Results tagged “shootings” from The Daily Nugget

In the last couple of days, there have been two separate shootings on the 101 Freeway. The shootings are thought to be not related to each other, but it reminds me of what happened in Southern California in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where freeway shootings were all the rage. Another rash of Southern California freeway shootings occurred in 2005, prompting the New York Times to publish an op-ed piece about the psychology of freeway shootings. That story has the best excerpt that explains how everyone feels about the shootings:

Secretly, everyone wants to believe that the shootings have been motivated by violations, however slight, of automotive honor. That would leave the rest of us on our best behavior, which is pretty much where we already are. What we really fear is that they are genuinely unmotivated. If that is true, then suddenly we all live in a very different neighborhood.

That's exactly how I feel. I would hate to think that everyone on our freeways has only two emotions: rage and repressed rage. The person that survived the second shooting claimed that he did nothing to provoke being shot. If that is so then we live in a different neighborhood indeed. Let's hope the shootings stop and this isn't the start of a new trend in the Bay Area.

The Virginia Tech Massacre shows us that school shootings are no longer a sport reserved for affluent emotionally disturbed suburban white kids. Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old shooter, was an immigrant from South Korea that came to this country at the age of 8. Surely, he could have already been damaged goods when he got here. But he may have also been damaged, or driven over the edge, by our own ultra-materialistic hip-hop youth culture which is probably contributing to driving many of our kids crazy.

He wrote a play about a stepson and stepfather fighting with hammers and chainsaws. He wrote another play about students conspiring to stalk and kill a teacher that molested them. Was the shooter abused at home? Was he molested as a young child? We'll probably never know. Sure, he probably didn't have the best parenting. In other societies, people with poor parenting don't succeed, but they also don't go on shooting sprees. Why so much here?

What does this say about our society and culture? And more importantly, how can we make changes to ensure that this sport of school shootings doesn't get corporate sponsorship? Our country is devoid of spiritual connection. People tend to value labels and luxuries instead of each other. Ultimately this may be what drives the kids to shoot. Hey, I am angry that Paris Hilton is a celebrity as much as the next guy, but it's not worth shooting people over it. Is it?