Lies and Bullets

Published in El Pais
(Spain) on 19 December 2012
by Elvira Lindo (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Adam Zimmerman. Edited by Lauren Gerken.
That there are countries more divided than ours should not be any consolation, but it lets us avoid for a time the hackneyed discourse of doom. It shows that we are definitely not the only ones using the hot coals of a violent event to launch ourselves into arguments that will never lead to a real debate. It seems that there are only two ways to confront the massacre in Connecticut, except, of course, that for any empathetic person the eruption of such a crime in somewhere as sacred as a school shakes one to the core. There are those who fix the cause of the crime to the young man’s mental illness, which would seem sufficient cause to exempt gun owners from guilt. On the other side are those who prefer to ignore the mental illness of the killer. According to the latter, analyzing the mental illness that afflicts someone who kills 27 people only serves to stigmatize the mentally ill and to ignore the growing percentage of people who die each year from gunshot wounds in the United States.

The point is that in this eagerness to sidestep aspects of the crime, one never addresses the circumstances of an event in all its complexity. It all ends in tears. Obama was said to have mourned as a father, until he was reminded that he was, first and foremost, president. But there is no sign that he is finally taking on arms control, nor that the average citizen is any closer to understanding how a weak or sick mind can deteriorate in the highly asocial life that many lead in the rural United States. Speaking lightly of mental illness could further isolate those who are ill, but failing to examine the reason why a human being can turn into a monster is to wrap mental illness in a fog of mystery that is even more dangerous.


Que hay países todavía más divididos que el nuestro no debería ser un consuelo, pero nos evita por una vez el manido discurso catastrofista. Y es que, en efecto, no somos los únicos que aprovechando las brasas de un suceso violento nos lanzamos a enfangarnos en discusiones que jamás acabarán en un debate real. Parece que solo hay dos maneras de encarar la masacre de Connecticut, dejando a un lado que a cualquier persona emocionalmente bien equipada la irrupción del crimen en un lugar sagrado como es la escuela le sacude las entrañas. Hay partidarios de centrar las causas del crimen en la enfermedad mental del joven, lo cual parece razón suficiente para eximir de culpa a los poseedores de armas; los hay en cambio que prefieren ignorar el desequilibrio del asesino. Según estos últimos, analizar el tipo de trastorno que padece alguien que mata a 27 personas solo sirve para estigmatizar a todos los enfermos mentales y para ignorar el creciente porcentaje de individuos que al año mueren por heridas de bala en Estados Unidos.

La cuestión es que en ese afán por esquivar aspectos del crimen nunca se llegan a abordar las circunstancias de un suceso como este en toda su complejidad. Todo se queda en lágrimas. Las primeras, las de Obama, que dijo llorar como padre, hasta que le recordaron que era, antes que nada, el presidente. Pero ni hay visos de que se aborde de una vez el control de venta de armas ni de que el ciudadano pueda hacerse una idea de cómo se degrada una mente débil o enferma en un tipo de vida tan asocial como el que llevan muchas personas en el campo americano. Hablar de manera frívola del desequilibrio mental puede aislar aún más a los enfermos, pero dar como buena la razón de que cualquier ser humano puede transformarse en monstruo es envolver el mal mental en una bruma de misterio aún más peligrosa.
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