The Demons of the Modern Rampage Killer
For the diseased mind that is saturated with such modern imagery, there is fascination aplenty with the drama of killing, but no commensurate lesson gleaned from its sheer horror—at least in human terms of the devastation that such carnage does to humans, both nearby and in the larger community. In the awful mind of the rampage killer, he always must be the center of attention in the manner of his homicidal fantasy counterpart, his victims of no more account than are those decapitated, dismembered, or shot apart by Freddy Krueger or Arnold Schwarzenegger. How odd that we rush to the emergency room for a cut finger in the kitchen—stitches, tetanus shot, pain killer, bandages, a doctor’s reassurance—only to matter-of-factly watch horrific wounds on television that night with no thought that a .38 slug to the shoulder entails something more than our split forefinger.
And there is a further wrinkle to these hyper-realistic cinematic rampages. The killer, be he an evil “Joker,” the horrific Alien, or a hit man in a mafia movie, has a certain edgy personality, even a sick sort of intriguing persona—at least in the sense that his evil is sometimes “cool” in a way that his plodding victims, who simply got in his way, are not. In the abstract, we sympathize with the good, who became his targets; but in the concrete, the film focuses more often on the killer’s emotions, his language, his swagger.
The Joker spits, he puns, he acts disengaged and “cool,” while his victims scream and panic; we want to know why he acts so, and are supposed to be fixated on his strange clothes, face, and patois, never on the series of Joe Blows that are incinerated by him. Is it any wonder we know all about the orange hair of the suspected killer, but very little about the hair colors of any of the poor victims?
Will this distortion of reality change? I doubt it, but I sense a great public hunger for the wounded victim, the near corpse, the dying to suddenly rise up and announce “I am a human being and I count,” as he either dies with a second of nobility or ends the rampage killer. One of the attractions of the violent film Dirty Harry was the utter disdain Clint Eastwood held for the perverted killer (“he likes it”), as he sought to remind society that in comparison with his victims, the killer’s feelings mattered little.
Yes, you say that the teary scene of the death of Boromir in Lord of the Rings or a Kirk Douglas burning on the departing Viking ship was hokey. But I prefer them to the new normal of cinematic death as irrelevant—an indifference that ripples through society at large.
I agree with your thoughtful article. You must have been pleasantly surprised by the caring and respectful coverage of the horror of the slaughter in that theater received from Michelle Malkin and others who spent the first 24 hours,tweeting about the victims and the beautiful young lives cut short.
“If the suspect is charged and found guilty, I have zero confidence that he will be hung.”
Too many hungry lawyers out there.
The quotation marks imply that Dr. Hanson is being quoted. He isn’t. He correctly used the word “hanged” rather than the incorrect “hung.”
There’s an old joke that ends this way: “You should be hung.” He calmly replies, “I am, that’s why she mows the lawn. . . and I cut her grass.”
I always preferred the example from Mel Brooks’ masterpiece Blazing Saddles:
Charlie: “They said you was hung!”
Bart: “And they was right!”
“It’s twu, it’s twu!”
- Lili von Schtup
Just to continue the meme.
…….was this guy alone or was he set up? Too easy to reject such a thought. That’s why people can get away with it. Nobody seeks to be called “crazy.”
This event is not Helter-Skelter: maybe more like Hocus-Pocus.
Who cares? Shoot him and the guy who opened the door for him. See how they like it.
Yeah right. “And the guy who opened the door for him.” If there _is_ such a person other than the shooter himself.
“Nobody seeks to be called ‘crazy’.”?
Dude, have you never even heard of “a crazy check”? Dude, you maybe need t’meet some folks who get that “crazy check”, . . . maybe hear ‘em brag about what they can “get away with” on account of that altered legal status.
I sometimes wonder whether the USA doesn’t need some kind of a nat’l cleaning in which a great lot of those “crazies” might be swept away—maybe some sort of a foreign invasion, say, . . .
Exactly!!
Also unfortunate – whenever a killer emerges such as this one, a large number try to explain ‘evil’. Evil can and need not to be explaines, nor do we need to hear what so-called ‘experts’ spew on coverage’to-coverage television screens day in and day out.
I do not care one wit about this guy; I do not care whether he had issues, problems etc.. Evil is evil!
Society as a whole is surprised by these actions; I am not because seeing the vile movies churned out by Hollywood, vile and nasty politics, the overwelming hate crimes committed by black mobs since obama’s election, although no coverage on television, or muslim honor killings or killings of infidels in america without any mention on television – what is so different than what this guy did?
Guns have nothing to do with that; so will this situation be treated as always by our current anti-second-amendment as “”"never let a crisis go to waste”"”?
If the current president and, his devious inner clan can concoct ‘fast and furious’ killing hundreds of innocent and, mostly nameless victims just to justify ‘under the radar gun guntrol’, what maeks them any better than the last ‘joker killer’??
Whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent can be debated (though it’s pretty clear to me that it does indeed deter.)
However: the perpetrator of this massacre has forfeited his right to continue living. This is a fact and simply cannot be disputed on any basis whatsoever.
Indeed. It’s a simple case of taking out the trash.
The purpose of Capital Punishment is neither to punish nor to deter.
It is simply to rid society of the offender and his genes forever.
Also and just as important: the purpose of Capital Punishment is to protect society from that creature. So that I can look my children in the face and assure them that “that bad man cannot harm anyone again, ever.”
I just don’t trust the parole boards of the future. I also don’t trust incarceration to be 100 percent. There are escapes.
A further note on parole boards. If anyone who is paroled is found to have committed a crime, the members of the parole board should be tried as accomplices.
What does Holmes have to lose? Jared Lee Loughner (who shot Gabby Giffords) has yet to go to trial, much less face punishment. Holmes is famous! And alive. And will be for many more years.
If this Holmes guy were tried this week and hanged* on Friday it may not be a deterrent to all, but will certainly give others pause. And erase him from the front pages.
What will a careful, monumentally expensive trial achieve? Determine if he did it?
Whatever happened to the concept of a “speedy” trial?
*why waste a bullet?
Will everyone be deterred? No. Will anyone be deterred. Obviously, quite a few. The people who did not bring their defensive weapons into the theatre were deterred by a sign, and I am deterred every day by the loss of reputation I might suffer from getting caught by carrying out the wrongful things that tempt me. But deterrence over time becomes habit, which, with no deterrence or punishment expected, becomes on the other side lack of deterrence. We do not today have the War of Every Tribe against Every Tribe which held sway for thousands of years on the Continent until about 1900 AD because of one thing only: deterrence. The deterrence was removed in the inner cities and in Northern Mexico, and what do we have? Hobbes’s or Darwin’s Natural War of All against All. Civilization is certainly a fragile thing.
