"Gunism" is a "cultural disease."

[DirksterG30]

His article is proof that higher education and intelligence are not always directly related.

 

[Sage of Seattle]

oo7 beat me to it (and brilliantly I might add).

I always thought he was a ****.

That about sums it up for me, but I'll post what I came up with anyway.

Indeed, I would claim that a knife is not just a lethal device but a psychological actor in this terrible drama. Knives and sharpeners were at the heart of that man's elaborate orchestration of the event and of his Yojimbo-like self-presentation to the world. When you look at those pictures, you understand how a knife can merge so fully with a person that a man who makes regular use of it could (in the historical East and in Ikeda) become known as a "blade."

Some years ago, the distinguished Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told me that, after a lifetime of studying Japanese culture, what he found most deeply troubling was our country's inability to come to terms with the knife -- which in turn strongly affected our domestic and international attitudes. Emotions of extreme attachment to and even sacralization of the knife pervade Japanese society, and commercial interests shamelessly manipulate those emotions to produce wildly self-destructive policies.

(Inspired by http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1376982.stm )

 

[Waitone]

I was struck by the similarity of language and themes to that used during the Vietnam War as a slam against those who either participated or supported it.

 

[Mad Turner]

I am English and have, perhaps, a different perception of the gun. I am a shooter of target as I am too squeamish to shoot animals but we do have a lot of people in this country who hunt deer and foxes and shoot ducks and geese etc. I think that guns should be regulated so that they were not so completely readily available, but an honest citizen should be able to acquire a firearm through a proper legal system with the proper police authority and a certificate from a doctor to the effect that there is no known adverse history of mental illness or depression. VT is a dreadfull occurance which every lover of guns finds as abhorant as the next and we know that the boy who committed that crime has damaged our reputation even though we did no more than go about our business in a law abiding fashion. It took the United Kingdom six days to kill as many people as those who died at VT but we used the automobile. Every day eight people are killed by the motor car in the UK but when I point out this fact to the anti-gun lobby they tell me that this is different. When I enquire where is it different they tell me that we need motor cars and so those eight every day are just an unfortunate statistic. I dont understand this, either way the victim is dead, how can there be different kinds of dead? Further to that we know that 'road rage' is a known phenomena where people lose their head to a madness where they will do anything to win. To win what, one space in front of the next guy. Authority never wants to know the statistic of the comparison of gun death against automobile death because they know they are on a hiding to nothing.
Kitchen knife - great for cutting meat or stabbing people
Golf club - great for a pleasant afternoon or hitting people
Base ball bat - same
Lots of other every day things - great for what they were made for or killing people
A closed mind is closed just as a dead person is dead. It's easier to give birth than raise the dead so concentrate on educating the young people about civilization and democracy and the rights of all citizens including having guns if that is what you want.

Mad Turner

 

[obxned]

The only reason idiots like this manage to transmit their damaged genetic material to a new generation of idiots is because decent people have made life safer for them by not giving in to evil.

His kind are the dodo birds of the human race. Worse, they allow evil people to have what they want, re-enforcing the evil behavior.

 

[Geronimo45]

I like this article. My love for guns is a mental disease.

I need rehab. Belt-fed rehab.

 

[RealGun]

I figure that wanting to ignore or tear down the fact that "gunism" is honored by the US Constitution is a worse "cultural disease".

 

[Sharps-shooter]

He does sound a bit off-base, doesn't he? After all, how can a gun be an actor of any sort. it doesn't act, really.

I definitely think it's true that attitudes towards violence in this country are... weird, in a way. Like it or not, this country (like many another) was founded on violence. And that may be part of it. But then there is the lack of realism when it comes to portrayal of guns and violence. I find that annoying. It's always either the newspapers going on about how evil guns are (unless they belong to "your friends, the government"), or the movies portraying guns as much more powerful than they really are (my favorite example being the scene in the bourne identity, where the protagonist fires a bird hunting shell from an old double gun, and it creates a huge explosion). Everyone likes power.

To me, one side of it is very much analogous to american attitudes about cars. People love the power that a car gives them. The difference is that there isn't as much of the questioning about them. How many people were killed by cars on the day of VA Tech killings? Nobody even mentioned it on the news.

 

[Legionnaire]

Lots of good, thoughtful, and entertaining follow-ups here. I particularly like oo7's spoof. Excellent!

Sharps-shooter, you said,

I definitely think it's true that attitudes towards violence in this country are... weird, in a way. Like it or not, this country (like many another) was founded on violence. And that may be part of it.

I think this is more than "part of it." Our country was founded by those who thought there were values worth dying for, and they understood violence in this light. Much of today's society is as self-absorbed as Cho was, and they don't see anything as being valuable enough to die for. Unfortunately, one can become so self-absorbed that one also doesn't see anything worth living for, which seems to be where Cho ended up. But feel-gooders like Lifton have lost the idea that lawful violence against evil is a service to society.

