MAKE IT STOP!

The usually peaceful town of Duncan, Oklahoma, where I've lived for 15 years, today has become part of the growing list of places where lack of sufficient gun control has taken its toll. According to reports, 3 people were fatally shot this morning at the Walmart store here.

Senator Chris Murphy, in 2012, wrote important words, quoted in full in my post HERE - including:

"None of this is inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our nation chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let those weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not abate.

"As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.

"My heart breaks for Sutherland Springs. Just like it still does for Las Vegas. And Orlando. And Charleston. And Aurora. And Blacksburg. And Newtown. Just like it does every night for Chicago. And New Orleans. And Baltimore. And Bridgeport. The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic. The time is now for Congress to shed its cowardly cover and do something."

Embarrassed Again....by a Pulitzer Prize Winner too!

I remember, not long ago, on 8 January actually, writing: "Any time our home state, Oklahoma, gets itself into the news it's always for something either horrific, or vaguely embarrassing!" Here we go again! This time it's relating to something both horrific and embarrassing.

In the February issue of Vanity Fair Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer prize-winning author has written an article about our home town in Oklahoma, and the dreadful murder which happened here last summer. (See my post here). It's puzzling that Vanity Fair should suddenly bring the topic to the fore once more. Perhaps it's because the three young men accused of the murder will be in court again soon.

Mr Bissinger's article didn't impress me one little bit, Pulitzer prize or not. I felt the article wasn't well-written, and was grossly unfair. He concentrates too much on the town rather than on the crime - as though the town itself were to blame. He trots out the old saw about there being "2 sides of the track" in Duncan. In every town I've lived in, in England, (many, and in all regions) there were equivalent areas to the 2-sides of the track metaphor. In our town it just so happens that much of the poorer area is actually located on one side of the rail tracks.

I get the feeling that Buzz Bissinger, from Pennsylvania - Wikipedia states: "He divides his time between homes in Philadelphia and the Pacific Northwest," obviously suffers from the "fly-over" syndrome, and has little knowledge, and a low opinion of, anything in between. Wiki also says: "In a column published in GQ, Bissinger states he is a shopaholic with an obsession for expensive designer clothes, spending $638,412.97 between 2010 and 2012. " Hmm.

Disclaimer. I have no great love for this town myself. When I'd been here for a month or two I came to the conclusion I'd stepped back in time to the 1950s, wrote to friends in that vein telling them that here, "there's a church on every corner instead of a pub!" The town's (and state's) politics are a complete anathema to me, as would be Buzz Bissinger's. Wikipedia states that he endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012. The town itself, though, is no worse than dozens of others in Oklahoma, and other states. In some ways it is better than many. There is certainly a lot of poor, run-down housing here which does contrast sharply with some huge mansion-type houses in a treed-in area on the north side of town. There's old oil money here, obviously. Haliburton used to be based here. None of that has any bearing on the horrendous random cold-blooded murder of a visiting student out on a quiet road, running, one day last summer.

Even the photograph accompanying Bissinger's piece is misleading. It's supposed to be Main Street, it is, but right at the end of quite a thriving true Main Street, with many non-chain businesses. The street, in reality is far from the description he gives:

"The city had just glossed up its Web site, using as its backdrop a picture of downtown Main Street glittering in the twilight. The image looked warm and inviting, something plucked from a stage set. But in reality downtown had died as a center of commerce long ago."

In every town in Oklahoma and in every other state we've visited, there is an older downtown area, equivalent to Main Street. These were once the hubs of commerce and retail, back in the 1940s, 50s, 60s. Now, in some towns these areas are completely derelict. In some other towns, like Duncan, they have been refurbished; private businesss owners have brought the area back to life. The now inevitable corporate chain businesses continue to grow up elsewhere in every town, almost like a secondary town in some cases.

That dreadful murder of last summer wasn't brought about by location, in my view. It was brought about by many things: ease of access to guns, constant de-sensitisation through depictions of violence in movies, TV, video games; maybe drugs, plus one sociopathic ringleader. Racism? No more here than anywhere else - less if anything, I'd say.

Buzz Bissinger was quite the wrong guy to send on a mission here. He might write a decent novel, but he doesn't seem to understand what I've come to realise. This is "the real USA".....this!. I see it, even though a foreigner here, as well as a US citizen and, shock horror, a socialist!

A Local Murder

My husband has this on his Thinks Happen page today:

 Click on image for bigger version

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps that is true. But often a picture still doesn’t tell the entire story. Sure, here is a small memorial, growing along a main street in a residential area. You’ve seen these before. Someone died here.

He was a visiting Australian athlete, out for his afternoon run. The story so far is that he was shot by three teen age boys who “wanted to see someone die.”

Does this hit you where you live? It is less than a minute from my home.

The site of the shooting is literally just around the corner from where we live. It's a very quiet neighbourhood, right on the edge of a quiet Oklahoma town. The young man murdered was a visiting baseball player from Australia.

NBC report HERE

Report from an Australian newspaper Herald Sun HERE.

What compels young men to act out their apparent disaffection in such violent and pointless ways? According to a piece in the Huffington Post back in April at the time of the Boston Marathon tragedy: as of 2006 in the US boys accounted for 83 percent of arrests for violent crimes. By the age of 17, over a quarter of boys report having carried a handgun. In 2010, there were an estimated 756,000 gang members throughout the country.

Curmudgeonly thoughts lead me along the lines that a mandatory draft into public service of some kind is needed, to try to plant some sense into young heads. Other thoughts remind me that young men from the USA and UK, not far from the age of these youths were fighting and being killed in World War 2, in the hope that their sacrifice would bring about a better world - and this is within my lifetime. What on earth has befallen us?

We seem to be well down a slippery slope towards something I don't even want to contemplate.