As the Talmud warned so long ago,
“All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel
In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate”
The modern West has let itself be taken far afield with uncontrolled empathy to the point that people think feeling an empathetic hurt for the suffering that the evil well deserve as punishment is, itself, some sort of demonstration of their own evil. They don’t understand and refuse to understand that people who bring such punishments on themselves well deserve them.
This perversion of our society and our “moral” reasoning has gotten to the point that about the only people in our society who are assured of a painless and quick death when it comes (as random chance leaves many normal, decent people suffering terrible and painful ends) are those sitting on death row for having decided to force excruciatingly awful and painful deaths on innocents – as per that random chance – for which the perpetrators arrive on death row to be assured of not receiving the same, unlike the rest of the population. It is beyond demented. But we do this because many have let empathy run wild and take over their reasoning. I guess it’s fitting that we just installed a SCOTUS justice on the idea that empathy is a legitimate main criteria for a judge or judicial decision, in direct opposition to over three millenia of history of Western jurisprudence and the very foundation of our concept of a Rule of Law.
I contend that, even though the murders happened in a movie theater and the perp dressed up as a comic-opera villain, we can’t blame movies, TV, comic-book, or video game violence for any of this. It’s all about evil as a basic part of the human condition.
Does anybody seriously think that he wouldn’t have gone equally as berserk if the Batman movie had never existed? He would have used some other venue, dressed some other way, and perhaps used different weapons. The evil was in him, not in his environment.
True, we hear of mass violence more often because we have the Internet and 24×7 news reporting: “If it bleeds, it leads.” But that doesn’t mean that killing sprees happen any oftener per capita than they did in ages past – only that the perps are more likely to be publicized and captured. To be sure, when there are more people in the world, there will be a greater total number crimes – and the vast majority of those crimes will be perpetrated, not by individuals, but by governments.
Laws abolishing guns and mass media would not have saved the shooting victims any more than they would have saved Abel from Cain. Evil is part of the human condition and must be dealt with as such, without excuses.
Upgunning violence in film, TV and literature is in the name of a type of verisimilitude. For some reason the Lone Ranger shooting the gun out of the hand of the bad guy wasn’t enough. We needed something more real than real, to somehow suspend our disbelief to mask the fact we were seeing the same recycled storylines over and over again.
When Popeye Doyle called people racial slurs and raided a bar in “The French Connection,” a nation of film-goers said “Ah, now that’s more like it.” More like what? Well, more like reality, or at least what people who’d never been to New York thought of as reality.
Soon this was surpassed and we’ve come to a hyper-reality in film where violence is often a slow-motion ballet of a single sword cut taking out three men at once to a satisfying spray of blood and men dodging bullets also in slow motion.
We have become transfixed by violence, examining it in every detail like the hour long episode called “Controlled Experiment” of the old Outer Limits where Carol O’Conner and another man are Martians who repeatedly re-stage a shooting in slow-mo, forwards and backwards to study murder.
A movie like the old Hammer film “Hound of the Baskervilles” would be considered a snooze fest to today’s audiences. What we get in the new Sherlock Holmes 2.0 is kung-fu, steampunk, special effects, a roller coaster ride and the inevitable slow-mo depictions of violence. We suffer from ADD and all our action films reveal ourselves as Martians fascinated by an entertainment called “Controlled Experiment.”
Considering how docile some action films from only 15 years ago look, we can only shudder at what it will take to make today’s action films look docile 15 years from now.
Invited a friend over to the house, eventually got around to watching Bad Day at Blackrock, w Spencer Tracy. I’ve always thought it was an interesting psychological peek into what motivates men, and find it entertaining. My friend – bored after 15 minutes – no sex, no graphic violence or language, too much ‘ thinking’ involved….sigh
You may need to upgrade your friend list and get more friends who are thoughtful and reflective. People who have the instant gratification thing going on and can only enjoy violence and mindless plots probably don’t make the most compatible friends. Doesn’t sound like you have much in common. Back in the days BTV, before television, it was the same for those who went to the library and checked out books and liked to read newspapers, as opposed to those who were only into physical activity and mostly trivial pursuits.
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK has always been controversial, your friend might have been offended by the theme. Directed by the great John Sturges, although it sometimes feels like a precious Stanley Kramer movie. It pioneered the “racist white people with a secret” movies we’ve seen for the last fifty years.
Next time, try Sturges’ MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. It pioneered the “righteous white people defending the defenseless” movies we’ve seen for the last fifty years. It’s also a very contemporary allegory, the politics and the fighting are somewhat realistic and the sacrifices made by the Seven have meaning.
Regarding this blog post, any time Hanson wades into modern popular culture, we get some excellent material. His four paragraph discussion of how people “die” onscreen was especially interesting. We get realistic bullet impacts, but no emotional impact. Bodies are blown out of frame and out of consideration… I would like to see Hanson expand on this, if he ever intends to do an anthology of extended blog entries.
_The Magnificent Seven_ is a remake of Akiro Kurosawa’s _Seven Samruai_. It wasn’t “righteous white people defending the defenseless” in the original.
Anyone able without googling to name all seven actors who played the hired guns? One of the actors playing a hired gun is still living, aged 79. Actor playing the lead villain is now 96.
I’ll bite. Saw it in ’66 and once in the 70′s. Yul Brynner. James Coburn. Steve McQueen. Clint Walker. Charles Bronson. A young guy (played the guy who killed Gandhi in another movie?). Eli Wallach as the bad guy.
Oh well, 5/7 means I gotta see it again! :)
That would be four out of seven. Clint Walker wasn’t in it.
The “young guy” was the one with the “fast hands” who caught fish barehanded. If he could act his way out of a paper bag, I never saw it. Nonetheless, he never went long without being employed and continued to act regularly until shortly before his death in 2003 at age 69.
Another one had slicked-back hair and wore a vest. Smoked a small cigar, as I recall, and had a string tie of some sort. Until I checked today, I was thinking he had died recently. Glad to see I was wrong. He’ll soon be seen in the top-billed role in _The Magnificent Eleven_. I predict it will be a disaster, maybe getting a score in the 15 to 25 range at Rotten Tomatoes.
Almost no one remembers the actor who played the seventh gunfighter. _The Magnificent Seven_ was easily the film he was most famous for.
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Was _The Magnificent Seven_ a violent film? Lots and lots of bad guys were killed, as well as several of the good guys. I don’t recall any of the peasant children or women getting killed, but I’m almost certain some of the peasant men were.
Robert Vaughn was one. Died (in the movie) with his lips sliding along the wall, if memory serves me right.
Without Googling, Horst Bucholtz (spelling?) played the young guy who insinuated himself into the group, making it seven. He couldn’t act, at least then. He was also in a funny movie called “One two three” with James Cagney who played a aggressive executive for Coca Cola, charged with introducing the product to Berlin during the cold war. The title came from Cagney’s barking orders and ticking off the things he wanted done.
