This Week In the Absurd: School Shooting and the Occupy Protests of The Whitney Biennial

There was another school shooting this week in Ohio. One T.J. Lane in Chardon Ohio let out ten shoots with a .22 caliber handgun and killed three fellow students. The shooting probably means that we're going to get another round of gun control hysteria in the media. I'm a NRA Certified Firearms Instructor and a registered member of the Libertarian Party of Nevada, so of course I hold the contrary opinion. This time around, I saw a statistic today about this particular shooting that made my jaw drop, however. This is CBS news quoting the U.S. Secret Service. This is one of the most absurd statistics I've ever read. "According to statistics from the U.S. Secret Service, which started compiling data on school shootings after the attack at Columbine High School in 1999, at least one other person had some prior knowledge of an attacker's plan in 81 percent of incidents. In 59 percent of incidents, more than one other person had some prior knowledge."- I generally see the number of American homes with guns in them cited at about 35%, including, of course, my own. The number of people who commit violent crimes is obviously minute in comparison. The above static would suggest that the problem with school shootings is something else. That is to say, most of the time with school shootings at least one person and more than half of the time more than one person knows that the attacker plans to attack before hand. Most of these attacks transpire because people in our society know about mentally disturbed and dangerous individuals, don't report them and do absolutely nothing about it. It's right up there with the parole officers who never checked the sheds in Phillip Garrido's backyard. You can't really blame guns for that. A gigantic mass shooting accured recently in Norway, which has much stricter gun laws than the U.S. does. This school shooting won't cause any changes to U.S gun laws anyway. Moving along to matters equally stupid, another news item this week struck me as especially absurd. This is a strange one involving a faction of Occupy Wall St called Arts and Labour protesting of all things the Whitney Biennial. Quoting Arts and Labour- "We object to the biennial in its current form because it upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers. The biennial perpetuates the myth that art functions like other professional careers and that selection and participation in the exhibition, for which artists themselves are not compensated, will secure a sustainable vocation. This fallacy encourages many young artists to incur debt from which they will never be free and supports a culture industry and financial and cultural institutions that profit from their labors and financial servitude." I've heard Occupy leader David Greaber admit that many to he members of Occupy got out of liberal arts schools and couldn't find jobs or pay off their college debts. It Kind of seems like OWS are the victims less of Wall St. and more of the liberal arts system, doesn't it? I think the Arts and Labour protest of the Whitney bespeaks to that. These are people that thought having something like a degree in something like film or gender studies would give them financial stability, and it didn't, which would help to explain why they are deeply concerned with the labour rights of artists. The reasoning seems to be "we got out of college and have no jobs...but we can spout leftist dogma...which has no market value... so the problem is the market...not the liberal arts school system…". I think there's a flaw in that reasoning. I also don't think protesting the Whitney Biennial is going to change a whole lot. I don't even know why they care. Are they angry because they're not featured in the Whitney Biennial? Exactly how bureaucratic does these Occupy people intend to become? Does anybody really want a board of Arts and Labour composed of Occupy members looking over art exhibitions to determine if they adhere to party line? Certainly one advantage of the number of guns in the United States is that it would make very difficult for a movement like Occupy to gain real power in this country. Not only do 35% of American homes have guns in them, gun owners in the United States tend to belong to demographics who would not submit easily to the rule of leftist extremists- conservatives, libertarians, Mormons and Evangelicals, military. In the case of Occupy, I'm not losing sleep over that happening. I don't even think they're going to be able to effect the Whitney Biennial.