Shooter

Adam Lanza

Last week Adam Lanza, a deranged distraught t/differently-abled 20-year-old, took an AR15 rifle and shot his mother as she slept. He then walked around the corner to the school where she worked and shot to death 20 6-year-olds and 6 teachers. At some point, and for reasons we may never know, the stopped and pulled out a handgun, which he placed against his own head and fired, killing himself.

The Left

Predictably, the "progressives", those who like to refer to everyone else as "reactionaries", are reacting with calls for the elimination of the Bill of Rights and total dictatorial powers to be granted to their most beloved president This is similar to their reactions to losing any presidential election,such as in 2000 when they reacted immediately by calling for the elimination of the Electoral College. It's worth noting that they take exactly the opposite position on abortion (keep your laws off my body) and never mention the electoral college when they win elections. It's reactionary. It's emotional. It's short-term thinking.

Let's ignore the typical and expected responses on the Left for a moment and just focus on what really happened as far as we know it.

Adam in school

Adam Lanza suffers from Aspergers Syndrome, a problem that makes it very difficult for him to connect with other people, communicate effectively, or understand human nuances like sarcasm and humor. Basically he's Sheldon Cooper, difficult to get along with but not impossible, only more so. His disability separates him from everyone else, creating a barrier that he can't overcome. He was known to suddenly withdraw deep into himself at school for no apparent reason. I have a friend who suffers from mild Aspergers. His life has been difficult at times and can be extremely frustrating and lonely. But overall he is fine. But Adam's Aspergers was not mild.

Adam Lanza is said to have been highly intelligent, especially with computers. He could relate to the machines in ways he couldn't relate to human beings.

Adam also suffers from a rare genetic disorder that renders him completely incapable of feeling pain. Its actually a dangerous condition because a person suffering from it can experience an injury that needs immediate medical care and not even know it until it is too late. They can accidentally harm others and themselves severely without meaning to.

Adam's father Peter Lanza

Adam's father left in 2009, when he was 17. Apparently his father is wealthy and pays a fortune in alimony to Adam's mother, nearly $300,000 annually  It was said that he couldn't deal with Adam anymore, but I don't know if that is just a rumor or officially known to be true. The Lanzas were very private about their personal problems, both in their marriage and with Adam. Either way, the exit of his father no doubt left a hurtful effect on Adam that can't be ignored. Adam can't relate well to people and one of the 2 people who know him best left the home and did not return.

With Christmas nearing, which is a time of family and a time of being sad for family that has left you, Adam was almost certainly thinking about his father and why he left. Whether he left because he couldn't deal with Adam anymore or not, most children feel deep down that they are in some way responsible when their parents divorce. For Adam, that pain would be a feeling he could not express.

Lanza House

Adam's mother didn't talk much about Adam, but did admit that she did not feel that she could ever leave Adam at home alone, even to go to the bathroom. She was said to watch him every minute. Why, exactly, was never known. Apparently Adam could flip out and hurt himself. He was known to have episodes that seem to come randomly, with no warning.

The Guns

The guns Adam used belonged not to him, but to his mother, Nancy. And all her friends say she did not buy them for him. She bought them for herself because she liked to shoot and was good at it. She allowed Adam to handle them because she hoped that it would teach him responsibility and apparently from what anyone saw, Adam took pride in showing how responsible he could be with handling the guns. Nancy Lanza, owner of the guns, apparently bought the guns following the divorce because she felt it was now entirely up to her to protect herself and Adam with her husband gone from the house. And she was right. But she did not count on Adam being the person she needed protection from.

Adam's mother Nancy Lanza

At some point, Adam waited for his mother to fall asleep. Then he snuck out her guns and used one of them to shoot her to death as she slept. Based on everything people who knew the Lanzas have said about how careful Adam was with the guns, it seems inconceivable that he did this accidentally. Either way, immediately after shooting his mother to death, Adam walked next door to the elementary school. Apparently he bypassed security measures by breaking a window and sliding inside the school through it. Then he went to a  classroom and shot 20 children and their teacher. From there he went to other rooms, shooting 4 more teachers. He tried to get into a room where the principal, I believe, is said to have barricaded the door using her body. He shot through the door, hitting her 3 times and killing her. After this, at some point, he simply stopped shooting, pulled out one of the handguns, placed it to his head and pulled the trigger.

It is hard to know what exactly was going on in Adam's mind during all of this. The FBI says it was all premeditated. I don't doubt it. Personally, I think Adam's parents' divorce hurt Adam more than people knew. I think the coming of Christmas, which his family always used to spend together but now would be spending apart, brought up emotional pain that Adam simply couldn't handle. Once Adam decided to kill himself, he apparently chose to take others with him before he went. Understanding this kind of emotional turmoil, pain so deep that it leads to a willingness to kill family members, random strangers including children, and then yourself, is more than I can do on a blog. I can only imagine that he must have been in absolute hellish agony to do this, knowing the entire time that he was going to end by killing himself.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the typical divide is taking place. The Left is calling for an instant ban on private ownership of firearms, eradication of the 2nd Amendment, and dictatorial powers for the President. Basically, their view is that we must do "something" and that even if that something accomplishes nothing with regard to the actual crime, it at least feels good to have done this symbolic act of passing a law that won't accomplish anything.