Bad Day at Black Rock is an excellent film. It’s a great morality tale with good guys and bad guys. Really don’t understand the racism charge, Komoko is incidental to the story line. We never see him or learn much of anything about him. It’s about life in a small minded town where people either won’t or are afraid to stand up to evil. That being said we would be far better off in this nation if our kids were viewing movies like that instead of the typical crap they watch now. I wouldn’t waste time on Magnificent Seven, an inane, cheesy movie. Yul Brenner would fit in better with the Brad Pitt and Ashton Kutcher crowd than he did with real men like Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ernst Borgnine and Lee Marvin.
Maybe you’d be well-advised to get some newer and classier friends — say, some who can understand snappy dialog, appreciate good acting, and follow complex or complicated plots. (Written much earlier but didn’t get posted until now.)
I can assure you that capital punishment is indeed a deterrent if carried out in quick order. How many of those convicted of the most gruesome murders are doing everything in their power to avoid a death sentence? See many of them volunteering to lay down voluntarily on a gurney?
There is only one verdict that needs to be determined about James Holmes as he is clearly guilty. Was he lucid enough to understand his actions? If so, he should immediately be euthanized – humane and quick to be civilized, and then his name should be expunged from the news.
Strange that the mafia understands something our enlightened society does not.
Deterrent is indeed strongly related to the time between the event and the punishment. If you poke a paperclip in a electrical outlet, how long before the pain comes? Of course, it comes immediately. How many kids will do that trick a second time? Nearly none.
I agree that “Batman’s inflated sense of justice, his inability to terminate evil” means Batman has condemned yet unknown numbers of victims to an often horrifying death. Batman portrays quiet well modern Western Cultures complete failure in dealing with Good and Evil. Western Culture has lost what the true meaning of Truth, Justice and Love is.
Enlightened? Yeah, right.
I was puzzled by the concern the police had that the evidence in Holmes’s apartment be preserved. Why should they need any evidence from his apartment in addition to evidence found at and near the murder scene? Unfortunately, but true, the word overkill came to mind.
They have to construct a complete picture of the criminal, his motives, and any possible accomplices who may have had a part leading up to his rampage. It’s painstaking and tedious work, but required before any prosecutor would be willing to go to trial on even the most obvious case.
My brain left the building before I did and I didn’t think about accomplices. Of course that has to be checked out. If no one else was involved in funding the purchase of Holmes’s ordnance, I’d be more than a bit surprised if anyone else is involved.
As for prosecuting him, he would definitely have been prosecuted if his booby traps had exploded — destroying a lot or maybe even most of what was in his apartment, from what I’ve heard about it.
Are you sure he didn’t have help? On the off chance he did, would the evidence in the apartment be useful in finding said person?
Witnesses said that someone opened the door for him, and left through the door after the perp entered.
That doesn’t mean that the ‘helper’ had forknowledge of what was intended, but makes them an accessory (before the fact) to murder.
what’s the difference if the question is the problem
As a Clint Eastwood fan, and particularly a fan of the morality of the Dirty Harry movies, I appreciated the reference to Harry’s simple but accurate assessment of the killer. “He likes it.”. Of course, Harry was the only one in a position of power who understood this and was willing to act, against orders, to do what needed to be done. And after killing the killer (no four year trial) Harry throws his police badge into the lake. In real life, Clint Eastwood endured at least a decade of mocking by the guardians of the culture in Hollywood, who hated the Dirty Harry movies precisely because they still maintained the old Hollywood view of Good versus Evil found in the old westerns. This morality had to be stamped out and replaced with moral indifference, where the bad is good and the good is bad. The killers in today’s movies need to be understood. And maybe even are heroes. Is it any wonder we end up with this. Even Clint resigned himself to dropping the simple truths and courage that made Dirty Harry great. Political correctness replaced Dirty Harry with the likes of his bosses, who always wanted to negotiate with evil. And here we are.
I’ll take one minor exception to your post, Kent. If you think Clint Eastwood has “resigned himself to dropping the simple truths and courage that made Dirty Harry great” just watch his masterpeice Gran Torino. It’s truly exceptional, and I’d say there’s no quarter given to political correctness, and no lack of simple truths and courage displayed in that film.
Gran Torino was indeed a fantastic movie!
Why do I keep thinking of Clockwork Orange?
@RationaldB8. – have to agree with your correction of me. Gran Torino might be my favorite Clint movie. Definitely up there with Dirty Harry. Walt Kowlski almost seems like a retired Harry. Correction accepted. Of course the “Academy” did not even give a single Oscar nomination to Gran Torino. A message to Clint.
You know, I have to agree – Walt could almost pass as a retired Dirty Harry, although I hadn’t pictured him that way…. for me, he was just as described, the ex military man who worked for years on the Ford assembly line. Just an upstanding if irascible man with a lot of integrity but who’s quite loveable to some. A protector, a level headed very reasonable sheepdog that brooks no abuse, just watching over the flock and keeping them from the wolves, even if he grumbles about it. Talks like he’s all mean and prejudiced, but when push comes to shove, there’s not a bit of it in him, not really – he treats people well when they treat others well themselves – and doesn’t have much use for those who don’t, either because they are mean, cruel, or just lack consideration and respect for others. He probably came up with the only possible way of getting those kids out of harms way too.
Yep, I loved that movie!
Another you might like that’s sort of analogous is Secondhand Lions. A touch corny here and there (pun intended), but guaranteed to make you laugh and has much in common with Gran Torino in terms of underlying values, morals, and message even tho the tone and pace is a bit different.
Meant to also say I totally agree about the awards – if Hollywood didn’t lean so far left, Gran Torino would have cleaned up. It’s a blasted shame that they are so biased.
The killer is a microcosm of our society. Video games today are the TV of the sixties. Volume sales and building on existing success. But is that what’s best for society? It’s easy to make tons of profit off bloody video games because industry and culture are promote it. It’s society that has to deal with the aftermath of a mis-used public medium.
What happened to TV is what needs to happen to the computer entertainment industry. You don’t have to eliminate the violence, just make parents aware, and give other options. When buyers vote for more intellectual computer games with their dollars, the blood bath on the computer screen will start to wane. Until then we will be raising our kids to subconsciously aspire to rampage killing just like their favourite video-game (& movie).
Video and movie making (and whatever is next) need closer monitoring and guidance from society.
I can hear, at this very moment, the gun fire and exclamation of the wounded, saying; “You got me!” Moaning and stomping around on a wooden stage for more dramatic effect, taking several seconds to fall to the ground with a resounding thud.
As kids, we imitated that action as we played cops and robbers or cowboys and indians.
Yea; Radio sure had a serious effect on us. It should have had a federal regulatory agency to assign ratings to these violent programs to warn our parents to keep us out of earshot of this graphic violence. As you can see; I still have those little voices in my head.
