Since 2000, there have been 270,000 murders in the US, 600,000 drug overdoses (200,000 involving opioids), 650,000 suicides (130,000 by veterans), and 85,000 workplace deaths. An estimated 700,000 people have died prematurely during this period due to lack of health care. Police killed over 12,000 people from 2000 to 2014, and up to 27,000 immigrants have died attempting to cross the US-Mexico border since 1998. The government has executed roughly 850 prisoners since 2000. Over 2.2 million adults are currently incarcerated in jails and prisons, with another 4.7 million on probation or parole.
The Parkland
shooting: Why are mass killings so common in the United States?
23 February 2018
On February 14, an American horror story played out in
southeastern Florida when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Stoneman
Douglas High School, killing 17 people, including 14 students.
In April 1999, the country was stunned by the mass killing of 13
students and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado by two students, who
then committed suicide. In the course of the past 20 years, eruptions of
homicidal violence have become almost commonplace, and the death tolls
resulting from such incidents have in many cases far exceeded the terrible loss
of life at Columbine. The 2017 attack in Las Vegas resulted in 58 deaths. The
2016 attack at the Pulse nightclub in Florida left 49 dead. The 2014 shooting
in San Bernardino cost the lives of 14 people. The 2012 assault at Sandy Hook
Elementary School claimed 28 lives. The attack on an audience at a movie
theater in Aurora, Colorado, also in 2012, took 12 lives. The shooting at the
Fort Hood Army base in 2009 resulted in 13 deaths.
The killings are not only deadlier than in 1999. Such incidents
occur much more frequently. Mass killings involving more than four deaths take
place every 16 days in the US, 10 times more frequently than in the period
between 1982 and 2011, when the average time between mass killings was 200
days.
Unlike in the aftermath of previous shootings, this time the usual
hypocritical appeals for “unity” and “remembrance” have been accompanied by a
groundswell of anger. Students have spoken out sharply against politicians,
including President Trump, and walkout demonstrations involving thousands of
students have occurred at high schools and middle schools across the country.
Student youth recognize that the wave of mass killings testifies
to a deep-rooted sickness of American society. Justin Gruber, who hid in a
classroom closet as Cruz gunned down his classmates, told ABC News Wednesday,
“I was born into a world where I never got to experience safety and peace.
There needs to be a significant change in this country.”
The initial focus of the demonstrations has been on assault
rifles, which have been used in numerous eruptions of homicidal violence. The
fact that such weapons can be so easily obtained, even by youth with serious
psychological disorders, is seen as an obvious expression of the irrationality
of American society. The hatred of the fascistic National Rifle Association and
the contempt for the politicians who take money from this reactionary
organization is entirely legitimate. But the exclusive focus on guns—which has
been encouraged by the media and the Democratic Party—runs the danger of
becoming an evasion from the deeper causes of the Parkland tragedy.
Horrific events like the Parkland shooting seize headlines, but
such incidents represent only a tiny fraction of the extreme violence of
American society.
Since 2000, there have been 270,000 murders in the US, 600,000
drug overdoses (200,000 involving opioids), 650,000 suicides (130,000 by
veterans), and 85,000 workplace deaths. An estimated 700,000 people have died
prematurely during this period due to lack of health care. Police killed over
12,000 people from 2000 to 2014, and up to 27,000 immigrants have died
attempting to cross the US-Mexico border since 1998. The government has
executed roughly 850 prisoners since 2000. Over 2.2 million adults are
currently incarcerated in jails and prisons, with another 4.7 million on
probation or parole.
There are two critical factors in the phenomenon of American
violence. The first is the extreme level of social inequality.
There have been numerous scientific studies that establish a
correlation between inequality and a high level of social violence. According
to a 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater
Equality Makes Societies Stronger, there is a direct correlation
between a country’s level of inequality and the level of social violence it
exhibits. A 2004 article by British social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson,
who authored The Spirit Level,
explains that “the increase in violence associated with greater inequality is
part of a broader shift in the nature of social relations.”
In the aftermath of the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino,
California, Daniel M. T. Fessler, the director of the UCLA Center for Behavior,
Evolution and Culture, wrote to the Los
Angeles Times:
What, then, makes our society so violent? Research indicates that
a principal driver is income inequality. In addition to being among the most
violent of industrialized nations, ours is among the most unequal, with wealth
being concentrated in the hands of a few.
In highly unequal societies like the United States, crushing
exploitation, unfair treatment by profit-hungry employers, a lack of access to
social programs, increased competition and extreme economic stress push
millions to the psychological breaking point.
A second factor is, undoubtedly, the impact of unending war, waged
by the United States all over the world, on American society. The “war on
terror,” now in its 18th year, dominates not only the political life of the
United States, but its social culture as well.
A 17-year-old high school student has not lived a day in his or
her life when the United States has not been at war. Under the auspices of the
“war on terror,” the government has armed the police with military equipment as
part of the development of a “total army.” It has advanced its war aims through
the perpetual exacerbation of moods of extreme nationalism, violence, paranoia,
xenophobia, fear, suspicion and alienation.
