Blaming Things vs. Blaming People

(Disclaimer: This article is written as if I accept the “official” story of what happened down in Parkland, but I actually don’t.)

Which of the following do you think was more likely to have been a contributing factor to the school shooting that happened down in Parkland, Florida?:

1 - Me and my locked-up AR-15, over a thousand miles away.
2 - The shooter’s classmates, and how they treated him.

Is it heartless and mean for me to point out facts and reason? Too bad. Because I know that I personally had nothing to do with the kid going on a shooting spree, while it’s quite likely that some of the students at his school—possibly including one or more of those fellow students now being given national notoriety for their calls for “gun control”—helped to push an already mentally unstable kid over the edge.

Now we have the ridiculous spectacle of ignorant, self-righteous brats like David Hogg out there screaming about “accountability,” but of course he doesn’t mean accountability from people who actually had an impact in the shooter’s life. No, he wants “accountability” from politicians, NRA members, people who support the Second Amendment—many millions of people who had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, directly or indirectly.

Since people get irrational when they are emotional, let me point out what should be obvious: I’m not saying that the shooting was at all justified, or that any of the shooter’s classmates deserved to die. But I am saying that, in addition to other possible factors (his home life, his mental issues, whatever other stressors, etc.), the shooter being mocked, ridiculed and bullied at school—as the mainstream news admits that he was—probably had a hell of a lot more to do with him wanting to kill people than the fact that I have an AR-15 sitting in a gun safe in Pennsylvania. (Duh.)

You can whine about me pointing that out, but you would literally have to be an idiot to disagree. So, who bears more responsibility for the shooting happening: millions of Americans who own AR-15s, or the kids who spent day after day around Nikolas Cruz, either teasing and bullying him, or watching other people do it without intervening? (I don’t know if David Hogg himself ever even met the shooter, but his arrogant, condescending demeanor makes it quite easy to imagine him being a total jerk to some unstable and abnormal “misfit.”)

Marolo Alvarez, a classmate of Cruz’s, said, “I could have said something to administrators, that ‘hey this kid gets bullied a lot, please help him, please reach out to him.’ I kind of regret not doing that.’” Alvarez also said that other students would say about Cruz that he “looked like a school shooter.”

To his credit, Alvarez acknowledged that there might have been something he could have done, even though (according to him) he wasn’t one of the bulliers. Meanwhile, you have all manner of fear-driven and feelz-driven morons saying and doing spectacularly stupid things. For example, at least two people decided to make videos of themselves sawing the barrels off of their own AR-15s (which is a federal felony, by the way), as if that somehow makes the world safer. Next time I see a story about someone driving drunk and killing someone, should I saw my car in half?

Are we going to pretend that inanimate objects are the threat to humanity, and that the mindset and behaviors of certain individuals isn’t? Almost everyone has the ability, and the equipment available, to murder other people. But only a tiny percentage have the desire to do so. To focus primarily on things, as if things are the problem, instead of focusing on why some people want to murder others, is just profoundly stupid. While we’re at it, let’s start blaming ski masks for muggings, and blaming car keys for drunk driving, and blaming computers for online fraud. Heaven forbid we focus on the individuals who choose to do stupid or malicious things, and the factors that may contribute to that.

And that brings us to Emma Gonzalez, another self-righteous classmate of the shooter now publicly calling for widespread authoritarian violence against many millions of peaceful gun-owners. (Because yes, that is what “gun control” is: the state using violence against people for merely possessing certain inanimate objects.) Emma publicly stated the following (in a rather emotional, angry way, in fact):

“Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him, that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have not ostracized him? You didn’t know this kid! Okay? We did!”

Hey Emma, maybe take a brief break from acting as a useful idiot for political control freaks, and ponder the fact that me and my AR-15 did absolutely nothing to make the shooting happen, and couldn’t have done anything to prevent it (from over a thousand miles away). You, on the other hand, very likely could have done something to prevent it, and since you used the word “we” when talking about the kids who “ostracized” Cruz, you may very well have been a contributing factor to him going berserk and killing a bunch of people.

(While this is a somewhat different topic, it’s worth mentioning that having “laws” and institutions which coercively imprison many millions of children by way of “compulsory schooling,” trapping them in a setting where they are mocked or otherwise abused, making them captive victims of bullies, is also an obvious contributing factor.)

Maybe all the marching, protesting high schoolers ought to get off of their ignorant high horses, stop demanding more authoritarianism and less freedom, and ask themselves if they don’t bear some personal responsibility for bullied kids who go berserk. Because I know that I and my AR-15 don’t.