It is dangerous to conflate entertainment (movies, games) with guns / poor health care
I have seen this floated with increasing regularity over the last few days, and it is worrying. As though people need to pat themselves on the back, tuck themselves in at night safe in the knowledge that "we need to do something, but it's not just America and her guns..." in order to get to sleep. I think these folks mean well, but I firmly believe that such thinking is dangerous.
It's irresponsible, it's foolhardy. Other countries - Canada, for instance - do not host these shootings with great regularity. There's not 17 per year in Europe, Japanese youths are not bursting into schools or movie theatres and removing people's heads from their shoulders.
Yet in so many of these places the same movies boost the box office, the same games sell in their millions.
In England and Wales (population 56.1m), the barrel of a gun was the last thing 388 people saw in 2010/11. Add Scotland to the mix (population 5.3m) and the figure inches up to 390. 390 deaths out of 61.4 million people. If we multiply both population and firearm fatalities by 5.075, so we get close to the US population of 311.6m and we have 1979 deaths over the same period.
The United States of America saw 8583 gun related murders over the same period.
Same games, same movies, same music.
Different health care, different gun laws.
If I had to think of another area in which we differ, I might raise religion. At least the ferocity of said faith. The all-consuming, politically motivated way in which it has been engineered to drive Americans of certain stripes to almost feral extremes. It is something that has become accepted, expected. My intention is not to denigrate faith because despite my lack of belief, I know that it is something that is used by many as a means to do good, to help the fellow man, woman and child. Yet by many its dogma is used for something much darker and heinous.
That isn't to say "oh, all of these shooters are religious" because they're not, but the extreme application of faith by so many in the United States creates a divide, another way in which people can become alienated.
There is also a paranoia within too many people that transcends reason and hovers dangerously close to the switch between 'Sane' and 'Otherwise'.
Do you think that common threads between violent fundamentalists through the ages and across are Call of Duty and the Dark Knight?
I am not saying that violent media should not be kept out of the hands of certain people; it clearly should, and there are plenty of things that I will not allow my children to see or play until I can be certain they are able to do so without negative connotations for their mental well-being. I know that not everyone is as responsible, so stricter censorship for those 'below age' would not be a bad thing.
As it stands, a five year old child could go and see an R rated film as long as they're accompanied by an adult; I think that's a faintly ludicrous situation. I don't blame everyone who has ever taken their kid along, but I don't think changing it would hurt.
There is no easy answer, but a satisfactory resolution will, in all likelihood, probably have things that gnaw at many of us. However, let's address the real issues, those that are in many ways uniquely American before taking a scalpel to the things we share with others.
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