Littleton

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Wed Apr 28 21:44:35 PDT 1999


Brad Hatch wrote:


>I can't help but think that you are dismissing one variable as being an
>oversimpification and replacing it with another. You don't need guns to
>exert power. Guns are what made the situation lethal

and this goes to support my point. I never impled guns were necessary to exert power, but I will insist that they can drastically alter the effects any exertion of power and in this way, and not only in this way, they help construct relations of power.


>but without guns
>the problem is still their.

A problem would be there. It would not be the same problem.


>I agree that power, peer pressure and
>hierarchies are very complicated but this doesn't mean that you dimiss
>all of this and blame it all on guns.

I did not dismiss this, I simply said it wasn't as simple as the previous posting had described it.


>This I believe is overly
>simplistic.

Well that's ok because I never said that. However, I don't need a game of what you said was... I am happy to stand by the position that guns are a crucial factor in this problem *as it is*, not as it might be in another context.


>I think we need to look at peer pressure, the role of
>competition and how they relat to enforcing hierarchies in our society.

And guns work to enforce hierarchies to and they make the enforcing or contesting of hierarchies in this and other situations very different than it would otherwise be.


>I believe these factors and others are responsible for much of the
>violence in schools and society in general. I also agree that the access
>to guns may be the first order of business in saving lifes but I don't
>delude myself into believing they have much to do with the underlying
>problem of angry alienated youth in our schools.

Nor are the issues of 'gun possession/use' and 'angry youth in schools' utterly separate. Guns are important factors in the social networks in which this 'alienation' occurs and is articulated. Guns provide ways of forming, negotiating and expressing anger that are all too final.

Catherine



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