As a graphic display of data, this table is missing a couple of essential elements, for instance, what time period? (I'm guessing this year to date, but it ought to say.) Also, it would be nice to have a row listing the populations of each country.
Still.
Today is US Memorial Day and three days after the rampage by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista. It is awful to find out about any murder, horrid for murder to happen, and yet this one, these ones, strike me as more awful and horrid than -- terrible to say-- usual.
For me, it has to do with the fact that the perpetrator was born in the UK, in Sussex, and then moved to Los Angeles. He grew up only a couple of miles away from where I did, in Woodland Hills. His high school is very close to the home of my sister's family. He spent much of his childhood in therapy; both of my parents are child psychologists with offices a stone's throw away.
Isla Vista-- the Santa Barbara area in general-- is lovely. Beach, hills, greenery, flowers. Bougainvillea everywhere (I yearn to live where bougainvillea grows). I've been to Isla Vista several times, including most recently on a family trip with the kids during which we bought sandwiches at the Isla Vista Deli, where one of the recent victims was killed. He came from Los Osos, where, on that same trip, we camped for the night. My nieces and nephews who are college age might easily have chosen to attend UCSB; some of their friends did. Fortunately for us, none was hurt.
These points of contact are chilling. It's nothing spooky or spiritual; it is an extra-forceful reminder of the fragility of happiness, of the luxury of taking life for granted. For the sake of sanity, we tend to regard it as a necessity. A right, even.
I keep thinking of the novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin. As a new-ish parent, I read the book with some trepidation, but found I was able to enjoy it because it seemed so caricatured; no mother, I felt, could get into such a situation with her child. I read it as allegory, as fable, and as such, found it powerful and memorable, but not believable. In real life, though, reports say that the parents of Elliot Rodger were immensely upset, but not shocked, to be told that their son was the perpetrator. Not so allegorical, perhaps.
I've been following Twitter on the topic of the shootings and gun availability, and found a thread retweeted by Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) lauding Canada for its relatively few gun deaths and trying to explain why. One Canadian tweets that Canada 'as a culture' is not paranoid about foreigners or about 'being invaded'. An American then applauds Canada's 'diversity without fear/tension', as well as its beauty, and asks if there is space for one more. Another Canadian tweets a caution, however: Canada is 'less decent' and more 'rightwing crazy' since Harper became prime minister. (Yep, figured that one out. A real shame.) The general consensus at the point when I stopped following (as I do), seemed to be that the US problems all stem from the Second Amendment and its insistence on citizens' rights to raise a standing militia at any given moment. For that, apparently, you need to have guns at the ready.
The problem is those militias of one with an agenda and an unbalanced mind. Where do one person's rights end and another's begin? Which constitutional amendment addresses that question?
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