Gun Smoke was the worst. I think I have powder burns on my soul.
Now that’s funny!
“Who knows what evil lurks in thehearts of men? The Shadow knows!! Wawh-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!
Thank god children of past generations didn’t have any violent games that involved gun play. Why, imagine the bloodshed if they’d run around, pointing “toy” guns at one another and yelling “bang! you’re dead!”
Blaming video games is as stupid as blaming cheese.
Your inability to blame the killer for his heinous acts, but the standard litany of excuses (eg. society, culture, “profit” driven corporations) is revealing along with the standard demand for government controls.
According to modern enlightened doctrines, we are all to blame for what happened in that theater.
We refuse to ban guns, therefore anyone who uses one to kill does so with our approval. Or so the argument goes.
We do not properly care for the weakest among us. Therefore when one who is weak lashes out, he does so in response to our uncaring attitude. Or at least that is what we are told.
We utterly fail to properly appreciate those who are “different”, no matter whether such difference is in the color of their skin or the content of their character, as Dr. King once observed. As such, when they lash out in a frenzy of violence in protest of our indifference, it is we who are at fault. Or at least that is the position of our Best and Brightest.
What is missing in all this is that the only person who is never held responsible for an act of violence is the perpetrator thereof. They are not held to be at fault, and in fact are considered blameless by those who decide what is good or bad in our culture. The most common reason being “he just couldn’t help it”.
Why not?
Why couldn’t a Unabomber, a McVeigh, a Zodiac, or a George Metesky “help himself”? Never mind what “drove” them, what about them prevented them from applying the brakes?
And why are so many of our ruling class so ready to use such atrocities to justify oppressing the rest of us, who did not commit the crimes?
I believe it comes down to the “countercultural” nature of our modern elites. They grew up imagining themselves as “rebels” against an immoral, corrupt, unjust world- the one we live in. And believing that they had been chosen by whatever they believed in (a god, a movement, or the “irresistible forces of history”) to remake the world into what they wanted it to be.
But to do this, what existed had to be destroyed. Evolution has never been good enough for them. And even revolution barely sates their lust for “change”.
As a result, when something like this happens, when some evil b*****d decides to kill, they publicly decry it, but secretly cheer. Because it gives them a club to beat the rest of us with, and also because the monster is striking out against society in a way they thrill to. It never sates their lust for destruction or their lust for power, but it makes them happy in a way that peace simply can never do.
Which probably explains why these same “leaders” will fight any attempt to execute this creep. Because he did what they secretly dream of doing. (” You refuse to become enlightened, like me? Take that, you f***ing peons’!”
The reality gets lost in such a mindset, that prefers its fantasies. The reality is that some people are both sick, and evil. (Yes, I used the “E” word. Sue me.)
Their preferred solution is that “Society must be protected against… the members of society”. And nobody recognizes a circular argument. Or if they do, they pretend it is something else.
I think it more likely that they, who regard themselves as the chosen leaders, want to ensure that we are defenseless against them, so that we cannot stop them from remaking the world as they please. And if we get hurt as a result, well, “sacrifices must be made in the name of the cause”. (As long as the “enlightened ones” aren’t the ones getting sacrificed, that is.)
You can look at “gun control”, the “environment”, or any issue that exercises our self-anointed thought leaders, and the pattern is always the same. As Wesley Mouch said in Atlas Shrugged, they are after power and they mean to get it. And use it, as often and as strongly as they can, to beat the rest of us into submission. To them.
And many of them have reasons just as crazy as this perp. Born of the philosophies they grew up with.
A world they design will be an even bigger nightmare than what happened in that theater. Because there will be no “Exit” sign.
Think carefully about that the next time one of our “Best and Brightest” demands that you take responsibility, in the name of “society”, for the actions of a lunatic.
As for the lunatic, lock him up. Forever. Since we probably won’t be permitted to end his existence, we must at least study him to determine if there is any way someone this sick can be rendered less dangerous. (Having studied Applied and Abnormal Psychology, I have no confidence in the chances of a “cure”.)
That’s all.
clear ether
eon
What we have in this mass murder is an individual who saw himself as a victim, much like those in the counter culture in the ’60s, thus able to justify his actions due to being a victim. James Holmes has been a memeber of Occupy Black Bloc which a very militant wing of the Occupy Wall St movement.
One other thing is that he sees himself as smarter than the rest of us. Much like those in the anarchist hacker group Anonymous who attack those who put them down. They have to prove that they are smarter. And the attack on the Batman movie was due to the movie protraying OWS as unfavorable (OWS in the movie kidnapped some of the 1%).
Because there are those who see themselves as smarter, there is no way that progressives (counter culture/feminists) can regulate everything (police state). These kids will find a way around anything that the progressives can do. Most of these kids are grad students and tend to be libertarian-socialists (anarchists, students of Norm Chomsky). The libertarian-socialists are at war with the Progressives (often their mothers who are feminists and controlling/over protective) as much as they are at war with big corporations.
In fact progressives have not had a good record of success in trying to regulate Americans. Prohibition did not go well. Neither did the 55 mph speed limit or the Assault Weapons Ban. Americans tend to be very libertarian (individualism vs. collectivism) in many forms (libertarians, Classic Liberals, civil libertarians, Jeffersonian-Democrats) that is in all political parties. Thus collectivism can not overcome American libertarianism and individualism. Even if every kid is successfully brainwashed in grade school. Too many kids rebel.
We are seeing the end of progressivism. Look for the libertarians to make gains.
Yeah, that Norm Chomsky’s a real pill isn’t he? His rat pack followers, too, from what I’ve heard. Once his stint on _Cheers_ was over, he really went to the dogs.
Speculate much?
In keeping with the Obama Doctrine;
He couldn’t have committed this crime without our help.
Well-written explanation. So the reason Brady Campaign always dances in the blood and blames law-abiding gun owners is not because they’re anti-gun, but because they are so ashamed of their own existence that they can’t possibly acknowledge such shame. To do so would kill them. Instead, they transfer and project, believing if they can beat us down they will somehow magically end up feeling good about themselves.
Usually I find myself in awe of Dr. Hansen’s writing. Not this time. This piece was conflicted, convoluted, confused to the point of incoherence. What was the point? Ia there a point?
After three pages the reader learns that Dr. Hansen wants this guy hung, quickly, but only after he is found guilty of his crime. Wait, is there some doubt about guilt?
I posit that in fact civilization itself is no more than a layer of tinsel upon the animal that portends to be “sapiens”, and that tinsel was removed for all to see. Two reactions followed:
1. hang ‘em
2. that almost never happens here
Maybe if we looked at if from an upside down point of view – why doesn’t it happen more often, and what stops it? If all that made us humane was empathy for the other, how come it can be suspended so easily. That this killer was a PhD student should allow us to at least ask this abject failure of a homo sapiens to explain why he did it, and then we’d better listen to the answers.
shocked.
