{"id":2146,"date":"2019-08-05T09:10:04","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T13:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=2146"},"modified":"2019-08-05T09:10:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T13:10:10","slug":"the-pain-becomes-too-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/08\/05\/the-pain-becomes-too-great\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pain Becomes Too Great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a post all lined up, talking about how Democrats are trying to determine their Presidential candidate.  It\u2019s good, and I\u2019ll use it later.  But after the events of the last two days, it feels too soon to move on.  The news cycle is fast, and I know that we won\u2019t be talking about El Paso and Dayton by the end of the week.  But it isn\u2019t appropriate to let them go, yet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

El Paso<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With the little information we know, we have a contrast in killers between El Paso and Dayton.  The El Paso shooter was driven by white nationalism, wanting to stop the \u201cbrown invasion\u201d by driving eight hours from his home and opening fire.  He is, frankly, all that many of us have been fearing:  a young white man out on the edge of sanity, pushed off by the damaging rhetoric of the President, Fox News, and others.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are they to blame for the dead and wounded in El Paso?  No, not directly.  But we all saw this coming, the inflaming language, from \u201csend them back\u201d to the \u201cinfestation\u201d of migrants.  To partisan Americans who could process the emotions, it was either disgusting or appreciated.  To Republicans forced to rationalize what the President was saying, it was probably humbling. From the number of resignations in the House of Representatives, most notably Congressman Will Hurd from the Texas border, it was far too much for some to swallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to the shooter in El Paso, already on the edge of madness, it was enough to load his assault rifle in the car, and head to Wal-Mart to stop the \u201cinvasion.\u201d  It was a white nationalist terrorist attack on those folks, and on our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dayton<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The even younger white man is Dayton fits the \u201cnormal\u201d mass shooter profile.  He was a disaffected white kid from an affluent Dayton suburb.  He may have been bullied in school, and from his postings we can tell he was struggling. There were rumors of \u201chit lists\u201d and \u201crape lists.\u201d He wanted to do just enough to \u201cget by.\u201d  He was two years into community college when he stopped attending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a lot like a school shooter; like Parkland and Chardon and dozens more we read about.  The other kids knew who it was before the authorities released the name.  Just the fact  that the shooter was a young man from Bellbrook was enough.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Causes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So what do El Paso and Dayton shooters have in common?  They are both young white men, disaffected from the \u201cnorm,\u201d looking for their moment in a literal hail of bullets.  One was subsumed into a white nationalist fantasy, one felt so powerless over his own life that he decided to take many others.  We have an issue in our society, past assault rifles and high capacity magazines.  We have an odd epidemic of these messed up young white boys.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a macabre trivia question:  name a black, or female; mass shooter.  While I\u2019m sure there must be some, right off hand I can\u2019t think of any.  The \u201codd one\u201d is the Las Vegas killer, an older white man with a lot of money.  But most are these young white boys.  Whatever is happening to them, we need to start figuring it out.  We know that shootings breed more shootings and that the Columbine killers of twenty years ago are still \u201cadmired legends\u201d to a certain sub-class on the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guns<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But it seems that all of these young white men start measuring their manhood by the length of their rifles.  We know the El Paso shooter got his assault rifle over the internet, online, delivered, and perfectly legal.  While we don\u2019t know how the Dayton shooter got his yet, it\u2019s a common feature in many of these shootings.  So I don\u2019t blame many Americans for blaming the guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they are right. We are the ONLY modern country that allows unlimited access to weapons designed for war to the general populace. And we are by far the nation most plagued with these grotesque mass shootings.  Norway had one, United Kingdom had one, Australia had one, and New Zealand had one.  We here in the United States, home of the free and brave, had our 250th<\/sup> for just this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like the political rhetoric, we know that most Americans can handle these weapons.\u00a0\u00a0We know that most owners of assault rifles have them because they enjoy shooting them, or because they feel they need protection, or maybe as a last safeguard against a wayward government.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Constitution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Most of those folks aren\u2019t on the edge of sanity. But we don\u2019t have a reasonable way of defining who is, and who isn\u2019t.  So, yes it\u2019s about the mental health issues.  The sane don\u2019t do what those white boys did.  But it also is about the guns, the access to weapons that are specifically designed to fire fast and create devastating wounds.  We can\u2019t turn our backs on that part of the problem, or hide behind the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated that, \u201c\u2026the Constitution is not a suicide pact.\u201d  The Second Amendment isn\u2019t either; we already accept many restrictions on what kind of weapons can be purchased.  A Federal license is required to have a fully automatic weapon, for example; it\u2019s been that way since 1934.  So it isn\u2019t that we can\u2019t change, it\u2019s finding the will to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pain Becomes too Great<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We will accept these mass shootings until the pain becomes too great.  We will allow our political gridlock to hand these broken individuals the weapon of their choice, until we decide not to.  Most of the solutions aren\u2019t hard to do, and they aren\u2019t hard to agree on.  Background checks, mental health evaluations, and \u201cred flag\u201d laws:  almost everyone agrees to those.  Most can even agree to ban high capacity magazines.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s get on that, knowing that there is a looming fight over how much pain we are willing to take for the \u201cright\u201d to assault rifles.  We can at least start to solve the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a post all lined up, talking about how Democrats are trying to determine their Presidential candidate.  It\u2019s good, and I\u2019ll use it later.  But after the events of the last two days, it feels too soon to move on.  The news cycle is fast, and I know that we won\u2019t be talking about El Paso and … Continue reading “The Pain Becomes Too Great”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pain Becomes Too Great : Our America - 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