Culture of Gun Violence
A lot of murders and murderers in our neighborhood...just taking stock...
The guilty verdict for James Holmes (28) who murdered 12 people in a Colorado movie theater during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, came a week after San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) closed. Holmes went to a high school six miles away from my house-he grew up here, worked at the local McDonald's. Probably went to Comic Con as a teen-everyone here does. 130K people come every year to see comics, movies, TV. Action, adventure, and lot of violence.
This year, across from the SDCC, were two huge displays that covered entire parking lots: Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. Long lines for shooter games.
Back to Holmes.
Holmes would have been old enough to remember the mass shootings at two local high schools when he was a teen-our very own "copycat" versions of Colorado's Columbine shootings (12 killed in 1999). Both San Diego shootings occurred during the month of March 2001, two different high schools, many wounded, but only 2 died. Only 2. Not even worth remembering, it seems. One of the shooters committed suicide in prison.
Holmes probably heard about one of the first school shootings in the US (1979) where Brenda Spencer-a San Diego teenager-picked up her father's rifle to shoot up a local elementary school killing the principal and the custodian and wounding eight children because, as she said, "I don't like Mondays." The Boomtown Rats even recorded a song with that title. It was a big hit. Her father wouldn't allow her to be treated for her mental health issues; instead, he gave her a gun to get rid of her aggression on neighborhood birds.
Holmes would have remembered the McDonald's massacre in the San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro on July 18, 1984-Huberty killed 21 people. He had told his wife that he suspected he had a mental problem and he called a clinic for an appointment. Then he went to "hunt humans."
Holmes probably knew about three SDSU professors killed in August 1996: that shooter lived around here, too-he was defending his thesis and didn't like his committee.
Holmes might have known that his rampage in July 2012 inspired a man to kill 26 people, including 20 children a few months later in Connecticut. It was two weeks before Christmas.
(I wonder how many parents gave their children guns that Christmas?)
Holmes grew up, too, in a culture that accepts violence: local news coverage was constant for the neighborhood murders of Cara Knott (Dec. 1986), Amanda Gaeke (1991), Danielle Van Damm (Feb. 2002), Amber DuBois (Feb. 2009), and Chelsea King (Feb. 2010). And those are just the San Diego girls we know about-there may be more whose killers weren't caught: these were the sensationalized cases. Cara was murdered by a California Highway Patrolman-he lived nearby, too. I knew her brother well. Danielle went to the elementary school down the street from us-she was killed by a man who ordered Girl Scout cookies from her.
(I wonder if there's something in the water here.)
There's research that says that people can identify with a single death more closely than mass murder-it's the reason your heartstrings are pulled when you see a single starving child in a country filled with starving children. We can't fathom it, it seems.
I had to look up how many were killed at each of the high schools-it seems to happen so often now. Sad.
Every so often I am reminded that I live in a very dangerous place where people solve their problems with guns or violence. We expect to be saved by superheroes in this place, we expect explosions are mere special effects, we expect everyone to be bulletproof. This is California-we are the Disneyland fantasy, we make dreams real. We play games where we hunt other people--all in good fun--and then blow them away.
We allow the purchase of guns by everyone-you could go to WalMart and buy one right now-two week waiting period.
That two week waiting period is about the average time that it takes to get an appointment with a mental health professional. And you have to wonder: what if the gun comes before the appointment?
We expect to remember how many died and who they were and then there's another killing, and another shooting, and isn't it too much trouble, we think, to remember all of these deaths? They happen all the time here. It's the California lifestyle: saddle up, lock and load.
Because, in the end, none of it is real.
(I was planning to post about Comic Con, Westercon, the Baker Street Babes Party-all fun times.
But I couldn't. Seeing the verdict-and knowing that he is/was mentally ill--and we're still having these insane discussions about gun laws. Just get rid of the guns already! Or, since we can't fight the NRA because we have gutless politicians, then severely restrict how ammunition is purchased and transported. But stop saying that we simply have to keep the guns away from crazy people. Putting a gun into anyone's hand no matter what their mental status, is crazy, period.
Oh, I guess I should say this about the SherlockDCC party since I had originally planned to post: one of the activities was shooting a cardboard statue of Sherlock with a Nerf gun. Somehow, I don't think that game would have happened had the party been anywhere other than here in San Diego.)
My apologies to anyone offended by this post--it was meant as a heartfelt rant. I don't think going to comic-Con causes murderous rampages.
