On January 3, 2013, I posted a blog in which I offered several comments concerning the horrible school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. These comments ranged from observations on mental illness to matters of ethics, politics, modes of thinking, the nature of tragedy and a Christian (at least) theology of pastoral care.
Concerning “tragedy,” I explained that just because something may be “terrible,” that does not necessarily make it “tragic.” At least according to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and drama critic, who defined the term in his Poetics in the 4th century B.C.E. Rather, at least one form of what is “tragic” is when something “good” (or is meant to be so) ends up being “bad.”
And the example I offered, with respect to the atrocity in Connecticut, was to surmise that the mother of the school shooter may have merely been trying to relate (in an ostensibly positive way) to her troubled son by engaging him in her recreational “shooting hobby.” Something meant to be “good”? Only for it to turn out so terribly otherwise, with him apparently stealing some of his mother’s guns and proceeding to murder her, along with the children and adults he killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
While some, of course, consider owning (or collecting) and shooting guns for traditional hunting and even target or skeet shooting as a harmless, not inappropriate hobby, others hardly agree.
Like one of my local colleagues who was quick to tell me that anyone who “likes guns and shooting” has a “serious problem”; much less, any mother who would think that sharing such a so-called hobby with her developmentally disabled, if not likely mentally ill son was providing anything close to something “therapeutic” for him.
I say “likely mentally ill” since initially, the school shooter was said to have been suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, a milder form of autism, which is considered a developmental disorder rather than a mental illness. However, I later read an article by a reputable psychiatrist who claimed that schizophrenia–clearly a definable mental illness–how it is, often for legal reasons, frequently under-diagnosed. Which led me to suspect that such may have been true of the young man who also took his life in this tragic story: that the violence he acted out may have been the result of a psychosis related to his possible schizophrenia. Since there is no typical correlation between Asperger’s and such violence.
Yet another not dis-similar “tragic” event–if one accepts Aristotle’s definition–has also occurred in recent weeks. Not that I knew who Chris Kyle was before he was murdered. But I’ve learned since that he had become something of a celebrity as a former Nave SEAL who was considered (according to the subtitle of his autobiography) “the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history.”
According to media accounts, Kyle had befriended another veteran, one Eddie Ray Routh, who was suffering–apparently severely, including paranoid forms of psychosis–from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Seeking to relate to Routh in a positive, therapeutic way–not unlike perhaps the concerned Connecticut mother–Chris had taken Eddie Ray to a shooting range for some target practice.
Except that is where and when, while engaged in what was meant to be a harmless recreational activity both military veterans would have likely enjoyed, Routh shot and killed Kyle.
My explaining Aristotle’s definition of “tragedy” to my colleague–another mental health professional–it hardly made sense to her, since she tends to be a rather literal, concrete thinker. Her world is pretty black and white, right or wrong, good or bad. Consequently, the “irony” that is inherent to what is “tragic” is essentially “lost” on her: the notion that something seemingly “good” (or meant to be so) can also be “bad.” Or conversely, that not all “terrible” things are necessarily “tragic.”
At least two notably different ways of thinking are revealed in the current polarizing political and cultural conflict surrounding gun ownership and use which has been so exacerbated, here in America, by such recent incidents of gun violence.
Like my colleague, there are those who consider private gun ownership and use as inherently pathologic, pointing to extremists on the other side of the issue who claim that their “Constitutional right” to “bear arms” is a means of “protecting” themselves against “violent offenders,” including–as some have declared–“government intrusion” into their lives (i.e. “When the government tries to take our guns away”).
*Whereas, even though I don’t own or ever intend to use a gun, I would be among those who consider gun ownership and use for recreational shooting, particularly hunting, hardly something inappropriate. Except for this caveat: extensive research has revealed that personal gun ownership substantially increases the liklihood of serious injury or death to oneself or family member–accidental or otherwise (so-called “self-protection”?). [Minnesota Post, 12-17-12].
Likewise, for the ongoing argument surrounding “gun control.” For some, if one can’t absolutely and totally “solve” the problem of “gun violence,” then there is, so goes the reasoning, nothing anyone can or should try to do about it.
For example, that “mentally ill” persons should not be allowed to purchase a gun. Technically, the young man who committed the Connecticut murders–he was not “mentally ill.” At least according to any established diagnosis. But even if he had been so adjudicated, he could still have stolen his mother’s guns–which he did–and commit such an awful crime. Since there was/is no indication that the shooter’s mother was proscribed from purchasing such firearms.
A recent incident, here in Charleston, represents yet another example of the supposedly in-solvability of this problem. A young woman, who had a documented history of “mental illness” (by virtue of a diagnosis, attempts at treatment and related legal consequences): she stood outside a prominent private school as teachers and administrators were escorting children to be picked up by their parents or care-givers at the close of the school day. She attempted to shoot, at school personnel who were present, a handgun she had purchased. But fortunately–due to her not knowing how to use the weapon correctly–the gun didn’t fire.
This woman was able to legally purchase the gun because when she had previously been arrested for “threatening to commit a crime,” she had been determined “mentally ill” and treated accordingly. Thus, for the licensed gun-seller there was no record of her being a convicted felon and thereby disqualified from purchasing or owning such a weapon. South Carolina being one of six states with no gun-buying barrier for persons who have been determined “mentally ill.”
Does that mean, then–with respect to legal/public attempts at “gun control”–if whatever possible methods aren’t flawless, there’s nothing that can or should or needs to be done? It depends on how one thinks about such things. I, of course, would suggest that “solving even part, if not all” of the “gun violence” problem here in America, through necessary forms of “gun control,” is better than acquiescing to helplessly “solving none of it.”
*When I was in the sixth grade, I was visiting my neighbor, a year older; we were sitting in his bedroom. He was playing with his .22 rifle when the gun accidentally fired a bullet into a wall of the room, instead of, fortunately, into me.
If that wasn’t enough “gun violence” to avert my “gun owning and using” career, when I was in the eighth grade, my dad, at my request, bought me a shotgun. I was later rabbit hunting with some friends. Our basketball coach was supervising. We were hunting on his farm. When yet, again, another kid’s shotgun accidentally fired a spray of buckshot which landed at my feet.
That’s when I went home and asked my dad to sell my shotgun. Never to own or shoot a gun again.