“I am a human being and I count” – The good doctor zeroed in on (at the risk of politicizing the discussion), a deliberate trend in leftist Hollywood over the last three decades: To minimize the value of human life, to reduce the importance of the individual and to undercut higher ethical concepts. It’s all part of the cultural marxism that has made it’s way into every aspect of American culture in order to prepare us for eventual collectivization. Opposing that is the generational challenge that faces us, and we ramp up our efforts after defeating their puppet in November.
It isn’t simply our current ideology of ‘Blame Society’ for the actions of any individual that bothers me. Oh, and note, how Obama shares this view, with his ‘Praise Society’ for any enterprising action taken by an individual.
It’s also the, may I say it, maudlin elevation of the victims to someone close to us, to ‘family’, which somehow not merely defines but even justifies their being a victim. Aren’t they a victim simply by being harmed, with no involvement of their own, by someone else? Do we also have to know their emotions, their lost goals, their past values for them to be understood and accepted by us as such a victim?
I think the basic morality of not harming another person is all we need to know and act on – and such a basic principle defines ourselves as well. We don’t need to psychologically analyze the agent or the victim.
I agree with most of VDH’s points here, even noting the obligatory dig at Obama and his drones. I had thought he might make it through one whole column with out an Obama dig, but he couldn’t quite do it.
One can make the case that we have too much empathy AND too much of a taste for action-violence. Supposedly feminized young males love violent video games. There appear to be more things in the new heaven and the new earth, than are dreamt of in our two philosophies. If these contraries did not exist, then we would jump en masse to one side or the other in our current cultural debates. But because neither side has a philosophy adequate to the task of completely explaining what is going on, although we we may find ourselves choosing one side or the other, if we have more than half a brain, we know that they/we don’t have it quite right.
As to VDH’s point about how we minimize the importance of the dead, showing the coffins of our dead coming back from Iraq was considered to be unpatriotic by one side, and certainly any negative emotions generated WERE going to be ridden hard by the anti-war folks. We struggle to distinguish between our “noble dead” our “victim dead” and our “justly dead (droned or executed).”
Each week, our newspapers (cumulatively) have stories of hundreds of people whose lives have been snuffed out in car accidents; sudden, stark, and it seems to be getting worse. Frankly, I am a lot more concerned with crazed drivers, than crazed gunmen.
You may have problems telling the justly from the unjustly dead, most people don’t.
Well, take a drone hitting a house in Pakistan; it takes out 2 bad guys, kills the rest of their families, and a few other folks who happened to be there. A drunken and passed-out soldier drowns in a ditch outside his/her base. A guy drives 95 mph on a 30mph road, hits a tree and dies, as well as his three passengers. Apparently for you, there are NO gray areas. Some people’s beleeefs do not permit gray areas. So it goes.
You’re right. Almost all death occurs in the gray area. That’s why we go to so much trouble to make every death “meaningful.” We have trouble declaring a full stop and admitting that it didn’t mean squat.
We had bad thunderstorms here in DC a couple of weeks ago. Several people died while sitting in their cars when large trees fell on them. They all got nice eulogies. But as far as when and how they died? WTF? No meaning. Or maybe the true meaning of the expression “random killing.”
I’m not sure who “has it coming.” People who hang out with wanted terrorists – they probably do, if only for Darwinian reasons. Does the mass murderer in question have it coming? Definitely – but he won’t get it.
“Hell, kid. We all have it coming.” – Clint Eastwoood line in The Unforgiven.
Some of us more than others.
Shooting women and children is beyond the Pale. Upon conviction, we should go all medieval on his ass.
“…But because neither side has a philosophy adequate to the task of completely explaining what is going on, although we we may find ourselves choosing one side or the other, if we have more than half a brain, we know that they/we don’t have it quite right…”
Yes, the moral universe is full of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox. As VDH has put in many times before, often your choice is between bad or worse. Our humanity weighs heavily.
But there is no ambiguity here. Whatever the ultimate source of his madness, he is not fit to live among humans and has forfeited his right to survive at our expense. A speedy trial and a painless death is all he deserves. As I Christian I believe that all human life is intrinsically precious, and that forgiveness is best way to respond to transgression. But there are limits. If I’m wrong about that then I guess I’ll have some explaining to do in the next life. But I’m not too worried about it.
Some lefties (like yourself) stand astride the fence of moral relativity constantly shouting “there is no absolute truth…” thereby implying that taking any kind of moral stance is pointless, and even hypocritical. I believe you are wrong about that. Our imperfect moral codes are what make civilized life possible. As mature humans, we know they do not account for everything. And in those instances we believe that the balanced judgement of the citizenry will be able to at least tease bad from worse. What is the alternative? Your constant equivocation ultimately reveals your bias. You prefer chaos over order which is why many of us here have you pegged as a lefty Dwight.
A mature human chooses to embrace a code of values knowing that it is not complete… In so doing he (consciously or unconsciously) acknowledges that logic and pure reason are fallible in a universe that is both infinite, and infinitely mysterious. Many of us nevertheless discern purpose in existence (the fact that organized systems do occur is suggestive, is it not?) That is why we prefer civilization to chaos and the kind of dehumanizing brutality that leftists embrace. It is also why we have no problem seeing “the Joker” for what he is: A manifestation of pure evil. If sometimes innocents die because we must destroy a building to take out a mortal enemy bent on killing our women and children, it is tragic but morally justifiable. But randomly murdering children to fulfill your own twisted fantasies, or resolve your own social dysfunction is not.
I have no problem with executing the guy. The ambiguous situations are those I list, and their ambiguity is not reduced, as far as I can see, by your response. As a matter of fact, I wish that there had been several concealed carry folks in the audience. This is one time, when they could hardly have made matters worse, except possibly for themselves, if their firing focused the shooter’s attention on them and they were not able to take him out.
But bottom line: you are responding to an argument I am not making; it just happens to sound too relative to you. Apparently, you are implying that I should pick ONE of the imperfect systems, most likely yours, rather than trying to mix and match morality and decisions from the two camps. I happen to agree with a fair number of conservative positions, but there is also a lot of cultural baggage that comes with many righties that I don’t buy. For example, I don’t believe that the desire to help people from lefties is ALWAYS about increasing their power. That is a convenient meme that permits righties to dismiss lefty compassion. Many lefties goes nuts at the mere idea of firearms, and I certainly can’t buy that, but I don’t worship my guns or gun rights either.
Only two philosophies to choose from? Only two “imperfect systems” from which to pick? Emperor Joseph II, ” . . . too many notes.” Me, “Too many philosophies.”
