Dear Friends,
I wanted to provide to you a “Letter to the Editor” that was published in today’s Columbus Dispatch written by our own PR Manager Katie McCann. Below is her writing and a link to it on the Dispatch Website. She authored this column in response to Nationally Syndicated Columnist Froma Haropp’s column last week entitled “US a perfect environment for fostering a deadly culture.” I also am providing Ms. Haropp’s column below for your review where she focuses on gun violence, mental illness and violent video games YET never once mentions abortion as an element for fostering such deadly culture. Katie does a terrific job in setting the record straight. See below.
Violent culture has justified abortion
Froma Harrop’s Thursday op-ed column “Something about our culture may promote violence” is spot on. Though Harrop veers into talking about how video games promote a violent culture where mass shootings are a norm, I’d like to talk about how U.S. law sustains a violent culture where violence is celebrated not only as a norm, but as a right.
When it comes to abortion, the powerful abortion lobby has promoted a culture where violence is normalized and carried out before a child can even leave the womb. It’s one thing to want reproductive rights to be able to choose when and if you’re going to have children. It’s another thing to demand a right to destroy an innocent child.
To re-use Harrop’s words, “That reflects a cracked worship of killing power…” As Harrop highlights the number of violent video games that the public now shrugs at, I’d like to highlight another that was not included in her commentary: Choice: Texas, a developing video game in which players hunt for abortion access. No, Grand Theft Auto V isn’t the only game that will inject confusion into already confused minds.
Indeed, there is something about our culture that promotes violence. There is something about our culture that treats life as expendable.
Recently, a Dayton man shot at the pregnant mom of his unborn child, allegedly because she refused to have an abortion. Undoubtedly, a large segment of our culture believes it’s entitled to commit violence against others — and the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Big Abortion.
KATIE McCANN
Ohio Right to Life
Columbus
U.S. a perfect environment for fostering a deadly culture
By Froma Harrop
Syndicated columnist
To the rising pile of shooting rampages, Americans can now add the rapid-fire murder of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. It is a sign of our remarkable times that this horrid deed seems to pale next to the massacre of 20 schoolchildren in suburban Connecticut last December.
Behind virtually every one of these slaughters is a loner who had shown signs of being mentally ill. The Navy Yard suspect, Aaron Alexis, had complained to police in Rhode Island of enemies passing vibrations through hotel walls. He was questioned in Fort Worth, Texas, for firing a bullet into an apartment ceiling and in Seattle for shooting out a car’s tires.
Though every incident pointed to a sick mind, none was serious enough to raise a flashing red flag. Worrisome how many unbalanced people fly below the official radar.
It’s hard to believe there are more mentally unwell people in America than elsewhere. But there are more of other troubling things in this country: isolation, a mesmerizing parade of violent images and easy access to weaponry.
I’m not going to dwell here on the gun-control issue except to say this: It’s one thing to want firearms for hunting or self-defense. It’s another to demand a right to own weapons that can murder large numbers in seconds. That reflects a cracked worship of killing power, especially attractive to the unstable.
Many argue that mental illness, not the flow of guns, drives these crimes. They are not entirely wrong. But how do you keep killing machines out of crazy hands? Laws requiring a sanity check for gun buyers sound sensible, but the guns used by the slayer of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., were bought by his supposedly rational mother. Adam Lanza’s mother went to bars to brag about her guns, while leaving them unlocked at the home she shared with her clearly troubled son.
We learn that Alexis, like Lanza, like the Columbine High School shooters, spent long hours hypnotized by violent video games. So pervasive have these games become that the public now shrugs at the likes of “Grand Theft Auto,” once considered shocking for its anti-social violence.
The casual bloodletting in “Grand Theft Auto V” is said to be oiled by humor and satire, injecting more confusion into already-confused minds.
There is debate on whether these games promote violent behavior. The case that they do seems strong enough to have compelled one video-game maker to hire a crack lobbying firm to stop a Senate bill that would sponsor research into the possible connection.
Much research suggests ordinary people playing violent video games do experience heightened feelings of belligerence, along with higher heart rates and blood pressure. In his own study, Brad Bushman, a professor of communications and psychology at Ohio State University, found that typical college students playing violent games for only 20 minutes a day for three days became more aggressive.
Most players don’t act on their anger, because they come to the game in fairly good mental health, Bushman wrote in response to the Navy Yard massacre. “But what about players who already are predisposed to violence?” He added, “Violent video games are just one more factor that may be pushing them toward violence.”
America’s mass shootings seem to be about several things. They’re about a culture that bombards people with images of casual homicide, that likes to wave guns, that doesn’t pay enough attention to mental illness. Though mass killings occur in other developed countries, our deadly mix of factors may explain why they happen here with grotesque predictability. It’s something toxic in the air.
© , The Providence Journal Co.
Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her email address is fharrop@projo.com
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Michael Gonidakis
President
Ohio Right to Life
88 East Broad Street, Suite 620
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614/547-0099 ext. 301
wyandotcountyrightolife 