Or: How I learned to stop thinking and start worrying.
You know, there’s been a lot of difference of opinion here on this blahg lately. Most specifically, this post. I make mention that I disagree with the idea that “responsible” adults should be allowed to carry concealed handguns on school campuses, and it becomes a pro-gun issue.
The whole thing boils back down to a heated exchange of words I had with this fellow, many moons ago, over the film Bowling for Columbine. He too felt the movie was nothing more than an anti-gun rally by NRA lifetime member Michael Moore. Rather, when one actually watches the film (as opposed to listening to the sentiment of pro-gun people who feel slighted), the best point the film makes is actually what is said by Marilyn Manson.
Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?
Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said ‘well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior’ Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to fuck you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of ‘keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’
Much in the same way we look at shootings and say it revolves around gun control, how industrial emissions are only about greenhouse gases, how Iraq was about nukes, people have really lost focus of what is really going on. Myself, I find myself transported back 20 years into the past. The days of school dances, awkwardness around the opposite sex, reading loads of ‘classic’ literature in English class and studying the symbolism of a cornfield in Saskatchewan, overgrown young men playing rugby with the crutch of armour and deceptively trying to pass it off as football, hockey debates at lunch, getting your first car, and on, and on, and on. Yes, high school was such a wonderful, awkward, scary time.
But in thinking back, we never had gun problems. None in school. We were presented, however, with the sheer horror of what happened at École Polytechnique de Montréal. And in the wake of the shootings, I think if someone suggested having concealed weapons in schools as a discourse, we would ALL have thought that said individual needed to seriously re-think the idea. But yet, in today’s world, it is now an idea that is warranting serious discussion.
Why? I’m sure one who supports the idea of allowing concealed arms in schools will argue “it’s a different world”. And they are bang on the money. Having the opportunity to go back to school after a hiatus, I learned something rather disturbing. The quality of education has slid drastically. I went to film school with kids who could barely spell (save for spell check), who wrote essays by cut and paste from online articles, who did not know what a bibliography was, did not know what the word ibid meant, how to do footnotes (or endnotes, as I hated re-formatting when I made changes in my essays), how to structure an essay, how to divide or multiply by 100 without the aid of a calculator, understand basic additive and subtractive colour theory (bearing in mind they were in a visual program like film). When I was growing up, these kids wouldn’t have even been close to getting their high school diploma. We suffer from a high level of apathy in the way we (as a whole) approach the education of our own children.
So the idea is to put such neutral-geared minds behind the trigger of weapons to keep the peace? If this is the ultimate solution down south, I do have a suggestion to keep shootings to a minimum. Borrowed from Chris Rock, we should make each bullet cost $5,000. Why? Because people will have to think before they pull the trigger. Is this shot worth $5,000? Because frankly, unless money isn’t involved these days, most brains are now in permanent neutral gear.
Luckily, I live north of 49. That is all.
