What for and in what way (could you have done this)!?

Media image

That the recent movie theater assassinations in Aurora, Colorado, have captured most of the attention of people who watch television and read the news, maybe even more than news of the Afghanistan war, does indicate that the media is still highly influential in bringing stories to the attention of the greater public, those of importance and moral consequences, and even those that are not.  It is not necessarily important that the Aurora gun – rampage suspect, a well – educated restaurant worker who had been seeing a psychiatrist, angrily exploded as some people have been known to do in focused yet uncontrollable fashion - not necessarily important outside of this behaviour reflecting individual and even collective psychoses, even violent culpability in the kind of over - reasoning that is apparently in the suspect's manifesto that seems indifferent to man's fate.  It is, however, of great or greater concern as to the way in which this person took out his apparent and in all evidence, violently motivated anger in a plot against people whom he might have momentarily disliked, but who were however complete and innocent strangers to him.  The way in which his dwelling was booby – trapped in complex fashion also indicates a very sophisticated cornering of investigators and other authorities into taking precautions about his person and related behavior that are troublesome and disconcerting, and shocking to the degree these devices were intended to harm anyone unaware.  People like me (and me) are not experts in how the mind works; far from it.  Though it is important to determine for oneself, the reader(s) of this writing, if any, some view on why a person who by indication, and by his own manifesto, including the body armor, intended to assassinate when he did.

The issue of gun violence in the Aurora theater events is similar to the recent assassinations of over sixty people (children, mostly) in Norway in a similarly shocking rampage.  Most people like me are at a loss and would be unscrupulous to venture a guess even as to simple motivations in such things, though with some of the evidence as seen on programs by television viewers it does appear again the assassin was reacting to something that made him angry against people, even angry against himself.  Some in the popular press and public have ventured to guess that the U.S. now needs more gun laws, and quite to the contrary, there are probably a good number of gun laws, federal and state, and we do not really need more.  I have never been to a gun show, though I have looked at a sport – shooting range and have looked at firearms for sale in sporting goods stores (from as far away as possible and without real interest,) and know this is probably not characterized by any affinity, or repressed need for guns.  I just do not like them, and like most such people it is extremely difficult to understand gun violence and related confrontations other than as a kind of hell.  It is probably true that once automatic and other weapons such as those used in the Aurora and Oslo incidents are banned, if indeed a law is passed to ban such arms and effectively enforced including by obedient gun owners, said arms will then continue to be easily available, despite all illegality, through the gray and black markets for weapons; and the authorities will be at a loss to control the use of such weapons through counteractive firepower for another set of constitutional reasons.  What, one must ask, is a decent solution to this dilemma? 

Many such events such as those around gun violence we hear about every day are random events and are intentionally perpetrated by people in contravention of the rights of others, who are willing to use force to prove their point, especially those who have used small arms in the commission of crime.  The police are good students in the detection and prevention, and deterrence of such crimes as they are planned or as they are about to occur, many times with the help of the citizenry.  About this, there is not a doubt, and it is less doubtful the crimes such as the recent Colorado theater shootings and the Oslo shootings are extraordinary in their plotting and execution, and as well reasons why the perpetrators deserve an examination as to their faculties, then possibly a reasonable trial within the rights of defendants, and a determination of a fair decision or decisions by the courts related to their alleged crimes.  Some times gun and other violence is impossible to stop, and this is what is so powerful and anarchic about some constitutional rights in our country in the event the rights are blatantly and obtusely, and violently abused.  More gun laws and stricter ones possibly and probably would only confuse the issue of the inappropriate and illegal use of amendment rights and would only serve (as in a kind of “bad apple” policy) to greatly restrict and curtail the liberties of many for the sake of a sole intent of preventing the deranged attacks and violence of a very few people.  In fact, violence of the kind on touchy ground such as the right to bear arms openly obscures the guns rights issue and serves the policies of anarchists and phalangists and other political ideologues to use the systemic remedies built into our polity to more or less legally twist itself into a pretzel.  This is obviously not the goal of gun control, and there needs be restrictions of an additional kind on violent perpetrators; but it’s catching them before they act using the system of crime detection that apparently failed here, and even more that the Colorado suspect succeeded in his diabolical plan while using methods and tools that were again, flagrantly against immutable laws, and those of human society; even those of nature.

For an excellent related discussion on gun control, see some of today's and especially the July 20th edition of Inside Washington.

praesto et persto (revision here.)