In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting people have rushed to place blame for what happened. I’ve noticed that where people lay the blame depends on what convenient scapegoat they can find that they’ve never liked and won’t be inconvenienced by if it’s banned. Right now the primary targets are guns, video games, and violent movies but in the past the scapegoats have included things like comic books, rock & roll music, and Dungeons & Dragons.
This blame is assigned without regard to the facts. Guns must be to blame because Britain and Japan have strong gun control laws and they don’t have this kind of violence. We’ll ignore Switzerland where people have easy access to military assault rifles, and I mean actual military assault rifles and not “military-style assault weapons,” and yet the Swiss violent crime rate is also low suggesting that easy access to firearms is not the problem. Violent video games and movies must be to blame because they desensitize us to violence while conditioning us to commit violent acts. We’ll ignore all the other countries in the world where they play the same video games and watch the same movies and yet don’t go on violent rampages.
Let me tell you where I place the blame. Back when I joined Facebook I did what a lot of people do. I “friended” a lot of my old college friends. About a week after reconnecting with one woman she made a snide comment about having just learned that her tennis partner was a fan of Ann Coulter. At the time I thought it was kind of tacky to be talking about the woman behind her back but I know Coulter is a polarizing figure so I just sort of shrugged it off. What happened next shocked me. Other people started posting some fairly vile, hate-filled comments about this woman that they clearly did not know. One man even said he’d like to whack her in the knees with a baseball bat. Most shocking to me was that my “friend” was clearly okay with this outpouring of hatred directed at a woman who probably thought she was her friend.
Since then I’ve seen many such occurrences from people ranging all across the political spectrum. When faced with someone whose beliefs differ from our own, all too often we don’t try to understand their point of view or engage them in a meaningful discussion of the issue. Instead we seek to demonize and dehumanize with hateful accusations that have no basis in reality. That way we don’t have to defend our own points of view much less consider the possibility that we’re wrong and they’re right. The thing is, our children learn by observing us. When we behave in a hateful manner we teach our children to behave in a hateful manner.
So if you’re looking for someone or something to blame for violence in our society, I suggest you start by taking a moment to look in the mirror and seriously reflect on what you’ve been teaching your children.