 

[ctdonath]

"Some ideas are so preposterous only an intellectual could believe them."
- George Orwell

 

[Cosmoline]

"gunism"--newspeak of the week!

 

[michiganfan]

I have had a load of college education and I still aint buying a lod of bull like this.

 

[nonquixote]

I think that guns should be regulated so that they were not so completely readily available, but an honest citizen should be able to acquire a firearm through a proper legal system with the proper police authority and a certificate from a doctor to the effect that there is no known adverse history of mental illness or depression.

Mad Turner, The problem many of us have with this idea is that then what we consider a basic right, the right to self defense, comes at the suffrance of a government who might not always have benevolent intentions. The long term consequences of this could be (and historically have been shown to be) much worse than living with rare random outbreaks of violence.

 

[Moondoggie]

Loved oo7's spoof!

We all know that Ph. D. stands for "Piled Higher and Deeper". There's no doubt that the original author is a Ph. D.

 

[Dienekes]

Lifton made his reputation right around the Korean War on the topic of brainwashing and later expanded that into the area of cults. He was well respected and pretty much the authority on those topics for a while. He got goofier and goofier during the 60s and Vietnam. He has got to be at least in his 80s at this point and like Cronkite, ought to know when to give it a rest.

Somebody probably called him up for an op-ed piece and he couldn't resist the spotlight once more.

I once read that the real purpose of an education was to be able to know when a man is talking nonsense. These days that is probably more important than ever.

 

[Legionnaire]

Here's a good alternate view from Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

A lot has been made of the police failure to apprehend Cho for two hours. Fair enough, but that's not typical. In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools. (In testimony this week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the head of the association for all campus cops explained the "safety issues" that mainly keeps them distracted: "At the top of the list are issues related to high-risk drinking and the use and abuse of illegal and prescription drugs.")

Full article at this link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009988

 

[HuntCast]

Maybe someone could write a slam dunk rebuttal?

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[mnrivrat]

I guess I can just cut and paste from a response I gave on another thread -

"A dumb ass with a degree is just an educated dumb ass - not an expert"

The trouble with too many shrinks is that they feel compelled to have wisdom well behond their abilitys .

 

[Mad Turner]

nonquixote

I understand what you say and appreciate your point. We have gangsters in this country and even though we have laws about keeping guns they very unsportingly ignore the rules and carry concealed handguns when the rest of us legal, honest, decent and ethical people aren't even allowed them. I began my post by saying that I think the English perception is at variance with the American view. We have, I think, never been allowed to carry a gun for self defence and the policeman carrying a gun is still relegated to places where it is thought that terrorist attack might occur such as airports but the ordinary policeman going about his job does not have a gun. I think that the English at large do not want guns for self defence as our culture has never required it. This is not to say that we have not had outbursts of violence. The last one happened at Dunblane in Scotland in1996 when a man went berserk in a school and killed 16 children and one teacher and that remains our worst attack on children. The time before that was 1987 when a guy went on the rampage with an AK 47 and a Bereta pistol and killed sixteen people and wounded fifteen others. Following the 1987 attack the government banned semi - auto guns and after the 1996 attack the government banned all handguns. They thought they could reduce gun crime with these measures but gun crime continues to rise year after year but the fact remains that 'only' about 160 people are killed with guns annually whereas the motor car kills 3500.
Regards
Mad Turner

 

[Happyshooter]

Turn the word "gun" into "afro" or "jewish hat" and mail the article back to him. Wait for the screaming.

 

[heypete]

Gunism? Is that like "racism" or any of the other bad -isms?

Thus, would someone who buys Perazzi shotguns but looks down on Hi-Points be a "gunist"? (Or just someone with way too much money. )

I happen to be a rather discriminating owner of firearms, and avoid low-quality products. Am I a gunist? Uh-oh.

 

[Standing Wolf]

I think that guns should be regulated so that they were not so completely readily available, but an honest citizen should be able to acquire a firearm through a proper legal system with the proper police authority and a certificate from a doctor to the effect that there is no known adverse history of mental illness or depression.

Trusting government to protect individual rights is like asking the coyotes to guard the hen house: not the course of wisdom.

 

[jimacp]

Why is it that so many psychiatrists - psychologists are fruitcakes?? My theory is that its sort of like why so many evangelists lead secret perverted lives.....they are preaching to or psychoanaylsing themselves.

 

[Blue .45]

But while there will always be mentally ill people, a few of whom are violent, it is our gun-centered cultural disease that converts mental illness into massacre.

Guess we're fortunate we don't have a car bomb-centered cultural disease like they do in Iraq.

 

[Kentak]

Plop the professor and his family down in the middle of a crime riddled community, make them live and work there for a few months, and then ask him if he still thinks the desire for a gun is a mental illness, or a survival tool.

K