Newtown: The Whole Conversation

Yesterday was an exceptionally difficult day.  Rarely have I felt such a range of powerful emotions over the course of a short period of time.  It started with shock and disbelief, quickly transitioned to tears and sadness, was followed by anger and frustration, and was topped off by love and compassion.  Since going down that emotional path, I have revisited each stop several times.

The visceral response to the Newtown mass shooting quickly connected to longstanding thoughts and emotions around the impact of guns in our culture.  Guns are the easiest and quickest thing to blame and that is where my energy went fairly quickly yesterday.  I was not alone.  My Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled with outrage, snark, disbelief, and anger about guns.  I even felt compelled to post on Facebook that I simply hate guns.  Today it seems that many people are hopeful and insistent that this incident will finally lead to a change in our gun laws, but I would suggest that is simply not enough.

Early last night my mind started to shift around what happened yesterday and so many days before it.  My friend and national higher education voice around masculinity Dr. Keith Edwards liked and shared a number of facts, opinions, and statements from others in his Facebook feed bringing attention to cultural norms and socialization around violence for men in this country.  This started off an avalanche of thought and exploration for me around this topic (another exciting Friday night).

I found many great sources, but the most helpful was an FBI overview of murders in 2010 (here).  It found that approximately 90% of murders where the assailant is known were committed by men.  Nearly 2/3 of those murders were committed with a firearms.  When it comes to sexual assault, the findings are once again stark:

Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men. Among acts of sexual violence committed against women since the age of 18, 100% of rapes, 92% of physical assaults, and 97% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men. Sexual violence against men is also mainly male violence: 70% of rapes, 86% of physical assaults, and 65% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men.

The same source also shared this finding, "access to firearms yields a more than five-fold increase in risk of intimate partner homicide when considering other factors of abuse."  The main problem here is sexual violence against anyone, but we know that women are disproportionally the targets.  Males are clearly responsible for the vast majority of this violence.  Guns appear to be like gasoline poured on a fire, making sexual violence more deadly and explosive.  

When it comes to the significant number of domestic mass shootings that I have seen in my lifetime, I did not need to do any research to know that they were committed by men.  I have seen their faces on my television year after year following each incident.  The original sin in all this is violence, not guns.  The super majority of violent sinners are male.  That is the conversation we need to have and based on my countless hours of television watching the last two days it is the conversation almost no one in the mainstream media seems to have found yet.

This is not to say that the rush to have gun conversations is unimportant or irrelevant.  In a strange move in order to prove that people, not guns, kill people, many in the pro-gun movement cited an incident in China yesterday in which a man slash and injured 22 children at a school (here).  The point being made seemed to be that getting rid of guns does not get rid of violence.  I could not agree more, but the key difference between what happened in China and Connecticut is the use of guns.  In China, one man was able to slash and injure 22 children, but killed no one.  In Connecticut, one man was able to kill 20 children and 6 adults.  The choice of weapon does matter, a lot.  Knifes can be used for deadly violence, but are highly inefficient, easier to defend against and flee, and easier to survive in mass situations.  Guns are more deadly, more efficient at killing, and more difficult to defend or flee.

A deadly combination in this country appears to be violence + men + guns.  I would also suggest the priority of conversations that we need to have should be in that same order or at least all happening at the same time.  Where does this violence come from?  How are we raising our boys and men? How does the culture, institutions, and media feed this connection?  I am sure violent movies and video games play some role, but I suspect it goes much deeper than that.  How do boys and men deal with conflict, emotions, and frustration? Do we allow men to be vulnerable and experience life outside of male gender norms?

As you can see, I have few answers.  I just want to be sure we are asking and talking about the right questions.  Where does this violence come from in our culture?  What is it about our culture that causes violence of all types and scale to be committed mostly by men?  As for guns, I think we should also ask questions about how they make violence more deadly, effective, and larger in scale.  The rush to conversation and possible action around gun control feels good, but if that is as far as we go, we probably will have done little to prevent mass shootings and other types of violent acts from being committed again in the future.