Most of us aren’t ready to stop talking about the mass murders of Newtown, Connecticut. I have tried to stop and I can’t. I keep thinking guns and mental illness and their life-threatening intersection. Guns and mental illness become the common denominator for all of our mass murders. However, there is a sub layer to all this violence that we also need to talk about.
Video games, movies and music are also a vital part society that is feeding the violence. God only knows what kind of violence is on video games. I won’t look. I pop bubbles and have frogs spit balls in my video games. No one over the age of three likes my games. However, I know they are out there. Video games are very life-like. The people look pretty much like people. How many video kills do we have to do before we are just desensitized and indifferent? At what point can we not come out of our game mode? Where do we draw the line?
Some music is horrible. It romanticizes death, shootings, rape and mayhem. I want it banned. I no longer care about someone’s first amendment rights. There are so many movies I won’t watch. We used to call them splatter films. I don’t know what I would call some of them today.
We really need to think about censorship. It isn’t about sex. It is about the gratuitous violence that society watches and in some cases, imitates. I would far rather catch my grandson watching porn than some of the movies I know are right there on my cable TV. At least sex is normal. Blowing people’s faces off at point blank range is not normal.
We aren’t ready to stop talking about these things and we should not be. The question becomes, how do we balance our “rights” with some punk’s desire to flood our society with violence of the most unimaginable sort?
What person mows down 20 little children and 6 adults in cold blood? What makes a person kill his mother? What did any of those people ever do?
We need to start talking about common sense solutions. The right time is now.
Pat, I said that I might be wrong already and that I couldn’t find it again. Its not that important.
@Moon-howler
Just saw this question….
This is why any arming should be voluntary. One has to make that decision BEFORE taking up arms.
It is beginning to sound like one must make that decision bbefore taking up teaching.
@Moon-howler
Maybe.
I’ve already made the decision…long ago.
But then, shouldn’t everyone decide what their limits are, just in case its necessary to find out?
I don’t think anyone really ever knows what their limits are. They just think they do. Perhaps its rational limit setting rather than actual limit setting.
First you have to intellectually decide whether certain actions are permissible for yourself before you can entertain the idea of action.
I thought long and hard on whether I could take actions that might take a life. I decided yes, I could. Now….whether I can actually do that, or whether I freeze in action, or whatever, has to wait until that situation develops, if ever.
But you cannot come to that place, without first deciding if you can or cannot, first.
I had to decide this when I joined the military in 1983.