Mad World

The world is talking about the Virginia Tech tragedy that occurred yesterday. It has become the only news story in America and the gun control debate is running rampant among the related topics. As is usual, many "experts" are appearing on one show or another and show that they are in fact far from experts on this subject. I feel that this issue is to be divided into two clear problems, gun control and the American society and culture.

To preface my own commentary I would like to first lay out some plain and hard facts that speak to both of these issues. These statistics can be verified and cited in too many places to name and you can feel free to do this research yourself if you doubt any of the following numbers:

Myth :Gun ownership is not the cause of America's high murder rate.

Fact : Gun availability is highly correlated with murder.Sensible, Federal Gun control laws make the murder rate fall.

According to a 1992 review of the scientific literature, most studies find that gun density is positively associated with the murder rate.

The National Institute of Justice, for example, reports a study of U.S. cities which found a positive correlation between gun ownership levels and felony gun use and felony murder.

Many people who own firearms do so for reasons of self-defense and home protection. Although the some researchers claim that uses of firearms in self-defense outnumber gun deaths each year, the surveys used to determine this information have been widely criticized. In fact, a gun in the home is 7 times more likely to be used in a homicide of a family member or friend than it is to be used in self-defense. In addition, a gun in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to commit or attempt a suicide than it is to be used in self-defense.

The presence of a gun dramatically increases the chance that a domestic violence incident will end in murder, often within seconds after a gun is brandished. One Atlanta study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1992), concluded that family and intimate assaults involving guns were 12 times more likely to result in death than family and intimate assaults that did not involve guns.

My final point comes from the "pro gun" argument that any gun control at all would be a violation of 2nd amendment rights. To this day constitutional scholars debate about the 2nd amendment and weather or not it is referring to the formation of a National Guard and it's right to bear arms. If this was in fact the intent it calls the entire notion of the populace at large owning firearms into question. If we put this debate aside as most in the mainstream Media already have, the right to bear arms is to only be given to a "well-regulated militia". As all wording in our constitution is deliberate, the term "well-regulated" should be noted here and can only imply that our founding fathers clearly understood the necessity of "gun control" and expected it.

These statistics should speak for themselves and frankly no debate for gun control or any commentary is necessary. The gun shop owner who sold the Virginia Tech shooter his gun stated that the sale took "only ten minutes". I would like to add that in order for someone to by the medication pseudophed at the local drug store you must provide an ID and sign a ledger, this process typically takes more than ten minutes.

The problem that isn't receiving any media coverage for the most part is the social problem at work in this tragedy. I feel there is a darker side as work here that is deep and subtle and more a subconscious result of the outward presence of violence and death. Death is big business in America. The profits of the war in Iraq are too great to mention and the tragedy at VT yesterday is but a fraction of the violence that occurs in Iraq daily. The video game "Grand Theft Auto" series is the largest selling video games of all time.

The point this brings me to is one that will likely offend many but is the unspoken truth behind much of this. While we all will make statements about how tragic and sad this event is we are all strangely drawn to it. Why do you think that CNN and the rest are playing nothing but coverage of this act? To put it simply because when tragedy like this happens the ratings go off the chart. The money to be made by advertising is enormous when something like this happens and the result is countless news stories covering every angle and many angles that are frankly redundant or complete nonsense to keep the story alive. If the news networks were truly concerned with informing the public in the wake of a tragedy wouldn't they stop playing commercials every 10 minutes? The darker part of this is that we all, myself included, watch the news and the many stories and after our initial shock why do we obsess? Because as much as none of us want to admit it, these kind of things have become exciting to us. There is an exhilaration to it. What does that say about us? Could it be possible that the same dark place that gets a rush from this sort of thing is the same place that people who commit these massacres allow to get out of control? Will be ever be able to have the honesty to confront this part of ourselves and our society and admit that we have become "fans" of mayhem and murder? We need to ask these questions and more, if a person goes mad he goes to a therapist who seeks out the truth to heal. If there is a therapist for the planet we need it, we are in a mad world.

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