Maine Is One Big Small Town & Now We Have Mass Shootings, Too

Awoke to news that an Army Reserve firearms instructor who is living with psychosis (hears voices, and was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment recently) shot up a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston last night. The above photo is allegedly security cam footage from the bowling alley. The shooter is white and in his 40's, on the run, and considered dangerous.

Bowdoin (pronounced Boh-den) is really taking a beating lately. The shooter is from that very small town as was last summer's shooter who came out of prison in another state and immediately massacred his parents and two of their friends. Then went out to Interstate 295 and started shooting at cars.

The college by the same name, which is in Brunswick not Bowdoin, is on lockdown this morning. So is Bates College where my gun-loving representative, Marine veteran Jared Golden earned his degree after returning from killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why can other countries control gun violence but the U.S. won't or can't?

Shooter Robert Card's social media presence was that of a right wing nut case. You know, kind of like the new Speaker of the House whose first act in office will be bringing forward a bill to send Israel more billions to continue their slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Not achieving gun control is a Democratic Party strategy akin to not saving abortion access -- so useful to fundraise off of that there is low motivation to solve the problem. 

In Maine, a hunting state with weak gun control laws, the Democrats control both the Senate and the House, and the Governor is a Democrat also. Will this be enough to pass strong gun control laws in the wake of last night's massacre? Doubtful, but I can hope.

When I say Maine is one big small town I mean things like my grandson's cousins on his mom's side live in Auburn, a twin city to Lewiston. His older cousin will not attend school today as all schools for miles around are closed while the manhunt continues.

Back in 2020 when I ran against Susan Collins for her senate seat, Project Veritas "tricked" me into admitting I believe in gun control. Subsequently Collins voted "no" on background checks, a fact being circulated widely on social media. 

Both corporate parties profit from violence, domestically and abroad. Neither will do anything meaningful to stop it. We have lost our representation in government, which breeds fear, which spikes gun sales. Meanwhile we have hugely inadequate mental health care because we have hugely inadequate health care of any sort.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it will continue until the people wrest control of their government back from corporate interests. Second Amendment defenders will tell you that's why they need to cling to their guns, to ward off tyranny. Sorry fellas but the government's drones, robots, lasers, and directed energy weapons are not threatened by your AR-15.

But you are, because the people most likely to die of gun violence are...gun owners.

The way to bring down this miserable government is a general strike. But that is a subject for another time.

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

Unarmed Black victims of police violence (may their families know peace), L-R from the top: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown
Image source: trauma doc Dr. Andre Campbell on Twitter

 

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

For AR-15 in that sentence, you could substitute drone, missile, or nuclear bomb.

That the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings, especially at schools, is a fact no one disputes. Regular people see a clear connection between a Pentagon budget that gobbles up more than half of annual expenditures by Congress. Regular people also see the pretense of elected officials who take millions in campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers and pro-weapon lobbying groups like the NRA and then tweet "thoughts and prayers" when the inevitable next mass shooting occurs.

Why then is social media is full of people blaming one of the two corporate parties for the massacre?

With the Ukraine war party in power right now controlling the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives why is our federal government still failing to enact gun control? Fund universal mental health care? Rescue from poverty the 20%+ children without housing or food security?

“All we have to do is elect more Democrats and we can stop these mass shootings” pic.twitter.com/QgP2RSp59B

— Revolutionary Blackout Network🥋 (@SocialistMMA) May 25, 2022

Who is falling for using the deaths of children to further the false dichotomy our corporate rulers think will deliver civil war (we're well on our way) rather than the revolution we need?

Though I do support stringent gun control I don't think that alone will reduce mass shootings. Other countries that are overrun with guns do not see 18 year olds cutting their own faces, shooting their own grandma, and then massacring little kids while local cops let them proceed. 

Did you know that in other countries, people with schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations that may be benign or even loving? In the U.S., people with schizophrenia hear voices urging them to violence.

