America's Violent Society
Gun Violence Terrorizing America
The mass shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin, Fort Hood, Newtown and several others point out a very sad and sobering fact:
America is a very violent society.
We have always had our number of murders by handguns and other means but in recent years mass killings have increased dramatically.
The shooting spree in Arizona several years ago almost took the life of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and had many citizens wondering: “Where are we headed as a society?”
Since the Columbine High School mass killing in 1999 America has witnessed an epidemic in the number of mass shootings in the country.
For years America has had the highest per capita murder rate in the world but that rating has gone even higher with the new trend of “group killing”.
It was bad enough when Americans were killing each other one or two at a time now the tendency is to kill in group settings.
A very disturbing trend.
What is most disturbing about this new mode of killing, however, is that the targeted people are frequently unknown to the shooter(s).
The person responsible for the Wisconsin theater shootings randomly shot people who happened to be in the theater at that time.
There appeared to be no one in the theater that he actually was acquainted with.
The Newtown shooter didn't know any of his victims either but felt compelled to take out his wrath on innocent kindergarteners and first graders.
These faceless, nameless shootings are a chilling revelation that American society is not only dangerous but unpredictable.
Before mass killings became the overwhelming trend most shooting deaths involved people who knew one another and had some history together.
The new trend of shooting in mass is impersonal and has no ties to previous relationship.
Shooters who have an issue with a particular group or person do not target that group or person but instead randomly target a group of people who have nothing to do with the issue the shooter is struggling with.
On occasion mass shooters target a group that is related to a problem they have but the trend seems to be to go away from the related group to a random group to exercise their anger or frustration.
No matter what the reasoning one thing is for certain; mass killings are on the rise in America and something needs to be done to turn the tide.
You Are What You Eat
Although many Americans do not want to admit it, we are the victims of our own habits.
Much of our “entertainment” consists of violent and physically aggressive imagery.
Many of the popular shows on television are laced with violence.
Our children play violent video games for hours on end that give high scores for killing more people than your opponent(s).
We are inundated and saturated with violence.
It is no wonder that the violence in society has increased as the number of these video games, movies and shows have increased.
Whether you want to believe it or not, there is a direct correlation between the violence in real life society and the violent images we feed ourselves on a daily basis.
Understand, not everyone is prone to see a violent image and go out and act upon it but those who have a predisposition to violent behavior see these images and they (images) act as caffeine or some other stimulant in that person’s mind.
And in this instance “predisposed to violent behavior” refers to a person who has a tendency to get angry quicker than others and act on that anger.
The old saying “you are what you eat” has application in this area as well.
If you consistently introduce violent images to your conscious mind you will inevitably become more violent.
The spectators in the Roman Coliseum who witnessed gladiators fighting to the death and lions being turned loose on Christians and eating them alive became addicted to the violent acts.
As they witnessed more of these acts they craved more of them.
They became immune and desensitized to the loss of human life and hypnotized by the violence.
This same desensitization is what we are witnessing in our society today.
The only difference is some of the spectators are going home, coming back out and committing the same violent acts that they witnessed on the movie screen, the television show and the video game.
We cannot control what a individual chooses to watch but we can control what is available to them.
We need to put pressure on video game producers and government to remove violent video games from the market or at the very least put age requirements on those games.
A child has to wait until they are 16 before they can get a driver’s license but they can buy a violent video game at 12 years-old.
There is something terribly wrong with this picture.
We need to also put pressure on television producers to develop more family-friendly programming.
Boycotting sponsors who advertise during violent television shows is a way of exerting pressure on television producers.
And last but not least we need to stop giving our hard earned dollars to movie companies who are poisoning our children’s minds with violence and degradation.
And we as parents need to stop aiding the poisoning by taking them to the movies or renting these movies from the video store.
America needs to get back to the wholesome, nurturing and decent society it used to be when Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver were the kind of family oriented shows that were on television.
I know we can’t get all the way back to those days but even halfway is a darn better place than where we are now.
