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July 22nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The US gunman, who carried out the carnage early Friday, had purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition over the internet in the past two months.
The masked gunman opened fire at viewers during the screening of the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Press TV has conducted an interview with Arun Gupta, an editor of the Indypendent Newspaper, from Seattle, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: What do you think was the cause of such a horrendous crime?
Gupta: The usual narrative is that this is crazy but we’ve seen this phenomenon again and again and again in the United States over years and even decades. I think at least anecdotally, it appears to have accelerated in the last few years coinciding with the severe economic downturn.
Certainly in a society as large as the United States there are the mentally unhitched people; but what the United States does in terms of its policies as a society, people often by themselves are very isolated. It’s easy to fall through the cracks, socially, where you don’t have any friends, any family you can rely on. There are very few social services available for people who have mental health issues.
On the other hand, it makes guns and ammunition incredibly easy to get. The United States very much valorizes the rights to get these types of deadly assault weapons, to buy 6000 rounds of ammunition over the internet as this young man did.
And on top of that, a media culture, especially TV and Hollywood, that really celebrates the violence of the lone, alienated individual, I don’t think it’s any surprise that we have these horrific massacres happening again and again and again.
They almost always tend to be white men. As on the side, I think it’s worth pointing out that if he had had brown skin and a Muslim sounding name, the media would be screaming terrorism. Obviously this is a form of terrorism, it just doesn’t get called as such.
So, these problems are very much socially embedded. They’re embedded in terms of the policy as a direct result of the various choices that America makes as a society.
Press TV: In your opinion, how successful do you think US media and authorities have been in addressing such issues because this is not the first time we’re seeing such a horrendous crime occur in the US.
Gupta: No, and that’s my point. This happens all the time. It seems like nearly every month there’s another one of these types of massacres.
For the media, what they do is they focus on the individual, that there’s an individual act. That they do not look at the social context at all and ask why in America?
I mean, one is obviously guns. In the US, something like 10,000 people die a year from gun violence whereas in other countries, you know, it might be at most a couple hundred. Some places like Germany which is one-third the size of the United States, their proportion events are far lower.
The media doesn’t look at it in terms of the social context. They will raise the issue of guns. This is something, though, that political leaders will not touch with a thousand foot pole. The Republicans are really celebrating gun rights.
Press TV: According to the Devour FBI Chief, the evidence found in the apartment of the attacker is going to the anti-terrorist department. Do you think the gunman’s going to be tagged as a terrorist especially since the police said that his apartment was rigged so that the first person that opened it would blow up, which would be authorities, after this tragic disaster?
Gupta: Terrorism is a political category; that’s all it really is. It’s how you interpret violence. So, this is a political position.
If we were to really objectively say who are the biggest terrorists in the world, it would be the governments of the world whether you’re talking about the governments in the West, the Middle East, in Africa or in Asia. I don’t think it’s of great significance.
I think it’s interesting they are sending this to the anti-terrorism task force but it’s a political question ultimately. It’s not an objective question.
Press TV: Why haven’t authorities – because usually they do this to protect the families of the person who’s committed the crime – why haven’t authorities or US media released images of the crime scene? What authority regulates such policies? There’s also been no picture of the man himself.
Gupta: There have been photos that are circulating with all the stories…
There’s a bizarre kind of relation that America has for violence in terms of we see theatrical violence, fantasy violence on TV and in Hollywood all the time but we’re loathed to see the real world violence that the media are very complicit in that. For instance, the corporate media refuses really to show the pictures of the extreme violence during the Iraq war either of the civilians killed or the US soldiers who are being killed by the US invasion.
It extends beyond the authorities. I think that it’s a tough question, but in my opinion it would be helpful to show these pictures because people should be confronted with the costs of what their policies do.
Press TV: Another situation that seems to be rare is why do you think that no fingers are being pointed at the gun lobby here in the US? After incidents like this people are allowed to carry weapons and have opportunities to purchase weapons.
Gupta: Because the gun lobby is so phenomenally powerful in this country. It’s very much in the cultural DNA of America. The notion of the cowboy, the hero on the frontier facing down his enemies with a gun, I don’t think we can downplay how much that is really woven into culture, into people’s identity; also, the whole notion that the only thing keeping you safe from the tyranny of government is having a gun.
It’s a very important psychological and social symbol, and also sexual, frankly, because again it’s really men who are acting out this aggression. It’s extremely rare to see women doing this sort of random massacre. I don’t know if there are any instances of women having done these kinds of random massacres and walking into a public place.
It’s something that takes a lot of untangling but American society isn’t very good at reflecting at itself as through its deep problems, so we’ll continue to see more of these types of massacres.
GMA/HJL
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