By Odeisel
Oh beautiful, for spacious skies. For amber waves of grey. America, the beautiful , stood at a crossroads in 2012. In an election year, you would think that politics would be the dominant story. With so many gripping human interest stories and sports triumphs like the final coronation of Lebron James or Serena Williams’ unparalleled dominance, you would think that surely something brighter would win out. Unfortunately, more than anything, 2012 was the year of the gun.
Aside from “normal” gun violence, 151 Americans were killed or wounded in mass shootings, the most in U.S. history. The year began with the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin by self-styled neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. Details of the incident are still relatively murky except for the fact that Zimmerman was not the police, Trayvon was not engaging in criminal activity, and he was killed because Zimmerman followed him and incited a confrontation.
Then came the mass shootings. On February 21st, at Georgia’s Su Jung Health Sauna, five people were shot to death in a murder-suicide. A week later, on the 27th, shooting erupted at Cleveland’s Chardon high school when student T.J. Lane let off 10 shots in the school cafeteria killing three and seriously wounding two of his classmates. A month later on April 2nd, seven people were murdered and three injured when gunman One L. Goh, a former student, went on a rampage at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland. It was the third deadliest university shooting in United States history.
The following month, six people lost their lives at Seattle’s Café Racer when gunman Ian Lee Stawicki opened fire, killing five in a spree that ended with Stawicki’s death. July 20th brought the Aurora, Colorado Movie Massacre. The shooting featured the largest pool of innocents struck, with 12 deaths and 58 wounded. Gunman James Eagan Holmes entered a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises with a tear gas canister and opened fire, with many of the victims believing it was part of the show. The shooter carried a 12-
gauge shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle with a 100 round drum that jammed after 30 rounds and a Glock 22 handgun.
Two weeks later, on August 5th, a Wisconsin Sikh temple was the scene of another rampage which left six dead and four injured. The shooting was racially/culturally motivated and was ended when the gunman, white supremacist Wade Michael Page took a bullet to the stomach from responding police and decided to shoot himself in the head rather than be taken alive. The following month, violence erupted in Minnesota when Andrew John Engeldinger, a former employee at Accent Signage Systems killed five including himself, and injured four, two of whom eventually succumbed to their injuries. It was deadliest workplace shooting in Minnesota history.
Wisconsin was again the scene on October 21st when the estranged husband of Zina Haughton went to her place of business, The Azana Spa, 
three days after having a four-year restraining order placed on him and killed her and two of her co-workers, injuring an additional four before shooting himself in the head. December brought unspeakable holiday tragedy with the Clackamas Town Center shooting on the 11th, when 22-year-old gun Jacob T. Roberts, armed with a stolen Bushmaster AR-15, opened fire on unsuspecting mall patrons killing two and wounding a third before killing himself. Three days later brought the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre which claimed the lives of twenty school children and six adults, leaving two additional victims wounded.
As evidenced above, these shootings took place all across the nation with no racial, cultural or regional preference. Some had a personal connection while others were seemingly random and senseless. Perhaps Sandy Hook could be explained by a mental illness or a drug side effect. Shot guns, semi-automatic weapons, and handguns were used, some legally obtained, at least one stolen. No gun law could have stopped most of these incidents.
America doesn’t need crazy gun laws, it needs to properly manage its crazy people. Its history of promoting separation and motivating people with fear, racism, xenophobia, classism and every other divisive element has led to a fractured collective psyche that forces its citizens to look at each other from the corners of their eyes. Gun violence has run rampant in urban areas for decades with many innocent children and victims murdered and sadly, it took 151 people murdered and injured for the general populace to become alarmed at a growing situation.
We swear the next person is out to get us; some black person is going to rape your daughter. Some crazy white person is going to shoot up a movie theater. Some Mexican gangster is going to kill your family in a drive-by. Some immigrant will break into your house. From that fear comes the need to protect yourself and your family. You HAVE to own guns. For the zombie apocalypse. For the day when the Manchurian black president who’s really a Muslim plant turns your government against you. For the mayhem that comes with the Mayan end of the world.
Americans are increasingly willing to end these mythical threats, whether they actually exist or not. Trayvon’s murder is no different thematically than the invasion of Iraq. They might have a weapon. They could be a threat. The problems of our citizens are the problem of America.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, there will certainly be an impetus towards curbing the availability of assault 
weapons and huge magazines. But it won’t matter if we continue to flood the minds of Americans with fear. It won’t matter if we don’t treat mental illness and stop writing off sociopathic behavior as novelty. It won’t matter if America remains fractured racially (with globalization we can’t even afford it anyway), socially and economically.
None if these issues exist in a vacuum. They were on full display during the Seinfeldian Presidential campaign about nothing. No plans for moving forward, just talk of what was and how what was is shaping the now. No talk of how those faults will destroy the American future. Just the manipulation of these fears in order to force your hand in the voting booth.
Guns are a symptom of a much more insidious issue. America’s self-destructive, fear-driven fool culture engenders so many tributaries of arrogance, delusion, rage and societal disintegration. The emotions we suppress, the conversations we refuse to have and the problems we never address foster a society of consultants we pay to tell us our problems, self-medication to deal with our problems and a race/class-driven fear borne of guilt and ignorance. It will take a lot more than laws to address this.
*Special thanks to the staff of MotherJones.com who did extraordinary work gathering the stories of the victims of these shootings. The media usually spends countless hours obsessing over the killers. Much love and respect.
