Why is America So Violent?

“Today all Americans are being asked to prepare for the grievous wounds of high velocity rounds.” 60 Minutes, June 13, 2021

This shocking statement came from a paramedic interviewed last Sunday evening on 60 Minutes. He also said, “Mass casualties have become so common that it is important for everyone in this country to be prepared.” And how do we prepare? We carry “Bleeding Kits” when we go to public venues. What has our country become?

In another interview, the Browery County Medical Director described the new training for paramedics which is based on military preparedness. All medics carry “Active Killer Kits” in their packs which include 5 tourniquets, 5 decompression needles, 5 hemostatic agents and 5 emergency trauma dressings. Why? Because mass murders are on the rise and the weapon of choice is the AR 15. There are now more than 19 million of these deadly weapons in circulation among our population!  Their popularity is due to both the number of rounds that can be fired in a brief amount of time and the fact that the ammunition, which travels at 3 times the speed of sound, is so destructive it can shatter concrete. Imagine what it does to the human body! Upon impact, bones explode and organs disintegrate from the shock wave generated by the impact.

On 60 minutes we followed the rehab of a wounded 5-year-old boy named Ryland, found under the dead body of his step-mother murdered in the Texas church massacre. Ryland was hit five times. He lost half his blood. Fragments of two AR-15 bullets remained in his body. This little boy had 24 surgeries to repair the damage to his limbs, pelvis, intestines, kidney, bladder and hip. His surgeon described the procedures as trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. His organs exploded into pieces and had to be reconstructed. This brave little warrior is still undergoing surgery after three years. While they may put his body back together, I can’t help wondering about his shattered psyche.

While the AR 15 is not technically a machine gun, an assassin can purchase an add-on called a “bump stock” that makes it function like one. In the Texas church slaughter, 450 rounds murdered 26 people and wounded 20 others in seconds. At a Las Vegas concert, 58 were killed and 489 wounded. This same weapon murdered 12 and injured 70 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater in 2012; 20 students and 6 adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary; and 14 students and 3 staff at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018. The list goes on. In 2020 alone there were 614 mass shootings causing 446 deaths and 2515 injuries. We are being terrorized by our fellow Americans and our government is doing nothing about it.

While the National Rifle Association promotes the AR-15 as “America’s rifle,” citizens are demanding that this deadly weapon be banned, to no avail. The Republicans in Congress block every attempt to protect our school children who are now being trained in domestic terrorist response! A program called “Stop the Bleed” instructs small children on how to use tourniquets and how to behave when a crazed killer goes on a shooting spree in their school!

On what basis do conservatives object? First of all there’s the 2nd Amendment. It does declare that American citizens have the right to bear arms, but it specifically applies to state militias. Nowhere does it guarantee the right of private citizens to purchase military grade weapons, let alone slaughter our children.

Gun advocates have been suing for years to loosen the interpretation of the 2nd amendment, and in case after case, the Supreme Court upheld the state militia definition, until 2008 in the case of the District of Columbia v Heller, a D.C. policeman who challenged the right to keep a loaded gun in his home for self-defense. The Supreme Court opened the door for our current explosion in gun sales.

         “Prior to the ruling, civilian-owned guns were required to be stored disassembled and unloaded or bound by a locking device. It was the first time in 70 years that the Supreme Court reexamined whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a gun for self-protection purposes or only as it pertains to servicing a state militia. The court ultimately struck down both Washington, D.C.’s longstanding ban on handgun possession and the safe storage law, which contained no exceptions for self-defense.” Civics Nation, Online article

If we consider the political make-up of the Supreme Court at the time, we see that 6 members were appointed by Republican presidents – one by Ford, one by Reagan and the rest by the two Bushes.

In 2014 in Palmer v. District of Columbia, a federal judge overruled the District’s ban on carrying ready-to-use firearms in public. That same year two other courts removed restrictions as well: a New York federal judge struck down the seven-round ammunition limit; a San Diego 9th Court of Appeals removed restrictions on concealed-carry weapons.

The Supreme Court has yet to take a stand on ammunition rounds and concealed weapons. In the meantime red states continue to erode public safety. Texas just abolished the need to even register newly-purchased weapons.

We have watched countless black mothers speak of their fear for their sons. Now due to Covid conspiracies, Asian Americans are being assaulted and slain. But violence is no longer limited to ignorant racism. It’s no longer restricted to age, gender or ethnicity.  It is random and has spread like the pandemic. Mass shootings aside, the USA holds the record for the most deaths by gun violence including suicides and homicides. In 2020 there were a record number of gun deaths – 19,379! And Domestic Violence rose by double digits. One out of every three women is a victim of rape or sexual assault. One out of every four men as well. In 2018 there were 734,630 rape cases and these were only the reported ones.

What is going on? Is this the best we can do? Is this the American Dream? Is this the ideal of Democracy – everyone carrying concealed weapons, living in terror, packing bleeding kits along with our children’s lunches?

This brings me back to the question in my title: Why is America so violent? I can’t begin to give a definitive answer, but here are some thoughts. We all grew up in a climate of violence. The USA has been at war for 222 years out of its 239 in existence! We have become inured to images of dead, emaciated, mutilated bodies. We are also the most heavily defended nation on Earth because these images have made us the most fearful nation on Earth.  I shudder to think how many times our planet could be destroyed just by the weapons in our arsenal. We are a belligerent nation and our children are raised on a diet of violent video games, TV shows, movies, news, aggressive sports like boxing and wrestling, not to mention school bullying which now infects the Internet.

While these are influential factors, I believe the cause lies in our paradigm. For the last 5000 years we have been dominated by masculine values – logic and reason, materialistic science and the religion of a vengeful god. We have evolved into a culture that suppresses feminine qualities like sensitivity, inclusiveness, compassion, intuition, and appreciation of the mysterious unknown. We have lost our enchantment. We have lost touch with nature and beauty and human-kindness. In short, we have lost our soul. Bereft of what makes life joyful, we have turned to the pursuit of wealth and power, but these will never nourish our souls. We have become numb to the sacredness of life.

I know this is not my usual post. I try to maintain a positive attitude, cheer everyone on, but I have been shaken by what I saw Sunday night. It broke my heart and made my blood boil at the same time. I want to shout expletives. I want to shake our political leaders until they wake up. Ultimately, however, it is up to us – the will of the people. Is this the world we want to live in? If not, we have to do something about it. We must exercise our power and our voice. We need a national movement as loud and outraged as Black Lives Matter. Those demonstrations had impact on policing. Our voices matter. We need to address gun violence with the same commitment.

For those of us who can’t go to Washington and carry placards in front of the Capitol, we can write op-eds and send them to our local newspapers. Or post on Facebook, or Twitter. Write to our congresspeople and let them know we demand gun regulation. And ultimately use our vote. We can no longer blindly follow party lines when the lives of our precious children are on the line.

I want to point out that last Sunday Saturn made its second square to Uranus. This year is about disrupting what has become institutionalized in our society, and clearly mass murder with military grade weapons is becoming the norm. Let’s make a stand.