“The ambiguous situations are those I list, and their ambiguity is not reduced, as far as I can see, by your response.”
I’m not trying to reduce the ambiguity Dwight, it is beyond my power to do so. I’m just appreciating it.
“I don’t believe that the desire to help people from lefties is ALWAYS about increasing their power.”
I agree. Sadly, for the most part these well-meaning emotional thinkers have allowed themselves to be transformed into useful idiots by the corrupt, power hungry statists, neo-Communists, global imperialists, entrenched bureaucrats and other assorted ideologues who have taken over the Democrat party and the U.N.
“Apparently, you are implying that I should pick ONE of the imperfect systems, most likely yours…”
Put it this way Dwight, if picking “my” imperfect system makes it more likely that you will vote The One out of office come November, then the answer is “hell yes!” You seem like an bright guy, therefore I reckon there is about a 10% chance you could be persuaded that in a world of grey zones, it is the pro-Constitutional, free market side that is most comfortable in a world of constant flux and ambiguity. Why? Because our ideology is founded on faith in the individual to respond to an unpredictable universe in a creative and constructive way. The left on the other hand has no such faith. They seek to stop history by mandating permanent controls on everything we do, and pulling the strings from on high. This is an anti-human perspective, and it is why it always winds up in poverty, misery and mass murder. And it is the left who takes the absurdely black and white stances, like claiming conservatives want dirty water and air, and to repress women and blacks etc. Honestly Dwight, I know you know this is true. That is why I believe there is hope for you. : )
You know, you could get to the other side (consevative) if you’d just let go of the collectivist skirt you cling to. Who makes places like malls, theaters, schools, etc. “gun free zones”? Leftists do. Who takes wealth from producers(at the point of a gun) and forks it over to many who could earn it themselves but choose not to? Leftists do. When such philanthropy goes wild, you get the Great Leap Forward. Obama is embarking on his Great Swagger Forward and in America, that will be quite a trick.
Diane Feinstein is a senator because she is from California, not because she has a brain. The same goes for Chuck Schumer from New York. They would ban guns in a heartbeat, and sugar, and sodas, and salt, and…… In real America, idiots like these would never grace the halls of this nation’s capitol. But they get voted in every time, by Lefties. Being senator means power and a guy/gal could get rich with that kind of influence. And drunk, apparently. “Ted, slow down, there’s a bridge ahead!”
You don’t have a right to own a gun, you have a right to Life. But a gun is pretty good insurance that this ‘right’ will be respected. You don’t have a right to be an artist, a carpenter, or a farmer. But you have the Liberty to do any of these things (until a bureaucrat* tries to shut you down). And, you certainly don’t have a right to be happy, only the right to pursue it. Should someone stand in your way it will most likely be a Leftist. Remember, you didn’t build it. Team America did.
*bureaucrat= team player
“I have no problem with executing the guy”
Why bother? Why let him off so easy? Cheaper to let him live out his natural life in a Gulag than it would be to pay the lawyers. Forced labor, Hard tack and water, an empty cell with one of your Gideon Bibles. Let him spend the next few decades thinking about what he has done. Most of these mass murderer’s kill themselves, he didn’t do us this favor.
This will likely become another “shovel ready” career project for legions of lawyers as in the Ft. Hood rampage. Money must be extracted, media must be expolited and politics advanced ie. denigration of the 2nd amend. and gun owners in general. Wasn’t it a democrat who said “never let a crisis go to waste” ? Diane Feinstein is wasting no time.
Splendid, Dr. Hanson.
But,
Whatever the insanity to be deemed “responsible” for this demonic behavior, it cannot distract from the horrific deed intended and committed by this perverted intellectual.
Even persons with mental disabilities will know and understand, that his execution is justified with little remorse.
“If the suspect is charged and found guilty, I have zero confidence that he will be hanged.”
Definitely. He will claim to hear “voices” and he will say that he was beaten as a child or that he felt “alienated” from the rest of the world. The defense will show him as being insane and the jury will probably agree. He will be stuck in some mental institution where, after ten years or so, he will make a “remarkable” recovery and will no longer be seen as a threat to anyone so long as he stays on his medication. He will be given weekend passes (like John Hinkley, Ronald Reagan’s attempted assasin) and he will be a role model for all people suffering from mental illness. In short, he will be “cured” and sent to a minimum security prison or maybe even released.
The whole thing makes me ill. The man should be hanged publicly and on the courthouse steps. His body should be left on the gallows as a warning to any other sick mind out there that this is what happens to people who try something crazy like this. Insanity should no longer be a defense. If you really are that insane, then society is better off without you being here. And any person who thinks that a killer like this can be “cured” is also insane.
We should not seek vengeance. But we do need to make examples of these killers to the rest of society, especially to people who are contemplating killing during the course of a robbery or a drive-by or gangland shooting. Teach them that this will be their end, a quick and in some cases a painful death that will end their miserable existance on this planet. That would send a message most criminals will understand. And to those who don’t, they need to be put down like the rabid dogs they are. There should be no shame in protecting society from people like this. So long as we keep making excuses for criminals like this, more innocent people will die.
The purpose of execution is to rid the world of the malefactor and his genes, not to deter, nor to punish.
Using the “deterrence” argument leaves you wide open to the Liberal cant that it isn’t a deterrence. They always win it since the folks in charge of the statistics and their interpretation are Liberals.
Anyway, the execution doesn’t take place until a new generation has grown up and has no memory of the events.
The question is not “how many murders were not deterred by capital punishment” but rather “how many murders were deterred.” People that commit murder are, by definition, those that were not deterrable by existing laws and threats of punishment. Even the Romans, with crucifixion and other drastic punishments still had crime and murder.
“If the suspect is charged and found guilty, I have zero confidence that he will be hanged.”
I hope He gets trialed as a sane person, how many times have i been pulled over for speeding and my “busting for the toilet” or “my wife is having a baby” never deterred the officer from handing me my fine for committing an offense.- the fact is He killed 12 people and injured 55ish people, whether he is sane or metal shouldn’t play a part in Him getting a suitable punishment.
Instead of publicly hanging the SOB on the court house steps, how about putting him in prison just long enough to ensure that he has been cleaned up and cleaned out as much as possible and then harvesting his carcass for as many transplant parts as possible? That way he’ll never harm anyone ever again, the public won’t have the expense of housing, clothing and feeding him for the next fifty or sixty years and his death will save the lives of a number of other normnal people who are reduced to waiting for some other normal person to die accidentally.
VDH writes, “but if he is found guilty, I would prefer the gallows and quickly so, ….”
That is what happened in the case of Timothy McVeigh. In fact, it happened so swiftly that it left one to wonder why it was so in his particular case but almost never in others. Hopefully, the swiftness of the process was for positive reasons.
