I am lost. I am heartbroken because almost every day I read the news emanating from the United States about senseless shootings, mass murder and rampant violence at what appears to be every turn in the road.
As a knee jerk reaction I think about access to guns of war and their proliferation within society that has a lot to do with it. However, as the supporters say, it is undeniable that guns do not fire themselves: People do it!
But then it becomes how is it possible a youngster of 16 years morphs into a knife wielding killer in a school? And on Sunday a Utah mother allegedly murdered her six children and stuffed them into cardboard boxes last weekend? Oh! And, apparently one of many white supremacists “had enough” and went on a rampage and killed Jews?
Apparently, for no other reason than their faith in God?
Last weekend started with the news from Miami of a man who mowed down a childcare center killing two, then we heard from California where a Fed Ex truck went on fire and killed 19 or so teenagers on a Humboldt College tour. Only because the viewers support it, CNN has made an entire garden industry out of the lost Malaysian airliner #370, broadcasting day and night with experts ranging from retired flight captains to pilots of single engine Cessnas what possibly happened to that flight and the location of the almost 300 dead. A profit motive, for sure.
I am at a loss to comprehend and less able to accept the violence that permeates the United States. Not Russia, not Germany, not even Venezuela but rather the United States of America who seemingly reports killings and attempted multiple killings on a weekly basis.
Is it something culturally that is semi-addicting to the disenchanted? Or is it socially alluring since the popularity of killing automatically grabs national and international headlines? But never the less, something is dreadfully wrong!
Sure, other countries have their issues and senseless killings, but the U.S. leads the pack by far. There must be reasons but my lot is management sciences and I am simply dumb founded, super sad when it comes to all these killings and wanna-be killings.
Costa Rica has yet to feel the wrath of senseless crime. However, we are a crime filled nation. Thank God, nobody has yet gone into a school nor a playground and literally slaughtered 20 or so children. Nobody has yet bombed a cross country bike race nor an innocent marathon run. Yet, Central America, including Costa Rica, is imaged as a violent region, a violent country while the State of Kansas is not.
Think of it, Newton Elementary School, not the Bronx, not South East L.A. but rather a typically white, upper middle class area lost 20 of its youngest in a senseless killing spree and we will never answer the question, “Why.”
Certainly in Central America we have the most murders per 100,000 population in the world. But, they are not random and not senseless. These horrible crimes are planned and the objective is always to rob, steal, eliminate political foes who are rioting and a good part of killing is to profit from the business of drugs by protecting “turf.”
Nobody has gone into a school and randomly killed kids, nobody has tried to wipe out the national assembly, nobody has stood in the center of San Jose with an AK-47 and blasted away on a self inflicted suicide mission….so I ask what and the hell is the underlying culture as well as the epidemic killing in the United States?