Worst of all, the number of people killed by the military forces
of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and
Pakistan is in the hundreds of thousands.
To claim that the ongoing state of permanent war and mass
surveillance has had no effect on the social psychology of the country is
untenable. In Cruz’s case, the 19-year-old reportedly sported his Junior
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) shirt as he unloaded clip after clip
into the bodies of his former classmates and teachers.
As always when sections of the population attempt to assert their
social grievances, the political establishment has mobilized to manipulate
popular aspirations and channel protests in reactionary directions.
One faction of the ruling class has responded to the shooting by
calling for more guns in schools. On Wednesday, Trump proposed to arm school
teachers so they can kill potential shooters. The local sheriff in Parkland
announced that all schools in the area will be occupied by police armed with
AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles, the same weapon used by Cruz.
The Democratic Party has intervened to orient public debate behind
gun control, seizing on popular hostility to groups like the fascistic National
Rifle Association (NRA) that have profited from the nearly unrestricted
proliferation of military-grade weapons. Though a law limiting the availability
of assault rifles might reduce the number of deaths when shootings occur, it
would not address the underlying causes of social violence. Other, and, one has
reason to suspect, even more lethal means of destroying lives will be found.
The root cause of such violence lies in the capitalist social
system, based on ever-intensifying corporate exploitation, inequality, and war.
This nightmarish American reality will be brought to an end only when
capitalism is ended and replaced by socialism.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality warns
that protests addressed to the Democratic and Republican Parties will fall on
deaf ears. Students and youth must turn to the working class, the great
progressive and revolutionary social force.
Eric London
The Mass Shootings Aren’t About Guns,
They’re About Our Culture
The Mass Shootings Aren’t About Guns,
They’re About Our Culture
The Florida school shooting, Las Vegas, Aurora, and the
others that have occurred in recent years have fired up the gun control debate
in America to white-hot. Pitting gun owners and the NRA once more against
Democrats, liberals, and the Hollywood loons whose ultimate goal is a disarmed
America.
And for all their denials and lies
make no mistake about it, the anti-gun coalition’s aim is to rid the country of
guns come hell or high water. Through new laws and regulations, outright
bans, and ultimately the confiscation of every privately owned firearm in
America.
For Democrats the knee-jerk
reaction to any tragedy is to immediately look for a way to further restrict
the rights of Americans. Gun violence is an easy target – no pun intended
- since it tugs at Americans’ emotions when they see news coverage of people
running for cover from a building after an incident.
Nowadays young people are eating laundry
detergent pods apparently in some kind of twisted challenge or contest.
The Democrats’ answer is to suggest forcing the manufacturer to spend
millions of dollars to make their product less visually appealing so youths
won’t be tempted to eat them. Instead of smacking the kids upside the
head and saying “Hey dummy, you’re eating laundry detergent for crying out
loud! Straighten up"!
For Democrats and liberals it is
far easier to put the blame on an inanimate object like a gun or a box of soap
capsules, than to admit that the root cause of gun violence and stupidity in
America is the immoral society that they have worked hard to create for at
least the last six decades.
There once was a time when no one
took offense to a Nativity Scene on the courthouse lawn, or in front of city
hall. And the Ten Commandments hung prominently inside most classrooms in
American schools. And whether it was true or not children were taught
that George Washington never told a lie. Something admirable for them to
aspire to, even if it was only folklore. Those days are long gone, replaced
with an extreme progressive and revisionist curriculum.
Instead of teaching children about
the history of America, the good as well as the bad, and of the importance of
honesty and integrity, for decades now children have been taught that our
founding fathers were nothing but lousy slave owners.
And those who fought courageously
in battle after battle for the Confederacy during the War of the Rebellion are
now maligned as fighting solely for the institution of slavery, when the fact
of the matter is that few truly fought to maintain that blight on America’s
past. Most fought because their loyalties were with their particular
state, and their state was attacked.
There are many progressives now
who wish to rewrite America’s history by removing statues of those same
Confederate soldiers, apparently believing in some way that by removing the
marble and bronze edifices they will somehow remove the Civil War and slavery
from the nation’s history and memory.
School children are now taught
that what was once considered immoral is now acceptable, and traditional family
values are “hate”.
When they should be reading books
like “Green Eggs and Ham” they are having forced upon them books like “Heather
Has Two Mommies”.
Is it a wonder that as they grow
children are becoming more and more emotionally withdrawn and starting to exist
only in a culture of video games, smart phones, and countless Hollywood
explosion and gun violence extravaganzas?
Why are we surprised that some
choose to act out the fantasy world they’ve been subjected to by modern
culture. Not to mention having absent parents, progressive schools, and
the liberal Democrats ?
Yes gun violence exists in
America, but it’s not because of some inanimate object jumping up and killing
innocent people. It exists because of people who are willing to gun down
their fellow man without feeling any remorse, or even acknowledging
responsibility for the carnage they inflict.
They’ve been ‘numbed’ inside.
Heartless, cold, and calculating killers. The product of our
progressive liberal education system, and the Democrat politicians who have
created it.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS
in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created
more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also
had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s
terms, 95% of the wealth created went to
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
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