Another thought. The root cause for heinous crimes as well as lives simply wasted lies in the fact that for far too many there is no foundational morality wired into their consciousness that says “ultimately I am accountable for my actions to a higher authority”. Fortunately, many of us question our actions against such a moral recognition or there would be even more murders, lying politicians, potheads, phony “disability” recipients, and others leading wasted lives. The solution to much of our current societal breakdown is to make such a moral recognition the common denominator of our existence. What if the popular media and our educational system were to take up the challenge to pound home that message? Oh, I suppose that would be “controversial”.
McVeigh attacked Leviathan, and not without cause. He was an enemy of the state. The last word on him was spoken on the evening news the day he was executed, “I don’t guess we’ll ever know why he did it.”.
“and not without cause.”
Please expand on that. Are you suggesting “justifiable”? Hopefully not. I abhor the Leviathan myself but I haven’t blown up any buildings occupied by innocents lately.
McVeigh’s cause?
Um. Leviathan “has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”? No that’s not it.
The DOJ was upholding and defending the 1st and 2nd Amendments, and the principles set forth in the Constitution at Waco and Ruby Ridge? No, that can’t be it.
I stand corrected. We will never know why McVeigh blew up that building.
What we do know is that McVeigh will never blow up another building. Is capital punishment a deterrent? Try truth as a filter.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence to *wink* defend McVeigh?
McVeigh parked a truckload of explosives under a daycare center and ran like a little b*tch. And when he was pulled over and given the chance to fight just one of those “swarms of Officers,” he folded like a little b*tch. Then he sat in prison and watched TV until he was euthanized, like the little b*tch he always was.
Go back to Atlantis, Patrick. I don’t think this blog is for you.
McVeigh murdered 168 people April 19, 1995; he was found guilty June 2, 1997; he was executed June 11, 2001. If he hadn’t decided to drop his remaining appeals, he could well have lived longer.
Six years is swift? Only in relative terms and in modern times. Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak died on March 6, 1933. Assassin Giuseppe Zangara was executed March 20, 1933.
I too, have zero confidence the ‘Joker’ will be hanged or electrocuted or even scourged, all that he deserves. He may get the lame punishment of lethal injection, but that would happen after the lawyers and judges have milked the appeals for all the money they can get, and provided that some deranged judge or judges don’t decide that the death penalty is cruel and inhumane.
“I wish to know nothing about him other than the information necessary to try, convict, and punish him—and any data that might provide some sort of deterrence in preventing another such rampage.
In local news, a cop killer (not “alleged” — he has confessed as much) has fired his attorneys for trying to play the “abused as a child” card on his behalf. Perhaps even this killer has a twinge more of moral culpability than his lawyers.
Swift and sure justice would be a desirable thing, but results in too few billable hours, so don’t hold your breath, Dr. Hanson.
I do believe, however, that you give too little weight to the radical change we made in the the treatment of the violently mentally ill in the 1960′s. Forced institutionalization is practically impossible today until a violent schizophrenic, for one example, has already killed or hurt another human being. IMHO our current attitude is false compassion at its very worst.
The concept of “liberty” is a tough one, eh?
Liberty does not require the tolerance of those who would kill or enslave you or others; quite the opposite, in fact.
I didn’t say that it did, but I will say that dissidents in repressive societies were sometimes institutionalized in mental hospitals. If you think there is a clear bright line between odd behavior and that requiring institutionalization, please elucidate. Can you look at 100 folks who are displaying suspicious and/or odd behavior and tell who should be institutionalized so they will not murder 30 people? The problem is that you have so many false positives, that if you institutionalized all of them, you would have doubled or tripled our “prison” population.
Dwight, prior to about 1965 in the US we did have institutions for the violently insane. They were designed to protect not only society, but the patients themselves. Was the practice sometimes misused? Yep. Do cars get misused, or guns? Yep. Doesn’t mean they should be totally banned. A pendulum swings in both directions, and can swing too far in either direction.
In fact with the advent of drugs (some of them nothing short of miraculous) to control many mental illnesses we would need far fewer such facilities than were needed back then. The problem comes with those who refuse treatment, or refuse to take their medication. I simply believe people who have been diagnosed as violently mentally ill by more than one MEDICAL psychiatrist, should be restrained BEFORE they run amok. Close family members often see these things coming, but the prevalent attitude denies them the opportunity to take any action until it is too late.
Is there a clear line? No. Before deinstitutionalization, courts used a preponderance of evidence as the standard in civil commitment proceedings. I am sure (because it is human nature to abuse power) that there were people improperly committed. But while writing My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill, I could not find any clear-cut examples of such improper commitments. Even the ACLU’s representative at Congressional hearings on the subject in 1963 admitted that she had no examples of such improper commitments.
Will there be people inappropriately hospitalized if we go back? Almost certainly there will be a few. But the alternative is the current system, where mentally ill people die of exposure in huge numbers, starve themselves to death while family and police look on helplessly, commit murder and other violent crimes, and occasionally, if especially clever or brutal, become a major news story like this.
Utopia is not an option.
The concept that some don’t deserve liberty must be even more difficult, right Dwightie?
The only thing tough about the concept of liberty is when it has to interact with the real world.
…
On this thread… like we do not have those institutions and support systems today?
What are homeless shelters but the alternative for what the State will not do and the conventional private hospitals cannot do?
What are State hospitals and mental health services such as they still exist?
What are the prisons? Excluding the gang members and other organized criminals vesting in their profession; the prisons are the alternative we have chosen to State hospitals for those whose behavior is too far.
All communities have to deal with difficult people and violent people. Had we taken the old system and kept working on it; we probably would still have problems just as we do with the schools. The old system worked better, seemingly, because limited resources limited the effort to those who most needed incarceration.
We should beef up the State systems we have to handle the difficult and hard cases. But we should also lower the barriers to set up cheaper, private, lower cost services for the non-violent kooks.
New study out this weekend: per capita mental hospital beds nationally are at the same level as 1850. Hence the full homeless shelters, and typically 15% of the prison population are mentally ill, and usually why they are there: they committed a very serious crime, because we did not successfully hospitalize them before they got around to some crime so horrifying that no judge and jury was prepared to be sympathetic.
Above all, the slaughter is an indictment of moral relativism. The details remain unknown, but absent a terminal brain tumor it is very likely that Holmes’ rampage, both causes and consequences, is tied to the evil folly of ‘correct’ cultural values. Beneath all the waffle about gun control (again!), no society that tolerates an indifferent shrug to mass murder can survive, nor does it deserve to.
If past is prologue — it usually is — we’ll all be expected to shuffle away after the candles and hymns are done. Moral preening by Very Good People On Our Behalf (see Oprah weep for our sins!) is the phoniest form of expiation. The final insult, very soon now, is be lectured on our own shortcomings and reminded how we’re all to blame, especially white men. We can rely on Obama to deliver there, with Romney dimpling prettily behind a wet hankie.
