile their own world view.

When people feel defenseless, when police are either absent or reticent to protect them in dangerous places in part because of the hopeless inefficiency of the criminal justice system, in part because the police may fear reprimands or law suits when dealing with violent offenders, then what are people to do to protect their families? Whether in the U.S. or outside of it, when faced with the prospect of having to live in a dangerous neighborhood for personal or professional reasons, people who can afford it will live in gated communities that offer the protection of private security--not just the wealthy will do so, but anyone who can afford it, sometimes making great sacrifices to do so, just as they do to send children to private schools to avoid the metal detectors, drugs, squalor and violence in too many public schools in neighborhoods all over this country. Those who do otherwise sooner or later become victims of the violence.

When people riot in the U.S. and other countries--Argentina these days comes to mind as a good example--pay close attention to the video footage and you will see a few desperate people breaking into grocery stores to steal bread, milk and other staples--these souls have my unfettered sympathy--but look closer at the marauding gangs that break into electronics stores and the anarchists who set fires, throw rocks, and loot at will as a form of "protest." You will see shame in some faces, and desperation, but on most faces you will see something far less excusable.

If we do not stop making excuses for criminals--especially violent career repeat offenders--the problem will simply grow worse until it reaches critical mass and we become a typical third-world country. We are a wealthy country that provides significant resources for people in need from housing, to food stamps, to free Medicaid, to free schooling from K-12 and a free ride at excellent public institutions of higher learning. Few other countries do more with comparable populations, if any, yet we are the only country in which violence seems to run rampant. We need to ask ourselves the tough question: WHY? And we need to search for answers unfiltered by guilt or idealistic notions of social justice. We need to spend less time wringing our hands at the numbers of people in prison costing us upwards of $75,000 per year to house, feed, clothe, educate, kept healthy and entertained, and ask some hard questions as to why we have such high levels of crime and repeat offenders, especially of the violent variety.

The criminal justice system clearly does not work. Moving away from punishment to rehabilitation has mushroomed crime since the 1960s. I suspect bringing back rock piles or, better still, forcing prisoners to build roads, hospitals, and schools to repay with their labor the harm they have done to society, might help. So would having some prisons that house minimum security inmates retooled as training and manufacturing centers where inmates could learn a valuable trade like welding, carpentry, and other trades that would make them employable when they serve their time. And why can't they build bookcases for libraries, desks for schools, and wire a new hospital while they're learning their new trade? (Delve into this question and you will soon touch the third rail of American politics--union resistance.)

Victor,

Great post on crime, but it does not apply to mass school shootings. A suicidal person is not deterred by a chain gang. The assault rifles have to go.

Joe has the best idea.

joefrank wrote:

12/23/2012

As I said on another thread all assault weapons and tons of

ammunition and none of these items should be allowed to be

sold at guns shows either, anyone caught should be fined

$100,000.00 and 5 years in federal prison !

Cheers.Joe......

Joe you are so right

Ann,

Great post as always. There is not much you write that I disagree with, except that evil does exists and we find more of it in violent offenders than elsewhere in society.

Alice,

I was writing about violence, not about school shootings. the latter is simply a reflection of the former in its vilest form. Guns are a problem, but they are not THE problem. That is my point throughout this thread.

For the record, I have seen a significant amount of violence through my High School years attending one of the best high schools in the country not in one of the best neighborhoods. NONE of it involved guns--knives, mobs and sometimes just fists, but never guns. The perpetrators were mostly from the lower classes, the victims almost always working class white or Asian kids who were either weak or alone, and the motive mostly robbery. Sometimes the motive was violence for the sake of violence, sometimes motivated by the desire to victimize someone with clear racist motivation (racial epithets thrown along with the demands for money or accompanying the fists to the face). There is no excuse for that type of behavior. Ever. No doubt many of the perpetrators went on to use guns and many ended up in jail or dead of the violence they espoused.

