Interesting article about masculinity,violence and guns

[Strelok]

Found this old article while researching similar topics for a work, the setting is the Usa so I supposed some of you could relate.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2008) — The recent fatal shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University, and similar attacks at a Missouri city hall and in a Los Angeles suburb, again raise questions about the eruption of mass violence in America in recent years. What is behind these acts and, more importantly, can anything be done to stop them?



In "Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre" (Paradigm, 2008), UCLA professor of education and cultural critic Douglas Kellner argues that school shootings and other acts of mass violence embody a crisis of out-of-control gun culture and male rage, heightened by a glorification of hypermasculinity and violence in the media.

"The school shooters and domestic terrorists examined in this book all exhibit male rage, attempt to resolve a crisis of masculinity through violent behavior, demonstrate a fetish for guns or weapons, and represent, in general, a situation of guys and guns amok," Kellner says.

Focusing on last April's Virginia Tech shootings, the 1999 Columbine massacre, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and similar events, Kellner places these apparently isolated killing sprees in the broader context of American culture and society and finds that in each case, the male perpetrators suffered from problems of socialization, alienation and the search for identity in a culture that holds up guns and militarism as potent symbols of masculinity.

Those images, Kellner says, are perpetuated not just by the traditional media — both in news coverage and in the frequent glorification of violence and murder on television programs and in film — but also by new media outlets like the Internet.

With the pervasiveness of male rage and such violent imagery, what can be done to change the situation and, hopefully, prevent further acts of mass violence? Kellner recommends stricter gun control laws; improved campus and workplace security; better guidance and mental health care on campuses and in communities; a reconstruction of education to promote programs advocating peace and social justice; and projecting new and more constructive images of masculinity.

Kellner holds the distinguished George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. His work focuses on the development of new literacies as a response to new technologies and the design of new teaching methods to meeting the challenges of globalization and multiculturalism.

He is the author of several books, including "Media Spectacle" (2003), "From 9/11 to Terror War" (2003), "Media Culture" (1995), "The Persian Gulf TV War" (1992) and "Television and the Crisis of Democracy" (1990) and is co-author of "The Postmodern Adventure" (2001).

Quite frankly Im surprised how those "academics" keep promoting as solution what is actually one of the catalyzers of the problem.

If the problems were guns Russia would count less than a million inhabitants because of the dismissed weapons of the former soviet union, take the guns you have in Usa make them bigger and you know what there is former URSS.

What Im trying to say is that the reason why a kid prepare a sandwich it more related to his hunger than the availability of a knife.

If they identify the problem as the crysis of masculinity why they dont try to indentify the problem and find a solution instead of "projecting new and more constructive images of masculinity" that in the academical language means discourage any masculine behaviour.

If certain facts happen in the usa and not in afghanistan or Ukraine there is probably an other reason than guns since both countries have many easily available.

What do you think? keeping in mind also the norwegian rampage.

 

[user43770]

These murderers seem to be beta males who are unsuccessful with women and do not possess the fortitude to strive on. Instead, they violently take out their frustration on those around them.

Progressives would have you believe that disarming and emasculating the American male is the solution to the problem. Personally, I believe that the emasculation of the American male is what got us here in the first place.

 

[Strelok]

These murderers seem to be beta males who are unsuccessful with women and do not possess the fortitude to strive on. Instead, they violently take out their frustration on those around them.

Progressives would have you believe that disarming and emasculating the American male is the solution to the problem. Personally, I believe that the emasculation of the American male is what got us here in the first place.

I completely agree with that, to cut the balls of the bull wont make him a family pet, he has his place and is supposed to live in a certain way, if the bull attacks someone is mostly beause that one waved a red flag in his face.

I remember this kid at a work barbecue, he was pretending to be a knight holding a wood steak close to his seat he wasnt annoying anyone,actually we even asked which kind of knight he was and he politely said "from middleage".
Then his mother came throw away his steak and loudly reproached him in front of everyone and when the kid complained she shown him her open hand.

Before the end of the meeting that same kid broke a small wooden gate and left the place with two other kids, we needed hours to find them.

 

[Quiksilver]

Another article with an incomplete premise.

It assumes that 'violence' is bad and thus tools of violence are bad.

Is defensive violence morally wrong? Defending your life, your wife or your kids from evildoers, is that wrong?

If not, then having 'violence is bad' as a premise of an argument does not conform to reality.

I see defensive violence as a duty, and offensive violence as very bad. Therefore violence is neither good nor bad and thus the tools of violence can have a positive or negative result based on the context.

The outbreak of offensive violence is a systemic problem relating to culture, not 'guns' or masculinity.

1950s America: millions of surplus military weapons around the country, but the culture was not one of wanton criminality, therefore no mass shootings meanwhile arguably masculinity was more pronounced than today, and as above, the tools of effective violence were plentiful.