Humans are both devil and angel

The first damnable thing is, it takes a tragedy to pull us together as a nation.

The second damnable thing is tragedy is the only thing that pulls us together anymore.

And the third most damning thing is we keep repeating these tragedies.

The Aurora, Colo., shooter, 24-year-old James Holmes, who went on a gun-toting rampage in the wee hours of a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” murdered 12 people and wounded 58 more at the theater on July 20.

It’s not that the numbers are so horrific — Norway’s mass killer, Anders Breivik, murdered 77 people on a small Norwegian island, in a country that has stricter gun controls than America does.  Ironically, this July marks the first anniversary of that massacre.  Internet tabloids such as TMZ claim Holmes was a follower of Breivik’s way of thinking.

Well, it doesn’t much matter what Holmes or, for that matter, Breivik thinks because I can guarantee you we’re going to see more of these massacres carried out.  Our society in particular, and the modern world itself are set up to create the circumstances that if someone wants to shoot and kill others, they will.  We just live in a violent era.

Strangely enough, it is not about gun control.  In other words, there is a certain futility involved in thinking that if guns were somehow controlled that would somehow create less availability of guns, and that the person or people using said guns would be less inclined to kill.

I know, I’ve totally lost my liberal credibility on this issue.  But the more I look at Holmes, the more I think about what Breivik did, the more you can buy guns anywhere and any way you want, legal or illegal — all you have to do is Google what you’re looking for, or go to your local Walmart — then how can you begin to control access to guns?

The far better approach is to counteract the society approach that wants guns in the first place.  And therein lies the core of why we keep having tragic shootings.

At that core is the human penchant for violence.  Now before you tell me that neither you nor me or nor your sainted mother are incapable of violence, let me warn you, we are all capable of violence.  I mean all of us.  It’s inborn, because if we didn’t have some violence we would have never evolved. Believe me, the hyena devouring the wildebeest on the African savannah is not making a moral issue out of it.  Only humans do.

I have two juxtaposed pictures in my mind on this: The first is the ape in the movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  The ape discovers a bone, the eerie and ever-present monolith block is somewhere in the background, and in a blast of wonder and murderous ecstasy, the ape takes up the bone cudgel and kills the animal just outside the picture frame in the movie.

The other scene in my mind is a sweeter, and yet no less potent picture.  It’s an illustration in a program on public television I saw a few months past that shows a hominid millions of years ago reaching out to support another hominid who happens to be disabled.  In other words, the picture portrays that along with our aggression, our violence is the same feeling that produces compassion.

Does this mean Holmes, sitting in court with his bright orange hair and vacant expression deserves our compassion for what he did?  Does this mean he should be our example of why the death penalty should be waived?  Or brought back with vigilante vengeance?

And is the media responsible for a troubled young man collecting an enormous arsenal of weaponry over a period of several months plus booby trapping his own apartment with trip wire and explosives that could have blasted an entire apartment building into the next state?

There is no mistaking we are saturated with violent images.  We see them in movies, television shows, news programs, even cartoons.  They’re present in magazines and what you can read on the Internet.  I’ve long since grown numb to these gory images, and I can’t imagine why anyone enjoys them.  But would censoring these types of sights defuse a future Holmes?  I don’t think so.

I believe it comes down to what kind of society we want to be, and would we be willing to create a less violent, less murderous nation — or world.

Here’s what is so confusing: Thailand, which largely follows pacifist Buddhist teachings throughout its society, enjoys the “sport” of boxing, carried out to a particularly vicious level.  American boxers, by contrast, seem tame.

But boxing is violence.  It’s beating your opponent into insensibility.  Holmes was no boxer, no boxing enthusiast.  Still, he went on a massacre, killed a dozen people, left scores wounded, and no one wants to believe it.  And right after the killing spree the sale of guns in Colorado shot up.

Can any society across the globe end its violent traits, stop tragic massacres from ever occurring?  I don’t think it’s possible.  That’s because I am firmly convinced we are both devil and angel.  But don’t expect me to tell you which is which.

We will always have reason to commit acts of violence — that’s the entire purpose of any war — and we will always have reason to reach out to others with care and concern.  We will always reel in horror over bloodshed, and we will always try to keep it from happening again.  But, we will each time, bear witness to more tragedies.

Jodeane Albright is an award-winning columnist, blogger and the community editor at the Idaho State Journal.

Compromise elusive on gun rights

As expected, the debate and discourse has turned to gun ownership in the wake of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8 that claimed the lives of six people and wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords along with several others in a grocery store parking lot.

Also as expected, the debate and discourse are as rancorous as ever. So much for the vaunted “civility” that was hoped for following this tragedy. Discussion is trigger temperamental concerning the Second Amendment.

It’s back to where we started, which means no one is willing to compromise or agree about what to do with America’s guns.

I’m not against the Second Amendment, which is a perfectly reasonable amendment to have in our Constitution. In sum, the Second Amendment states, ” A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

And I don’t like tyrannical governments anymore than the next guy or gal does. So having the right to keep and bear arms certainly gives the ordinary citizen considerable leverage in the face of government tyranny.

But — and this is a big but — American extremists have failed to understand, or have arbitrarily assumed because the Second Amendment says citizens can bear arms, that means you’re entitled to your own arsenal, that you can use any kind of weapon you want any way you want.

Today’s extremists aren’t fighting or defending themselves against King George of England. Nor do we have a dictator system, or divine monarch who should, rightly, be opposed.

No. Could it be the extremists, who suffuse the meaning of the Second Amendment with their own intolerant interpretation, are just plain mad that a black man, Barack Obama, is president of the United States? So let’s get some guns and overthrow him, that’s what they want. It’s a damn shame that a lot of American citizens who should know better want to get rid of Obama just like the extremists do.

Another disconcerting point championed by extremists in our country is how owning guns is a worthy deterrent against the robber who will invade your home, the government forces that will drag you off to jail, or the monster hiding in the bushes that can be stopped by a hail of bullets.

But what these extremists believe, in all their paranoia, is that anyone outside of themselves is the enemy.

So extremists start using their personal firearms against anyone or anything they don’t like.  Make no mistake, although Rep. Giffords’ assailant was suffering from mental illness, there is evidence that she was his target. It can be said that Jared Loughner was influenced to use his Glock to kill others based on political differences with Giffords and perhaps the United States government.

Did you know that the United States of America tops the list of guns per person throughout the world? Are you aware that the runner-up nation that is as heavily armed as America is happens to be Yemen — an unstable country and often a terrorist sanctuary?

Figures provided by the 2007 Small Arms Survey state that for guns per 100 residents, the U.S. comes in at 88.8. Yemen’s statistic is 54.8 guns per 100 residents. Having so many guns in so many households in America is a dubious distinction. And with Yemen coming in a close second, that says volumes about the company we keep — on the issue of owning guns, that is.

Believe me, extremists and their supporters, such as Sarah Palin, who has a “target” map showing Giffords’ congressional district as one that should be “attacked” (for the record, Giffords’ Tucson office was vandalized before the shooting took place) — are well aware of the inflammatory nature of their remarks.

Palin and her ilk can defend themselves all they want, they can point to their rights with the Second Amendment every time the subject of guns comes up. We can go around and around talking about who should and should not have guns and how they should be used.

Yet as we discourse, debate and defend, 80 people will die everyday from guns in America. That’s one sobering statistic, isn’t it? But is it enough to sober up the people who own the more than 100 million handguns in the U.S.?

Jodeane Albright is the community editor of the Idaho State Journal.