Not all poor people are worthy of sympathy, just as not all people on Wall Street are greedy bastards who care only about themselves. There are poor greedy bastards, working class greedy bastards, and rich greedy bastards. There are poor, middle class and wealthy sociopaths, psychopaths and plain old evil people. Some of the very best people I have ever known were dirt poor, and also some of the very worst. The same is true of the working people I have known and know to this day and of the professionals. The same is not true of the relatively few significantly wealthy people I've known and even fewer true aristocrats, but only because my sample is too small as I rarely move in those circles. People are people. Good and evil objectively exist and no class/race/sex/economic strata has any monopoly on either one.

The conversation about crime and violence (which I thought was the original topic of this post) in the U.S. is almost always linked to poverty. Of course a link exists. But poverty is also too often used as a crutch, a questionable mitigating factor to excuse violent and/or criminal behavior that is often inexcusable. We use poverty to frame criminals as victims because it makes us feel better about humanity--at both the macro and micro levels (e.g., feel better about humanity and about ourselves).

I don't disagree with the assertion that assault rifles have to go" made by Alice. I just don't want the conversation to end there, and I disagree that my comments on violent crime are not applicable to the school shootings. It is all a symptom of the same disease with a common cause--we create monsters by failing for a lifetime to limit, punish or hold responsible individuals from a young age onward for their violent, antisocial and even monstrous actions.

Victor/Ann. Well thought out and informative posts. It is easy to form conclusions based on our input. Rushing to find a solution is good and bad. The urgency part is good, however a quick fix doesn't solve the problem.
I was watching a history documentary yesterday about the birth of Jesus. It was very informative. Joseph was a very poor man and Jesus was raised in poverty. The implications of this birth are often overlooked. The debate about whether Joseph was the father continues. Many years ago, an old friend said, "I can't understand why people refuse to believe that Jesus could have been an illegitimate child." At the same time, people refuse to consider that Mary may have become pregnant from an affair and that the marriage to Joseph was a cover-up. What does that have to do with this thread? We seek answers and often use religion and/or morals to point to the cause. If that is the answer, then the morality of Jesus birth comes into question. He was born in poverty, but that didn't cause him to become a bully and resort to violence.
There is no easy answer, yet we must continue to Seek Answers if we are ever to find a solution.
Frustration plays a role. Inferiority with the need for recognition plays a role. Poverty plays a role and yet we find children of rich families commiting crime.

I don't have answers, but rather more questions, however I don't think there is a single cause. Guns are used as weapons to carry out criminal acts. It is easier to pull a trigger than some other form of violence. Whatever we can do to impede criminal activity is a step in the right direction. Controlling guns is just one step.

I once thought I would take on a campaign for gun control as my life's mission. A secondary issue is the prison industry. In keeping with Victor's statements, it is my belief that the prison industry has become a country of its own and does zero to deter crime, rather it trains petty criminals to lose all sense of humanity and become hardened criminals.

I believe any weapon that shoots rounds from a magazine should be banned. Period. If the gun folks need their "power" pistols for "target shooting" and protecting themselves against the military state or the intruder let them go through a psychological and background check similar to what I went through in seeking job with Miami County several years ago.

I believe that no person should be incarcerated and caged in buildings as part of the prison country. All criminals need to be rehabilitated and made to pay for their own keep by whatever job skills they have or are trained to use by the rehabilitation system. They also need to make amends for whatever crime committed by financial or personal commitment to improving society.

Florida does have a prison furniture building industry. When I moved offices in Madison, Florida, prisoners provided our moving services. They keep the roads clear of refuse. However, they still return to cages. They are still forced to live like animals and become one, either cowed and never able to lift their heads again or full of rage that likewise ends their lives.

Every criminal act needs a consequence. Yes, freedom needs to be curtailed. Freedom of association, freedom of travel, freedom of financial choices - may all be curtailed while intensive medical and psychological and vocational education are provided.