Of course other nations weren't built on genocide of indigenous people (not all nations, anyway) and enslavement of kidnapped laborers.

We are a traumatized nation. And trauma begets trauma. 

The vast majority of mass shooters are men, around 98%. Men and boys have no more access to guns and ammunition than women and girls do, so what’s the explanation?

It could be something most analysts overlook: adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.

Back in 2019, researchers studied every mass school shooting from 1966-2018.  “The vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying,” wrote criminal justice professors Jillian Peterson and James Densley for the Los Angeles Times.

The ACEs questionnaire and scale were developed to quantify and name the cause that creates such devastating effects: high levels of stress are toxic for our nervous system as humans. If experienced in childhood, they can lead to actual changes in the structure and function of the brain. And researchers say the effects of stress on male brains is different.

Additionally, if high levels of stress lead to acting out behavior, this can often trigger additional stress as authority figures respond violently to the behavior. Ask any teacher if they’ve seen this in their school.

Forensic ACEs reveal that the vast majority of violent criminals have a high ACEs score. Poverty results in ACEs e.g. children experiencing eviction, hunger, or lack of medical care for themselves and their caregivers. Being targeted for one’s race or ethnic identity also raises the ACEs score.

Nearly 1 in 6 people in the U.S. reported four or more ACEs  as adults in a study by the CDC with Kaiser Permanente which found, “ACEs can have lasting, negative effects on health, well-being, as well as life opportunities such as education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, maternal and child health problems (including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death), involvement in sex trafficking, and a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide.”

One a national level, our ACEs are through the roof. Using nuclear bombs on Japan after letting the Holocaust proceed, producing a zillion big budget films glorifying this and other violence, police murdering Black, brown, and indigenous people with impunity, illegal invasions that killed millions and which the pepetrators later laugh about in public...

I could go on but it would fill volumes.

Live by the sword, die by the sword is an old idea found in the New Testament (an account of radical truth-telling in the face of the brutal occupation of Palestine by the Roman Empire). One translation reads "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

The U.S. Empire has some very bad karma. And it's breaking our hearts that children pay the price.

But as long as violent patriarchy is the organizing principle of our culture, nothing will change.

Fiscally Responsible Idea: Stop Killing Children

Source: Washington’s Blog: U.S. Army Starts Targeting Children at NakedCapitalism.com

How much of a coincidence is this? The same week the U.S. Army admits it is deliberately bombing children in Afghanistan a deranged gunman opens fire on kindergarten children in Connecticut.

To put it another way, does a culture of violence breed violence?

Drone strikes kill mostly civilians, many of them young children, and are paid for by me and thee. Unless you've figured out how to withhold the 50%+ of tax revenue that Obama administration budgets allocate to military spending, that is.

Can we afford to go on like this, increasing spending for state-sponsored violence while cutting budgets for mental health care?

Here's a modest proposal: take all the $$ allocated to aerial bombing, including paying those who make it possible, and redirect it to mental health services.

Split the services up between people in the U.S. -- who clearly need it badly -- and people in any country the U.S. has bombed since WWII. (Israel can re-direct its own military spending to mental health services for its people and those of Gaza and the West Bank. Oh, wait, a lot of that $ is U.S. tax revenue, too.)

Source: Jordan Times "The mother of 10-month-old Palestinian girl, Hanen Tafesh, killed the day before in an Israeli air strike, is comforted by her husband and relatives as she mourns before her funeral in Gaza City, on Friday (AFP photo)"

From the Jordan Times:

Child psychologists say the trauma of war stays with Gaza’s children for a long time. 

Hussam Nunu, the head of Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme, said close to a third of the about 1,500 patients treated every year are children affected by stress and violence. After Israel’s last offensive four years ago, the number of children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders was “overwhelming”, he said. 

“Since then we have done a lot of outreach, but when another escalation like this happens, our work can be undone,” he said.