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A year ago, my wife and I had both tested positive for Covid. We were housebound and unable to attend the parade we would normally attend in Lake Bluff, the next town over, nor the fireworks in our town, Lake Forest. We weren’t feeling that bad but were dutifully following the isolation protocol as to not infect others. Rather than parades and fireworks, we were watching the classic 4th of July fare on TCM.
We were watching one of favorites, Yankee Doodle Dandy, the 1942 classic starring James Cagney in the story of inimitable and charismatic George M. Cohan. We were having lunch when my mother in-law called to tell us about people that were wounded and slain by gunfire at the parade in Highland Park, another town next to ours. Our plans changed and we ended up following the real-life drama of this event which ended in the capture of the gunman, Roberto Crimo, a mere 3 miles from our house.
I am sitting in the same chair watching another movie. It is hardly a 4th of July movie but it is a serious US special operations gone wrong, deep state, thriller, that is full of intrigue, gunfire, and revenge to make things right. The movie is The Contractor (1922) starring Chris Pine.
I love these kinds of movies. They are exhilarating and entertaining. But they are just that: entertainment and for most of us a kind of escape and perhaps sublimation of what we wish could but know we would never do. I do love these movies and novels of the same genre. I watch them and read them, wishing I could be like the action heroes in them; superbly fit, experts in martial arts, and a dead-eye with firearms and other weapons real or makeshift. This class of movies also have, for the most part, the heroes have an inner morale code. They want to make things right, even more so if they were wronged as the lead character was in the movie I watched.
Such movies and books are fantasies. They are also great escapes. But they are violent with lots of gunfire and high body counts. Many people watch such movies but very few actually take up arms and kill people. Disturbingly, the number of us in this country that take up arms to kill is increasing. It is quite disturbing on one hand and it has happened so often that we are often not moved when another occurs.
What is wrong with our society? Why is this number increasing. I wonder if these kinds of movies, novels, and video games contribute to the abuse of guns and mass shootings in our culture? I am sure this is more a job for professionals in the fields of psychology, sociology, and psychiatry.
Certainly, the availability of guns is also factor. If guns are really hard to get, then gun violence will probably go down. The logic makes sense. First, I believe that the black market for guns, and gunsmithing, will explode. If we ban guns, and by some miracle all the guns already out there go away, I believe gun violence will be replaced by violence with other kinds of weapons. The part of this that makes people, that feel so disenfranchised, want to kill others won’t go away. Gun laws will have some impact on this violence but it won’t fix the flaw in our national psyche.