The Right is responding in the usual way by saying, "hang on, banning guns won't stop someone like this. All it does is punish law abiding citizens who never hurt anyone. It's wrong-headed and totally violates the Bill of Rights."

And along the way, as Left and Right argue, they quite predictable throw in lots of little jabs at one another, loading their arguments with words and phrases that have an obviously biased and insulting meaning directed at the other side. This wins no one over and simply increases the divide between the two sides.

Why is there such a wide gap between the two sides? Why can't they see each other's point-of-view?

The other day an article was published detailing how researchers have concluded that women do, in fact, nag men a lot. In fact, women nag and complain to men more than twice as much as men do to women. When they looked into the reasons why, they found that women are small-picture-oriented, which is to say, they look at the little details of things and focus on them to the exclusion of the big picture. Men, on the other hand, tend to be just the opposite. Men tend to blow off the little details and focus more heavily on the big picture.

"The floor is dirty. Why can't you ever see how dirty the floor is without me pointing it out to you?"
"Did you put out the candle you left burning in the bedroom while you were so focused on the floor? You nearly burned the house down yesterday with that candle."
"Don't change the subject!"

Dirty floor - little details, small picture oriented towards cleanliness. Not unimportant, especially if you're going to have babies.
Burning down the house - big picture, dirty floors aren't as important as the house being on fire. Not unimportant if it is your responsibility to insure the safety of your entire family.

The Left is overwhelmingly female. The Democratic Party is totally dependent upon the votes of women in order to win elections. Their positions on issues always reflects the views of a substantial number of women, especially young and single women who are more small-picture-oriented than older women. Democrats like to divide America up into small groups and pit them against one another. It's like the movie "Mean Girls" where a powerful clique of girls not only causes trouble for the school as a whole, but also for individual girls who don't play along or fit into the mold the Mean Girls want them to fit into.

The Right is overwhelmingly male. The Republican Party is totally dependent upon the votes of men in order to win elections. Not that you'd know it from the positions they take once in office and the compromises they make with the Left. But that is why the Tea Party sprang up. It was a male reaction to a betrayal of their values by the Republican leadership. Overall though, the Republicans tend to take political stances that are focused on the big picture, the nation and the world as a whole, not small groups neatly divided into small issues.

Researchers on the topic of charity found time and time again that while Leftists will talk and sing songs and hold hands while crying over some charitable need, they don't actually give much of their own money to the causes they claim to feel so strongly about. They will, on the other hand, call upon Big Government to "solve" the problem by forcibly taking money from others and applying it to their pet charitable cause. Leftists are infamous for not paying their own taxes while decrying about "The Rich" not paying "their fair share." The Right, it is consistently found, donates the lion's share of funds to charities. But the Right does not often shout at others to give more, or sing songs about the need to "feed the world", or call upon Big Government to force anyone else to donate to their pet causes.

It's like a teenaged girl who expects Dad to pay for stuff she wants, but calls a need. The girl freely expresses her wants and desires to Dad, but it is Dad who silently pays, usually after examining the girl's arguments and determining whether it is a true need or just a want. He looks at the Big Picture. She looks at many small details such as how having it would make her feel.

The girls of the Media

So how does this relate to Adam Lanza and the loud cries among the Media, dominated by women and Democrats, for gun control?

Putting all political rhetoric aside, gun control calls such as this always arise in reaction to some shocking incident.  Every day in Memphis someone is shot and killed, or stabbed and killed, or run over intentionally by an angry ex or a gang banger, and often children are among the victims. But no one cries out for new laws in response to this. It is literally every day. It is not shocking. A lone gunman walking into a school and shooting up twenty 6-year-olds and six teachers, though, is very unusual. It is thus shocking. It has been years since we last heard of someone going on a rampage and last time it was a Muslim terrorist shooting our soldiers in the back. In fact, the last several mass murders have been Muslim terrorists shooting Americans in the back. That doesn't shock us anymore. But this incident does shock us. And so, we react.

The Left reacts with small-picture thinking. They call for new laws that we know won't do anything to help any of those kids or their families and won't even prevent another madman from going into another school and killing anyone. It is a call for a "feel good" response from our politicians, our Big Government. The Left looks to Big Government as their husband or father. They are the teenaged girl and they want Dad to make them feel like everything is going to be OK. They want Dad to do something that they know won't really address the problem, but soothes their upset minds. They want something symbolic.

Nothing is more symbolic than a law that says it is wrong to go into a school and shoot up kids. We already have such laws. We have many laws already on the books, all of which were broken during the commission of this crime. We already know a politician making an emotional speech declaring a ban on something that honest citizens use to defend themselves against madmen and tyrants alike will not accomplish anything good. In fact, it could very well result in something very bad. But that requires Big Picture thinking to see.