The guilty verdict for James Holmes (28) who murdered 12 people in a Colorado movie theater during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, came a week after San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) closed. Holmes went to a high school six miles away from my house-he grew up here, worked at the local McDonald's. Probably went to Comic Con as a teen-everyone here does. 130K people come every year to see comics, movies, TV. Action, adventure, and lot of violence.
This year, across from the SDCC, were two huge displays that covered entire parking lots: Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. Long lines for shooter games.
Back to Holmes.
Holmes would have been old enough to remember the mass shootings at two local high schools when he was a teen-our very own "copycat" versions of Colorado's Columbine shootings (12 killed in 1999). Both San Diego shootings occurred during the month of March 2001, two different high schools, many wounded, but only 2 died. Only 2. Not even worth remembering, it seems. One of the shooters committed suicide in prison.
Holmes probably heard about one of the first school shootings in the US (1979) where Brenda Spencer-a San Diego teenager-picked up her father's rifle to shoot up a local elementary school killing the principal and the custodian and wounding eight children because, as she said, "I don't like Mondays." The Boomtown Rats even recorded a song with that title. It was a big hit. Her father wouldn't allow her to be treated for her mental health issues; instead, he gave her a gun to get rid of her aggression on neighborhood birds.
Holmes would have remembered the McDonald's massacre in the San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro on July 18, 1984-Huberty killed 21 people. He had told his wife that he suspected he had a mental problem and he called a clinic for an appointment. Then he went to "hunt humans."
Holmes probably knew about three SDSU professors killed in August 1996: that shooter lived around here, too-he was defending his thesis and didn't like his committee.
Holmes might have known that his rampage in July 2012 inspired a man to kill 26 people, including 20 children a few months later in Connecticut. It was two weeks before Christmas.
(I wonder how many parents gave their children guns that Christmas?)
Holmes grew up, too, in a culture that accepts violence: local news coverage was constant for the neighborhood murders of Cara Knott (Dec. 1986), Amanda Gaeke (1991), Danielle Van Damm (Feb. 2002), Amber DuBois (Feb. 2009), and Chelsea King (Feb. 2010). And those are just the San Diego girls we know about-there may be more whose killers weren't caught: these were the sensationalized cases. Cara was murdered by a California Highway Patrolman-he lived nearby, too. I knew her brother well. Danielle went to the elementary school down the street from us-she was killed by a man who ordered Girl Scout cookies from her.
(I wonder if there's something in the water here.)
There's research that says that people can identify with a single death more closely than mass murder-it's the reason your heartstrings are pulled when you see a single starving child in a country filled with starving children. We can't fathom it, it seems.
I had to look up how many were killed at each of the high schools-it seems to happen so often now. Sad.
Every so often I am reminded that I live in a very dangerous place where people solve their problems with guns or violence. We expect to be saved by superheroes in this place, we expect explosions are mere special effects, we expect everyone to be bulletproof. This is California-we are the Disneyland fantasy, we make dreams real. We play games where we hunt other people--all in good fun--and then blow them away.
We allow the purchase of guns by everyone-you could go to WalMart and buy one right now-two week waiting period.
That two week waiting period is about the average time that it takes to get an appointment with a mental health professional. And you have to wonder: what if the gun comes before the appointment?
We expect to remember how many died and who they were and then there's another killing, and another shooting, and isn't it too much trouble, we think, to remember all of these deaths? They happen all the time here. It's the California lifestyle: saddle up, lock and load.
Because, in the end, none of it is real.
(I was planning to post about Comic Con, Westercon, the Baker Street Babes Party-all fun times.
But I couldn't. Seeing the verdict-and knowing that he is/was mentally ill--and we're still having these insane discussions about gun laws. Just get rid of the guns already! Or, since we can't fight the NRA because we have gutless politicians, then severely restrict how ammunition is purchased and transported. But stop saying that we simply have to keep the guns away from crazy people. Putting a gun into anyone's hand no matter what their mental status, is crazy, period.
Oh, I guess I should say this about the SherlockDCC party since I had originally planned to post: one of the activities was shooting a cardboard statue of Sherlock with a Nerf gun. Somehow, I don't think that game would have happened had the party been anywhere other than here in San Diego.)
My apologies to anyone offended by this post--it was meant as a heartfelt rant. I don't think going to comic-Con causes murderous rampages.