POST 12: School shootings in the USA

The Columbine School Shooting.

I didn't have time to read a 10th of the information on the blog which is very detailed on every part of this tragic event. But what i thought was most interesting was:
*How the shooters plan the event, and how it happened, because every deteil given in the blog about what happenned shows that it was indeed planned by lost teenagers who, even though killed and injured a lot of innocent people, "failed" to do what they wanted, which was blowing up their school. In the sumary of the event, it is said that most of the bombs and molotov cocktails they had prepared failed to explode, which was initially part of a plan that they started a whole year before. i had heard of this shooting but had no idea how planned it was and it really surprised me.

*The shooters' profiles, especially Eric Harris, and what is said about him. At first sight, he has a James Deam kind of look, is handsome and looks confident, which is actually ery important to be accepted in high school years. Also, comments of people who knew him stroke me because they say he was a "nornal guy" with a "classic type" and the description of his life, wanting to raise two sons, joining the marine, does not give us at all the image of frustrated and rejected teen, but someone who had life goals. I think it is very interesting because it calls into question the whole theory that school shootings are done by rejected teens who want revenge.

*The diaries of the killers, which i didn't read but i caught a sentence written by Eric Harris which is very shocking and interesting at the same time: "I'm full of hate and i love it."
*Some pictures that i picked and wrote below

This is the first photo i saw and the website. The girl on the right, Jessica Holliday, just escaped the school and this picture captured in a very artistic and striking way, the chaos and the sudden pain that was going around during the event.

This is also a very beautiful moment well captured by a picture. The suffering going along with maybe relief on this boy's face makes us feel what was going on in people's minds this day.

Through an artistic point of view this is the best picture, although it is violent and sad but it makes the viewer question himself: "Whose shoes are these? Is this person dead? Injured? Maybe these are the shoes of one of the killers..."

For the films and movies that illustrates this topic, i choose American Horror Story's first season for several reasons: first of all because i started to watch this show a few months ago and loved it because of how it is shot, the great actors and the unusual topics.

Also because i thought of the first season as soon as we started talking about school shootings in class, but mostly because a part of the first season is inspired by the event of Columbine.

Some things, like the name of the school, or the fact their were 2 shooters, have been changed, but most of it stayed, for example this very striking moment in the library when Kyle (the shooter) asks for the Jocks to get up. Also, we get to know the character during the show and try to understand what is going on in his head, which i think is way more interesting then just talking about the facts.

 Here is the link to the episode of the shooting from 0:00 min to 4:50 min.

The main reasons that are given to explain school shootings are vendetta (because they were bullied, rejected or for other reasons), because they were deranged or because they were exposed to violence in their everyday lives. All of the other reasons revolve around loneliness, access to drugs and weapons, bad social background or mental problems or ideas like not valuing life, etc... Even though these are really the main reasons why these tragic events happen, i think putting every one of them in the same bag is going to fast, and studying the psychologic part of their act more interestinf maybe to prevent it from happening again...

POST 11: THE US GUN CULTURE

In this poster we can see a gun printed with the Stars and Stripes and above that, a list of countries with the number of deaths in a year because of gun. All these states have had less then 100 deaths except for Canada and Germany (respectively 200 and 194).

Below this list, we see in bigger letters the number of people killed by gun violence in one year and the USA: almost 10 thousand, with written underneath "God bless America".

This poster is part of the Brady Campaign, campaign that has existed for now 40 years against gun violence in the United States, because the USA are one of the only developed countries to allow its people to carry and use guns.

In this one, we see the same poster but with little differences: first, the gun is older so the poster must be older too. Then, the list of countries is not the same. And last but not least, the number of people killed is higher: instead of almost 10 thounsand people killed by gun in one year, we have more then 11 thousand, which means one good thing: with time, guns are making less victims, or we should hope it is not a casualty.

~

In these graphics we see two things: first, the top 10 countries where there is gun murder and secondly, the number of people killed by guns in developed countries only this time.

In the first graphic, we can see that the USA are far behind (26th) which can make USA feel better about themselves but if you compare with the second graphic about gun murder in developed countries we can see that USA "wins" the contest by far, because we can probably not compare poor countries with an unstable political state with developped countries, putting the USA first in line when it comes to gun violence in developped countries.

This cartoon denounces the role of the state in the gun traffic in a USA. We see a congressman and someone from the gun lobby exchanging money after an ironic interruption because we see blood on the side so we can guess that somebody was killed, probably by a gun, and the gun lobby guy says: "Now where were we, before we were so rudely interrupted..." which is ironic because he thinks the killing was rude only because it interrupted his business, not because someone was killed.

In this cartoon we can see an old statue representing the authentic second amendment and a parody of this statue with a man from the National Rifle Association standing on a pile of munition boxes.

Next to the first statue, the author wrote "Second Amendment as defined by the founding fathers" and we can see a soldier holding an old gun in his hand and standing proudly.

Next to the second "statue", the man from the NRA, looking scary and scared at the same time, is carrying three rifles and multiple guns in his pocket. He is way "larger" then the man of the other statue and looks really threatening. 

With this cartoon, i think the author is trying to show what were the really goals of the founding fathers with the second amendment, which would be defending their beloved countries and be safe from eventual dangers or animals, but on a defense note, not an attack note as we can see on the second "statue" where we understand that the NRA has taken advantadge of this amendment to turn the USA into a land of fear and where having a gun is normal for every family.