AWEEK ago I received a forwarded e-mail from a friend of mine at James Madison University. The message was somewhat of a response to the second school shooting in San Diego in as many weeks. The body of the message listed an abundance of reasons why children "kill strangers, classmates or even themselves."
The e-mail was obviously written by a conservative, as it bemoaned the lack of religion in public schools and then heaped a chunk of blame on the media for "movies that promote profanity, violence and illicit sex, ... music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes..."
At this point, I got a bit agitated.
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You see, I like violent music. I've listened to music that mentions all the above elements. My music collection has a large number of particularly morally depraved CDs. I own three Marilyn Manson albums. I've got several recordings by the Lords of Acid, whose selection of song topics center on sex, with a bit of drugs thrown in. On my desk right now is a CD from DJ Tron, the cover of which depicts a severed hand.
I have a reason why I listen to such music. It was prompted by high school. We all know the intense emotions that flow through the veins of any typical teenager. With the build up of stress that accompanies seven classes a day, five days a week and various extra-curricular activities, it's a wonder anyone survives the four years preceding college. And yet, we do find a way to deal with it.
My way was with music. Some people like soothing music that calms aggression. I like aggressive music that wrings the anger out of me like you would squeeze a sponge.
Naturally, I get angry anytime someone starts talking about how the music I like is such a horrible influence on children. I'm proof it isn't.
After a tragedy like the one in San Diego this past month, it is easy to see why some people begin passing around the types of mail like the one I received. Tragedies provoke people to look for reasons why they happened. Citizens try to rationalize the irrational. They hope to prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again, and they come up with what seems like a good idea on how to do so.
But what really bothers me about the events that follow a school shooting is the idea that the actions of one or two teenagers are grounds for nationwide changes.
Following a school shooting, various talking heads, each with a political agenda, pop out of the woodwork explaining why their solution is so much better than everyone else's proposed solution. And because of the heightened attention to such issues brought on by intense media coverage, these pundits have a large percent of the American public as an audience.
It's called demagoguery. Essentially, it's taking a small event and magnifying it to national importance. It works, and it shouldn't.
George W. Bush employed it while lobbying for his tax cut, showcasing several families that would be aided by the tax cut. If his proposed legislation is good for one carefully screened family, it's got to be good for the rest of us, right?
In the aftermath of school shootings, all sorts of idea are paraded out. A school security guard shot the alleged gunman in the second San Diego shooting, so armed guards should be put in all schools. The Columbine assailants listened to violent hard rock music, so we should hold record companies accountable. Each of these students had access to guns, so we should make guns less available.
Nationwide action must be based on nationwide problems. And as much as political activists would like us to believe they are, school shootings are not a nationwide problem.
Letting such events dictate the way we run the country is silly. When the country discusses such matters as gun control and religion in schools, it must be done from a platform free of the raw emotion stirred up by tragedy. Likewise, we must be sure that the choices we make are done in the best interest of the country, not in response to the actions of a few individuals.
Our nation's government works slowly for a reason. Mistakes at a national level are much more expensive to fix than we can imagine. Also, politicians have to consider how their actions will affect the 280 million people of America, not just high school students in California.
There are no easy solutions to any problem that effects the entire nation, and anyone who proposes one isn't thinking in national terms.
(Brian Haluska's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bhaluska@cavalierdaily.com.)
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