No I'm not talking about a street-walker, prostitute, or loose woman. Well, at least I don't think she was any of those things. I'm talking about an incident that occurred on Easter Sunday when a 42 year old woman shot and killed a 19 year old woman that came to her house for Easter dinner dressed in shorts that were too short. Those must have been some provocative shorts. {insert fashion-victim joke here}
I'm all for setting young folk straight about the proper attire for semi-formal occasions, but yelling at or say shooting someone in the head in order to get your point across seems to be going a little too far. If it was God that the 42 year old was trying to appease, I don't think he is any happier now that Daisy Duke is dead. And if it was other relatives that the 42 year old was trying to impress, I don't think they were very impressed by the site of brain matter in the driveway. The worst part of all this (aside from the murder) is that the young woman was in the process of leaving when the shooting occurred. Way to shoot a person in the back. Maybe the 42 year old was just jealous of the 19 year old's awesome gams (why we ever stopped using this slang term I'll never know, but I'm all for bringing it back).
Despite the fact that it appears as though people are losing their minds nowadays, it is more likely that this has been going on for ages and no one really noticed. Now that we have internet and tv we can see every little retarded thing that every crazy lady, psychopath, and murderer does on a daily basis. This overload of information is great for entertainment value but gets depressing after a while. Not to mention the fact that it is easy to get paranoid upon hearing about all the murderers, rapists, and just outright insane people out there. A while back I read a history book on early America that talked about the common occurrence of people, even women, traveling alone and staying in an inn in a room with strangers of various genders. This was made possible because people weren't as paranoid and also probably because no one changed their clothes except once every couple of weeks or so. There was probably the occasional psycho that preyed upon strangers, but they were subsequently caught and hanged or no one ever found out what had really happened to poor Aunt Mae who went on a trip by herself. Either way, random violence didn't factor heavily into most people's thoughts back then. Oh for the good old days.
Then again, the good old days often allowed domestic violence and incest to continue unchecked. It was the family's problem and no concern of the community's unless it became a public issue. Now you have everyone getting all up in your business and calling child services when you spank your kid in public. I guess we just have to take the good with the bad. Either way the story I cited above is a perfect example of the degradation of society on both ends of the spectrum.
6 comments:
The story is really sad and disturbing and reminded me that, despite being pretty libertarian in theory (I've been expressing those kinds of opinions lately), I do believe that people are just too crazy to have guns.
I think that people were always this bad, but when they live in a society that tells them that a civilian owning a deadly weapon is a good thing, they're just far more likely to shoot somebody in the back.
Culture never fails to blow my mind... Egyptians are taught that financial corruption and wife-beating are more or less as acceptable as guns are in America, but they are also taught that outright murder and robbery are terrible sins. As a result, they have safer streets than many European countries.
I do have hope that as the internet continues to make people's lives more public, people will be less likely to act out. It's the old idea that people are less likely to commit crimes when there are witnesses... like how serial killers don't last long in cities, and robberies happen less in stores that are located at intersections.
That's honestly one of the things that I think needs to (and will) change in America. So many people (even in NYC, the densest place in the country!) are in love with privacy. On one hand, this allows for an "individual spirit," but more frequently, it makes it easier for people to sit alone in their home plotting the destruction of others without anyone else even wondering what's going on. There's a reason America has more neo-Nazis than Germany.
It's a really terrible story, but I do have a little bit of hope that this kind of thing is going to decline as we begin to perceive ourselves being "witnessed" in the digital world as well as the physical one.
This is an interesting story, with a bizarre topic. That lady was obviously insane. Did the story give her reason or justification for shooting the girl in the back of the head? What were the other guests doing during this event? Did she already have the gun on her?
All I know, is that I have a lot of guns and I was raised knowing that it's wrong to kill. As far Egypt, I don't know what their reported crime rates are. But as in most countries, I know there legal has the freedom to serve itself, and report that numbers as it sees fit. I also know that most Arab countries tend to be a little extreme with their punishments, regardless of the way that the criminal was brought up.
The internet opens up communication that brings us so many more stories of how human beings actually behave in this world.
Simultaneously we have an increase in atheism and decline of faith that some benevolent power is guiding all of us.
Perhaps coincidence. Perhaps not.
I think that the freedom to own guns isn't really the problem. The idea of private gun ownership is not a new thing and was a necessity when many families had to hunt to provide their families with meat. The idea of using guns in random acts of violence, gang violence, etc is a newer concept and the problem lies in modern culture. Our culture is evolving (not a bad thing) creating individuals that express their emotions and opinions through violence (very bad) and others who opt for an extreme restriction of freedom to cut down on violence (not good either).
I guess what we have to ask ourselves as Americans is if we are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of freedom to make our streets a little safer. Granted, we shouldn't be asked to make that decision. We should be teaching our children a better way to live. But I guess dumb people end up raising dumber people.
@Southern Fried Skeptic, actually, the past 10 years has seen an increase in faith, not a decrease. Religious groups are using these same media to spread their message, so I don't know where you see this "increase in atheism".
Part of the problem is that this kind of thing feeds on itself. For example, when people see a school shooting, a certain twisted percentage will say, "wow, what a great way to get my point across. Why didn't I ever think of that?"
@Alex - I agree that this sort of thing does feed on itself. This is the main reason that as mass communication improved it seems as though crime is rising. Before the village idiot found out all the crazy stupid things he could do, he just sat around being the village idiot. Now he has other idiots to get ideas from.
Post a Comment