The Right reacts with big-picturing thinking, totally ignoring or even failing to comprehend the small-picture views of the Left. They see millions of law abiding citizens relying on their privately owned guns to defend their own lives and the lives of their own families from lunatics like Adam Lanza who could just as easily have walked into someone's front door and started shooting up their families instead of going into a nearby school. They easily imagine the impotent feeling of being in that house and watching their wife and children being slaughtered as they stand helplessly by, unarmed and unable to stop him, before dying alongside everyone they care about.

Nanking Massacre 1937

More than that, though, they see all over the news one story after another, year after year, of tyrants across the world who force their way into power, either through military force or election fraud, and then promptly disarm the citizens with the claim that it will make them safer to be disarmed. Then those "great leaders" engage in a war on those very citizens they disarmed, slaughtering them en masse, killing all who dared to oppose their rule, all who stood on the "other side" politically or in religion. Always there is some group of citizens that a tyrant wishes to punish, to eliminate, to slaughter. And always those tyrants disarm all The People in order to make this slaughter possible. This happens over and over again, all over the world, all through history. It always works this way. A person would have to be blind not to see it.

But that is Big Picture Thinking, and a person who does not think that way simply does not see this anymore than a Big Picture Thinker comprehends why Small Picture Thinkers want a symbolic gesture from elected leaders pretending they are going to punish the shooter, even after he is dead, with some meaningless and harmful new law that eliminates the rights and freedoms of millions who had nothing to do with the crime.

Why are Catholics overwhelming Leftists? Catholicism is filled with symbolism and traditional gestures which have very little meaning according to the actual words in the Bible. They provide a feeling of security, a sense of being in control even in circumstances in which a person has very little control. Religions all through history have discovered this need among people, a need to have gestures that in reality mean nothing, accomplish seemingly nothing, but provide a good feeling to worshipers which they value. It is a feeling of control.

Witch doctors dance to bring rain. It does nothing, but those who desperately need rain feel good watching the dance performed. Priests sprinkle water on a baby, saying the child is absolved of sin by the water. It accomplishes nothing, but the parents feel good knowing that they have done all they could to assure that if their child dies somehow, he will go to Heaven. When the child grows older they put a St. Christopher medal around his neck for the same reason. Die wearing the medal and you go to Heaven. It isn't what Jesus said, but the ceremony makes the parents, who truthfully can do nothing to secure a place in Heaven for their child, feel good. In politics, Democrats make speeches laying all the sins of another onto someone else, a banker or an inanimate metal gun or people who simply think differently, and then promise to pass some new law that punishes that banker, gun or conservative, for sins they did not even commit. Jewish Rabbis used to perform this same ceremony using a goat. All the Jews of a town would lay hands on an goat, declare the goat to be guilty of their own personal sins, and then beat the goat and drive it out of town. This, they felt, absolved them of their own sins. It accomplished nothing, but they felt good for having done it. It is where we get the term "scapegoat" from.

China

In China, the communist government maintains total weapons control. Citizens have no rights at all. They don't even have the right to defend their own lives. They have no guns. And yet, for the past few years, China has experienced an odd crime wave involving madman taking knives into local schools and hacking up the children and teachers they find there. Often these madmen end their rampage by taking their own lives. Authorities in China seem to be at a loss to explain why this keeps happening. They also have found no way to stop it from happening again and again. A man with a knife never runs out of bullets.  The News Media in the US barely mentions these murderous rampages. There was another one just a week or two ago. Sometimes the madman uses a bat or a hammer or some sort of makeshift club or sharpened device that we would call a shank.

The idea of a child being murdered by a madman is the ultimate nightmare to a parent, or to anyone planning to become a parent. It is the worst possible thing that could ever happen. Our reactions to such a thing is always very strong and very emotional. We are shocked. We are upset. We want to know what happened and why. We want a solution to the problem of how this could have been prevented. If we are short-term thinkers we are willing to accept most any solution, even one which does not work and only makes us feel better in having participated in creating it. A symbolic new law that declares it to be bad to gun down children makes us feel better if we helped fight for this new law, even as it does nothing to protect future children from future madmen. If we only think small-picture then that good feeling is enough. We are satisfied. We walk away from the problem feeling that all is right again.

But if we are big-picture thinkers then we are not able to feel at all soothed or secured by a new law that we know won't protect innocents, won't punish or even slow down the guilty, and will instead punish the innocent and disarm the intended victims. A law that in the big picture actually increases the danger an average citizen faces, disarming him and preventing him from protecting himself either from a lone madman with a gun or an army ruled by a madman with a desire to kill all who dare to disagree, is totally unacceptable and alarming to a big-picture thinker.

And that is why The Left wants new gun control laws in response to the Connecticut school shooting and The Right is not only opposed to them, but altogether alarmed by them.