Take all the money poured into the now mostly privatized prison country (payments received according to the beds filled, not the "rehabilitated" successes) and pour it into education centers, rehab centers and trained therapists who are assigned to small groups.

Perhaps have more halfway houses with tighter controls yet the requirement for work and attending to their own daily lives, including support for their families who end up on the community dole anyway.

It's a heinous, barbaric, archaic, primeval system that is enriching the pockets of politicians and private companies while lives are destroyed forever because of bad checks, drugs, petty crimes of youth, mental illnesses, lack of education and environments they didn't have the will to overcome.

Threat of incarceration does not deter crime. Statistics regarding these issues lie. They are too difficult to measure as every state has different levels of systems.

Should criminals suffer? Of course - suffer with consequences that equal the crime, not by years of incarceration and training to be a better criminal by numbing their humanity to survive in the system.

Are there people so heinous they need to be locked up? Of course, but they are the exception. The whole system should not be governed by the exception.

The difference between a white collar criminal and a petty thief is their experience before the crime, the root cause is the same: they can get away with it. Yet, the petty thief will likely receive worse treatment by the courts and the system because they lack the fancy lawyers and the publicity.

The whole system stinks. It's like an elephant. It looks too big to do anything about other than expand and add bandaids of little GED classes and vocational classes here and there.

Every current prisoner needs to be evaluated for their potential harm to society and given a rehab plan that may include release with conditions. Then, those who are unable to care for themselves yet housed in group homes with supervision like half way houses for drug addiction.

In the past, prison industry has been fought as unfair competition for the private businesses. By privatizing prisons, they eliminated some of that "unfairness."

I have only touched the surface here and know there are many holes in my plan. Maybe it should start with one community, one country or one state. Somehow, the current system is not working for anybody.

DK. Lots of things to consider. I like your ideas.

Keep violent, mentally unbalanced folks confined and away from guns forever.
Forever means FOREVER.

We just had a sad case. Monday, a previous offender shot and killed a man in Bellevue, WA. That is about 4 miles from our home. As a juvenile, he and his friends beat a man to death.

He was locked up for 36 weeks for that crime and is back at it now with a gun. He is still on the loose. I keep the doors locked.

DK made a good point about consequences. Retribution is required. Having said that, what can one do to suicide bombers? They are not available for punishment. Recent killers have in the end taken their own lives. When one commits an act knowing it will cost them their lives, it increases the dilemma on how to stop them. What will cause a person to commit suicide? Taking others out with them is a sickness.
Analysis has been done on suicide bombers in the Middle East. They were fighting for a cause and martyrdom an appealing incentive. They would forever be remembered and be welcomed in paradise. It is an act of desperation and at the same time a need for recognition. They are gullible and vulnerable to those who use them as tools.
Some who are bullied may become bullies.
Our way of life, our society is a contributing factor. The need to win. The need to be recognized, etc.

In some countries, consequences can be severe. In Saudi Arabia, the family can decide the punishment, i.e., they can ask for his head or some monetary penalty. but there is a consequence. It is a deterrent. Theft is severe where a person is marked for life. The loss of an ear or a hand is a brand that tells everyone that the person was a thief.

I often felt that a rapist should be castrated. The problem is solved immediately and a long jail sentence is not needed.

If we are to provide a deterrent to crime and at the same time consider the possibilities of suicide perpetrators, then the family of the criminal could be held liable in some form. Consequences for any crime should be a must.
Just my opinion.

Abe F. March wrote:

You're right. For some, having money is the goal. Where they intend to spend it doesn't seem to matter.
In any event, this is December 21st. I got up this morning and I'm still alive. From what I can see, the world is still intact. If this were to be my last day on earth, I would want to say thanks to all of you for your friendship and look forward to our meeting again, whenever, whereever. We are all part of the universe and connected.

At least one question answered ( or perhaps two, even?):



Annie

Good one!