San Bernardino's Killing Contagion

Just today (December 2, 2015), there was a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California with over 12 tragic casualties and multiple constituents injured during the conflict. In the past we have seen multiple shootings in environments like schools, where we think we are safe because it’s a learning environment for bright and young individuals. However, shootings in the like Sandy Hook, or Virginia Tech exemplify how people use weapons as a resort for releasing their anger and violent ideas. Personally for me, I never thought a shooting would ever happen around me because shootings like Sandy Hook occur in states that are extremely far away.

Due to the San Bernardino shooting, I realize how there might even be a shooting at our own school if fanatics for violence come upon this campus. This not only scared me, but I was concerned on how our society has progressed. According to TheWeek.com in their article “America’s Killing Contagion”, they write in regards to the recent shootings that have occurred and how it is unfortunate how innocent lives are ended because of people who are male or even mentally challenged.

It is indeed a tragic event where innocent people die, but this article and the author make some invalid points in my opinion that simple do not make sense.

The author of this article is extremely good at indirectly sending a message or even listing cliché arguments that we have heard in the past a lot concerning the problem of public shootings. In the third paragraph titled “What drives the shooters?”, one aspect that agitates me the most is the article and study by Mother Jones.

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The author makes a claim that almost all mass shooters are male and this is simple an indirect attack on the male gender which is sexist. You can’t just indirectly claim that men are heartless and naturally violent because they are supposedly “responsible” for these shootings. The source of this claim is by Mother Jones, a new source that has been known to promote feminism, but the source clearly does not understand the definition of feminism. The idea of feminism is to promote for women’s rights at the level of equal rights with men. However, by indirectly attacking men in this article, you aren’t exactly promoting for “equal rights”, rather you are promoting for women to be superior to men simple because of the little flaws and coincidences that occur in them. I feel that our society has provided equality for both men and women on a political scale with rights and the legal procedures, but the problem with gender equality is that on a societal and social level, men do not acknowledge women to be on the same level as them.

Furthermore, the author talks about many solutions and proposals that can be done in order to “solve” or “mitigate” the problem of shootings and public violence in general. One of them being that we should make proposals to reduce the availability of guns and high-capacity magazines. This is a flawed argument simple because it is not the guns fault for the acts of violence. If the culprit and criminal has the idea of violence in his mind and he wants to hurt people, he doesn’t necessarily have to use a gun. Guns are just efficient and superb at getting the job done. Even if we limited guns and had gun control policies and reforms, the person can still use other weapons like knives and swords to hurt people. Furthermore, most people who are involved in mass shootings use illegal weapons that are not issued for regular citizens. (About 60% of shootings that occur, New York Times)

Another argument and claim that the author makes that agitates me is the idea of mass shootings being a contagion. The authors support and reasoning behind this is Adam Lanza, in which he creates a 7-by-4-foot spreadsheet documenting the names, body counts, and weapons from previous mass murders. The only reasoning behind this is that, they all have something in common. This is simple a another Illusory Correlation, in Psychology it’s a term in which the person sees a correlation and assumes something, but actually is non-existent and based off of “conspiracy theories”. This is like saying Bush did 9-11 and the Illuminati is a secret society in which they control the world because their iconic symbol is a triangle with an eyeball. There is no study claiming that one mass killing ACTUALLY leads to another mass killing. This is based off of theory and some excel spreadsheet that was created to back up this “conspiracy theory” they actually call a Contagion. I believe that the Author and the article has a good intention of spreading the issue of mass murders and shootings, but the argumentation and writing techniques are simply flawed, offensive, and illogical.