Control

I don’t really see myself as any kind of expert on gun control, or the cause of mass killings. However, in light of the foolishness I’ve been seeing around the internet, I figure I may as well demonstrate some of my own foolishness here.

I got to thinking about gun control because it’s news today (Obama seeks assault weapons ban, background checks on all gun sales). Now, the only thing I am sure of is that gun control is probably not the answer to ending mass killings. But arming all teachers or having armed guards is probably not a solution either. Anyway, I decided to have a look around to see what other people think, and I happened on this blog post (Nice White Boys Next Door and Mass Murder).

So, the article starts out with an anecdote about a group of students wondering aloud about the race of the shooter at Sandy Hook, as if there is nothing wrong with this.  Here's an excerpt:

“More than likely he was white,” they agreed. As the only people of color waiting to be admitted to the exhibit, their open question about race elicited visible unease from a group of elderly white women across the line from us.

This hardly sounds like wondering at all. This kind of talk, the assumption and subsequent group agreement that the crime was committed by a specific race, any race, is clearly racist, and even though it was a group of students of color, it is still racist, even though they were right. Then again, since white people make up approximately 78% of the U.S. population (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html), odds are you’d be right if you guessed a white person did it. As far as guessing the shooter was a “he” goes, that may not have been an explicit guess. People often use the pronouns “he” and “she” without knowing the actual gender of the person being referenced. Still, just based on the news that I’ve read, I would also be inclined to guess male.

The next paragraph hardly deserves comment; it appears to be the author gloating over the shock felt in white suburban neighborhoods, while attempting to draw some kind of parallel between school shootings and inner-city violent crime. I don’t see it; all violent crime is not due to some common cause. But that’s a subject beyond the scope of this post.

The next paragraph does deserve more comment. First, the author states that these mass shootings are “committed by young white males with mini arsenals aping video game assassins.” To my knowledge, there is no real evidence linking mass murder to video games. In fact, I’ve seen studies that could be interpreted as quite the opposite. I’m not stating a fact either way, just pointing out that there is nothing factual in the “violent video games contribute to violent crime” theory.

Then: “So no doubt the elderly white women’s unease came from a sense of deep existential displacement.” Or maybe it came from all the racist talk that they knew they couldn’t respond to without being deemed racist themselves. Or, maybe there was no unease at all, but merely the imagination of someone that wanted to see unease. It’s a good thing this blogger is such an expert on other people’s feeling, and why they feel that way.

The rest of the article seems to launch into an analysis that is insistent on the idea that all violent crime somehow relates. It doesn’t. There is a significant difference between a liquor store owner being shot during a robbery and a classroom full of children. It has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with motivation, though. It’s easy to see what might motivate a person to hold up a convenience store. It isn’t so easy to see why someone would walk into an elementary school and start shooting.

To make things even worse, peppered throughout the analysis are inflammatory blanket statements. For example: “As the unraced universal subject, white people are simply unaccustomed to being explicitly identified as white.” Every time I fill out a job application, I am asked to self-identify. Granted, I don’t have to, but what would be the point? As soon as I walk in to the interview, I will, in fact be identified as white. Beyond that, it shoves it right in my face… the fact that I’m white will likely decrease the odds that I’ll be hired, because the other groups are considered to contribute to diversity, simply because of race. Oh yeah, and they don’t ask my age because that would be illegal, and yet, hiring an older person would probably increase workplace diversity far more than hiring someone because we don’t have very many of that color here.

The final paragraph gets to the point of the article.

The senseless slaughter of children from the “perfect” town may finally prompt serious bipartisan legislation to curb the barbaric gun lobby. But it will not prompt analysis of the violent masculinity at the heart of whiteness. And if any of these nice white boy shooters had been black the national sentiment would have echoed the biting comment made by my student Jamion: “Send those niggers back to Africa.”

Further regulation of people is hardly the answer; in my opinion, regulation of individuals is at the heart of the problem. Perhaps there is some sort of “violent masculinity at the heart of whiteness.” But why? Is it this author’s opinion that violence is simply inherent in white males because they are white?

In the end, it doesn’t appear to really matter what my opinion is; Obama is going to push gun control regardless of what some people think. I just wonder where the regulation of individuals by the federal government will end. Perhaps when we are all taking some sort of psychoactive drug so we can all think alike, or, maybe a better thing, we don’t think at all. All I know is, it appears that some people won’t stop until we white men accept responsibility for the actions of other white men, and submit to the control of, well, anybody but us.