Blame

Another child has rampaged and killed people. Rather than blaming the real culprit—the child and whomever allowed him access to the weapon and ammunition—you will begin to see many reports on how Music, Video Games, Gun Manufacturers, and even the Internet are somehow to blame. The parents of the slain children will want a scapegoat. The parents of the child who committed this act will want to blame someone for his actions.

Music—the music industry releases hundreds of titles each year and millions of people buy them. Of the 350 million people in our country, nearly all listen to the radio, buy cds, or in some other way have music as a constant influence in our lives. Whether it is rap, heavy metal, country, or pop, the shear numbers of those who listen and “connect” with a song(s) is staggering.

Video Games—the video game industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Video games are sent around the world. In places like China, Korea, and Japan, video games are played by more people of greater age ranges even than here in America. There are huge numbers of European video game players. And the numbers of players in America are staggering. Yet, most video game players are the people you want to meet.

Gun Manufacturers/Owners—there are approximately 70-90 million legal gun owners in America. (It's hard to nail down a specific number, this range seems to be the census.)

The Internet—this is so pervasive that nearly ever person on the planet in a second- or first-world nation is touched by this medium.

If these industries/entities, and most any other you could name as being somehow “at fault,” actually were the bad guy, with the numbers of people who use their products, we would have an epidemic of violence on the scale of genocide.

But we don’t.

As we look deeper at this child, we will find patterns of abuse or neglect. We will find indications he was a violence-prone person with antisocial behavior most likely from an early age. We will likely find that there were plenty of ignored warning signs along the way. Just like we found with the two boys who committed the atrocities in Columbine. Just like we find in any other predatory, violent act.

We have plenty of laws in place that, if properly enforced and maintained, would keep guns (and other dangerous weapons) out of the reach of those who shouldn’t have them, children included. Most responsible gun owners follow the safety rules of never leaving a gun out, never storing a gun and it’s ammunition in the same place, and always using safety and education as a first line of defense to ward against gun accidents and violence.

At some point we have to lay the blame squarely where it should be: on the child. This child is at fault. No matter how abused or neglected, no matter how picked on or ridiculed he was, he still made the choice to seek out a weapon and commit these acts. Others may share some of the blame, but it is still his in the end. If he got the weapon from his parent’s stash, then his parents are partially to blame for not properly securing the weapon and not teaching the child the proper gun etiquette, safety, and respect. If he somehow bought or obtained this weapon from a dealer of any sort, then that dealer is also somewhat to blame—the law is very strict on the ages of those who can purchase weapons and many places (it may even be all now) also require you to show proof that you went through a gun safety course. On top of all of this, there are the mandatory waiting periods and background checks. Add in the fact that the boy apparently wore a bullet-proof vest, and you know that this person planned for this violence and it was premeditated.

The fallacy of blaming the weapon, or some form of media, is prevalent in our society and can be traced pretty far back. In the 1950s, Fredric Wertham wrote a book called “The Seduction of the Innocent.” In it he suggested that the growing prevalence of comic books was creating a world of antisocial children who were prone to violence and criminal acts. He made this supposition because he went to juvenile halls and youth prisons and interviewed the children there. He noted that the jails had comic books and the kids liked reading them. Because of this, he concluded that comic books had caused the acts. He never bothered to find out that the prisons bought the comics and had them available as cheap sources of entertainment. He never asked if the boys read the comics before or after coming to prison. He never found out that the guards found the boys to be less hostile and easier to watch if they had comic books (and other such literature) available to them while they were incarcerated. Wertham put one and one together and came up with the answer he wanted because he didn’t like comic books. Similar studies found correlations to pornography in the 70s and 80s. Others have linked Dungeons and Dragons and other popular, but misunderstood, roleplaying games to violence and criminal acts. Every single one has been dismissed by a majority of healthcare professionals as baseless supposition at best, and outright lies with no credible scientific evidence to back it up.

And today that “blame trend” continues. No one is responsible for his/her own actions. The simple fact is, once we look at the life of those who commit these crimes, we nearly always find patterns of steadily rising acts of violence, bouts of severe depression or paranoia, run-ins with authority (police, school, parents).

The US Department of Justice backs these facts up. Even at our worst, there are less than 20,000 gun related homicides per year. Out of the tens of millions of people who own guns, you’d think that stat would be higher if the guns or the gun manufacturers were really at fault. When you add all of the illegal gun owners into this mix, it becomes an even smaller percentage. Even if you take into account nonfatal gun-related violence, that number is still only around 100,000 incidents per year. Similar statistics can be used to show the large number of people who buy music and video games in comparison to the very small amount of violence and deaths that occur in relation.

This act, as with Columbine, stands out for the shocking brutality of it. It stands out because it is a child committing violence on other children. We are horrified that our society can create the type of person who could do such a deed. And, because of media saturation of the event, it will stay in our public consciousness for many weeks and months to come. But it is still not the music, video game, gun manufacturers, nor the internet's fault.

I am sorry for those who lost their lives and feel bad for their families. I feel pity for the family of the one who committed this act and who now have to live with the media scrutiny and the questions. But I do not blame anyone except the person who committed this act. He made his choice and now a lot of people have to live with it.