Massacre at the Movies

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We have just heard of the recent shooting in Aurora, CO: a young man shot at some seventy people, killing a dozen of them, at the showing of a movie.  This morning a motive was still unknown, and a good motive is unlikely to emerge.  All that is known about the shooter is that he was evidently a graduate student in neuroscience, who had just decided to abandon his program, or at least the doctoral program he had been enrolled in.

Senator Diane Feinstein has been the only one so far to speak up about gun violence, in connection with this most recent incident.  Evidently she was present when a supervisor of San Francisco, Harvey Milk, and Mayor George Moscone, were gunned down in City Hall in 1978.  Subsequently, Diane Feinstein was catapulted into politics, and was active in passing gun control legislation.  Some of the bans of assault weapons she helped to bring about expired earlier this year, despite all her efforts.

The man who perpetrated the shootings last evening, who surrendered to police after the shooting spree, was carrying an assault rifle, a shotgun, and two pistols.  While personally I am opposed to any firearms being permitted for ownership by private citizens, I see no reason why anyone should own an assault weapon such as the AK 47 rifle that it appears the culprit was toting.  At the very least, state authorities should require that assault weapons be registered as strictly as automobiles, for instance.  That will not prevent shootings such as the present one.  But crime prevention authorities will have a little more information with which to work in discouraging mass shootings.

President Obama has been careful about using the current tragedy as a platform for pro gun-control rhetoric.  This being an election year, he is being careful not to emphasize to moderates that he is an Anti Gun Liberal.  This is what is needed in order to win elections around here; one has to present oneself as not against pretty much anything at all.

We had to realize that the population is inevitably tending towards heterogeneity in all matters.  Already by around 1959 attitudes and beliefs in America were highly varied, so much so that it was impossible to generalize about the Man In The Street.  All you could say was that the typical American had a 9th grade education, and was probably desperately afraid of Communism.  Over the next several decades even less could be said about a typical American, with any kind of confidence.

Unfortunately for me, and anyone who shares my views, if Barack Obama were to return to the White House, it will be on the shoulders of a large number of people who are against at least one of: gun control, family planning, controlling lobbyists, taxation, gay marriage, public education, health care legislation, and so forth.  It is very difficult to be enthusiastic about a President who, in order to appeal to the widest spectrum of supporters, is coy about coming out in favor of any liberal issues at all, except vaguely against big money interests.  While we would prefer Obama over Mitt Romney, who seems not to have a single idea that I can personally support, it is frustrating to see Obama not stand behind the good ideas that he once seemed to espouse enthusiastically.