Thursday, February 15, 2024
PMT: Bullets, again
Twenty one people were injured and one killed yesterday, when one or more gun owners opened fire on the Kansas City Chiefs' victory celebration.
It's so wrong, but at this point so predictable.
Those who think guns should be available to nearly everyone, in almost any configuration, usually say that guns are needed to protect people from crime. But, at this point, the proliferation of guns does not seem to be having that effect, does it?
Instead, the message people hear seems to be-- based on the actions of gun owners like the ones in Kansas City-- that guns are necessary to make a person significant. It gives you the ability to scare others, to even kill them. So often these gun owners involved in mass shootings are people who seem to be seeking nothing more than significance, to matter in some way.
That idea is deep within our culture. I just watched the fourth season of the TV show Fargo, and I hated it-- more with each episode. It concludes with a bloody shootout at Union Station in Kansas City, the exact same place that yesterday's shooting occurred. The shooters are two female outlaws who have been looking for the significance that comes from shooting guns at other people. Another part of that conclusion features a young boy finally able to stand up for himself by pointing a loaded gun at (bad) people.
I hated that season of Fargo not only because of the underlying value professed-- personal meaningfulness through shooting people-- but because the execution of the story was just so lazy. Want to create drama? Put a gun in someone's hand. No need for character exposition or a narrative arc; just a gun and some bullets.
A mass shooting at Union Station in Kansas City in a TV drama one day (for me, anyways), and an actual mass shooting at Union Station in Kansas City the next day. There is no connection between culture and these mass shootings, though-- of course there isn't, because no one gets their values from the culture, right?
Right?
