Why does America have more school shootings than other countries?
Exactly. If it wasn’t school shootings, it would be bus stop knifings, or whatever was played up in the media. I don’t think so. A firearm provides a unique brand of superiority and dominance not really found elsewhere. These loner kids are not going to go out and try and physically assault people – they just can’t. You can’t blow off steam running around knifing people or hitting them with a baseball bat, you’d get tired for a start, and the first person bigger than you would stop you in your tracks. As soon as someone clicked to what you were doing you’d be wrestled to the ground and arrested in no time. A gun is different. I have no experience at all with firearms but they clearly make people feel invincible and that must be attracive to this type of downtrodden kid. You are untouchable to individuals of any size, groups of people, adults, and to a certain extent even the police. Albeit for a short time only.
I think the US since its inception has the cult of the rugged individualist which comes out in gutsy entrepreneurs and frontiersman. The truth of these images are irrelevant, it is that they are American archetyes, if you will. The flip side of that individualism which has often served America well is that if you are a loner, have mental problems, or are a little ‘off” you are never so alone as you are in America. Nobody to hear you, nobody to allow you to vent, you are practically invisible. The flipside of the individualist archetype is Ted Kaczynski, Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver” and now the ‘school shooter.
I also see that Canada has strict gun control laws while the US has none. We have no gun control laws? No. Wrong. Utterly wrong. We have spotty, inconsistent gun control laws. But we do have them. It varies by jurisdiction. Big cities like Chicago and New York tend to have very strict gun control laws. Rural areas, particularly those in the South and West, tend to have less restrictive laws. Now, as for your question, I actually am an American and I’ve spent my whole life here. So I’m not going to invoke stupid Euro-cliches about how childish and immature we are. I would say that America has more school shootings because we have a colder, harsher society. As someone else mentioned above, in America, if you are alone, you are very much alone. Add to that the Darwinian social atmosphere of the American school system and you’ve got quite a combustible mix.
Would that the Metatalk related thread on the original thread regarding the Virginia Tech shoots were as eloquent as much of what I’ve read here in this thread. Of course Canadians have had school shootings, but something is clearly very different between the two cultures. And this is an issue that has so many dimensions regardless of nationalism – topics like how societies deal with the outsiders living among us, how we deal (or fail to provide support for) the mentally ill, how we view relationships and solutions to problems. Like so much in life, it’s an interdisciplinary, multifaceted issue with no quick fixes. The older you get, the more you realize there *are* no quick answers or fixes – that there are more layers to any issue than we’re willing to admit. I’ve lived in Canada and I’ve lived in the U.S.
Exactly. If it wasn’t school shootings, it would be bus stop knifings, or whatever was played up in the media. Funny, reading this thread I was reminded that my small Canadian town had a school “knifing” shortly after Columbine. Two kids were injured, non killed. It didn’t make much of a media splash. I remember thinking that that’s the kind of violence you get when kids don’t have access to guns.
