Too Much Focus On Violence
Connor Strange
Staff Writer
Shootings, at schools or otherwise, now seem to be a regular occurrence in the connected and current lives we lead. The media circles around killing like vultures around a dying animal.
Every single incident of mass violence is turned this way and that, probed and dissected, buried, dug up, then buried twice as deep. Knowledge of the murders is, of course, a right of the American people - it should be exercised. However, the constant display of the identities of the killers should be reserved to the judge and jury.
Making monsters known (see Aurora, CO) is a counter-productive effort toward stifling mass murders. Everyone and their mother has seen the faces of the Boston bombers, which only serves to show prospective killers the infamy to be gained from carrying out their nightmarish machinations.
Of course, the seemingly obvious solution to the problem is to remove factors which enable the acts (i.e. guns). Anyone who delves deeper into the issue can immediately see how unattainable that goal is, unfortunately. I support more intensive background checks and a longer procedure to obtain a firearm, yet I know shootings will continue even then.
Though a more stringent process in the procuration of guns is an idea that I find alluring, I still don’t advocate anything more in gun control. Outlawing guns is an impossible, ridiculous concept, especially when considering the fact that shooting is a fun pastime when done correctly. I’m not a big fan of firearms, but I had loads of fun when my grandfather took me out to a range. I would hate to see his favorite hobby taken away, even if it were possible.
And even then, if the unreal became truth and firearms were removed from circulation, some nutter would find a way. One man recently attempted a “mass stabbing”, ridiculous though it may seem. He used only a knife, yet he was able to injure several people before he was subdued.
Violence is, regretfully, a trait of every human. Before we killed each other with M4s and hand grenades, it was broadswords and crossbows. Before that, primitive stone weaponry. In many cases, past, present and future, weaponry wasn’t even involved; the deed has been and will be committed with bare hands. Murder is encrypted into our genome, and all we can do to avoid it is to fight our instinctual bloodlust.
A constant stream of news about it can’t help, so we should slow our media roll and quit analyzing every tidbit of violent information.