Who are we to judge? Well, if you need help there…
Had enough yet?
Schizophrenia is by far the more likely explanation. Hallucinations lead to delusions, and horrifying crimes that result make perfect sense in the world the schizophrenic inhabits.
The broader implications of what the good doctor writes is the “devaluation” of human life (and living) in terms of the readily observed common reactions to depictions of the destruction of life. That same reaction is observed in the “non-valuation” of the perceptions of “mass killers.”
A million deaths is still “a statistic.”
In a protest society, divided deeply and led by a Protest Culture Warrior, the rampage killer is the crescendo to the symphony of hate.
Is Bill Ayers really any different in substance or is he merely different in form? Nail bombs at Ft. Dix…are they less “planned”, less mortally aimed, less morally depraved?
“Guilty as hell, free as a bird”…would the protest culture smile broadly if the Aurora massacre was instead aimed at the “1 percent” and had been equally effective?
Would there be a different reaction if the New Black Panthers went on a rampage and killed “cracker babies”?
Would a brick to 75 Reginald Denny’s heads be somehow more “understandable”?
Rampage violence as a “flash mob” is modern blowing off steam, but a suburban rampage is evidence of depravity in our society?
It appears to me that this particular incident was a sick soul, with one yellow wire touching one green wire in his dysfunctional brain. Someone above said that he was a part of some fringe sect of the fringe Protest Culture, OWS.
OWS was filled with rape, mayhem, derangement. And our Protest Culture kings made them heroes.
Violence on the fringe is now a part and parcel of being led by Protest Culture warriors who are not accountable for the deep divisions they are intentionally building into our society.
We are at war on the fringes….because we are at war at our core.
“We are at war on the fringes….because we are at war at our core.”
So correct. Just where Alinsky wanted us and much to the delight of the Obama administration. The plan after re-election. Pour more gasoline on it.
WHO, or rather, WHAT, was that guy? The “alleged” killer?
A high tech Narcissus.
“See me, ma!”, his actions scream. By the way, his mother and father must be crushed. How would you like it if your precious child grew up to be a mass murderer of innocents?
“What kind of parents were they?” “Where did THEY go wrong, in his upbringing?”
Those of my age, 70, might remember The Lamplighters, who sang comedic tunes. The one that comes to mind includes this—
“That killin’ a man is real immature.
It is just an attention-getting device.”
Here’s the whole song—
“Gunslinger, gunslinger, where did you go wrong?
When you were a child, did the Cheyenne and Sioux
Refuse to play nicely with you?
Did you always feel you didn’t belong?
Gunslinger.
Gunslinger, gunslinger, why do you act so strange?
When you were a child were you forced to compete
With siblings you never could beat
Did you come from a broken home on the range?
Gunslinger.
Gunslinger, gunslinger, please take my advice.
You know in your mind that you’re plumb insecure,
That killin’ a man is real immature.
It is just an attention-getting device.
Gunslinger.
You’ve killed one hundred and thirty men, my darling.
And now you want to settle down.
But other gunslingers are a-gunnin’ for you,
And a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Gunslinger.
Don’t wear your guns to town tonight, gunslinger.
Last night you cried out “Mother dear!”
You’ve got a recurrent dream in your craw
And that dream of your maw will inhibit your draw.
Gunslinger.
There you lie dead in the dust, gunslinger
And now your myth begins.
Out in the west, the folks all believe
You faced and killed the toughest hombres of your day
But time has exposed your feet of clay.
Current researchers have clearly shown
That 93.6% of the gunmen you killed were simply accident-prone.”
Oops. It’s the Limeliters, not the Lamplighters.
RE: Instapundit’s pull quote
but…but…but…sotto voce as an after thought .
Of course. .
The first time it happens it’s just random chance, the second time is merely coincidental, the third time a reasonable person might begin to suspect a pattern. The three thousand four hundred and twelfth time a car bomb explodes in the middle east (or a crazed loner shoots up a crowd of innocent people) a reasonable person might want to search for commonality. Is it religion, philosophy, political belief, or a brain parasite contracted from cleaning the cat litter box?
So I want to know everything there is that’s possible to know about this guy, and his friends (he doesn’t have any), his parents, does he have a cat? HHmmm could be a book deal there…perhaps a government grant.
So once we know everything that’s possible to know about this guy, then we can talk about prevention. Personally I believe that anyone who has a cat should be rounded up and sent to re-education camp. (Heavy…heavy sarcasm…because it is entirely possible that once all the expert elite have analyzed all of the available data they will still draw the wrong conclusion)
um. you can change the law to death penalty. we’ve got one in Texas. It gets used on a right regular basis. Or Arkansas. It gets used in Arkansas. Maybe Oklahoma, too.
Most states had death penalties until this century.
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Eph 6:11-13
Well said, Dr. Hansen. I’m not quite sure of the relevance, but this song’s been in my head since I read this piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygZYecME0g&feature=related
As in a previous comment, I have to take exception to the assertion that modern screen violence is realistic. It’s not. More often than not, death in the movies is carefully orchestrated, choreographed, amplified, and highly stylized, even when the director is trying to “make it look real.”
Movies like “300″ are terrible examples of realistic violence. They turn battle into a bloated, sado-masochist’s slow-motion ballet of death that bears no resemblance to anything any actual soldier, ancient or modern, ever experienced. Any movie that slows things down, letting you see and hear every strike of a fist or smack of a bullet through flesh, is guilty of stylizing violence. Any movie that freeze-frames people in interesting poses as they leap at the enemy or fire their machine guns (or both at the same time), is guilty of stylizing violence.
We, the audience are supposed to detach ourselves from the reality of bullets and death and, like Beavis and Butthead, declare the violence “cool.” Unfortunately, for a few of us, it goes beyond cool and becomes an unhealthy obsession.
True. For realistic violence, go see “Act of Valor.” Note especially the last scene.
That’s part of it, but it doesn’t explain why We Were Soldiers Once… And Young is a better and more disturbing film than Blackhawk Down. The violence in both is realistic and most would say both were classy productions.
You can’t easily isolate the violence from moral issues. Comic-strip Batman movies are different and anyone who struggles with reality vs. ‘it’s just a movie’ has problems that needn’t delay us long. As for Holmes, if he’s fit to plead, kill him quick.
I disagree with the esteemed VDH a bit on one point. It seems to me that the media has made a good effort this time to describe and honor the victims. It’s also good to hear about so many heroic actions that occured during the rampage. Even among the cruelest circumstances, there are people capable of rising about themselves to do amazing acts of heroism. Maybe the lesson should be that there were dozens of acts of selflessness and courage among the one act of unspeakable horror.
It’s good to hear the wise man make the point that this horror isn’t unique to modern society. What is certainly true is that violence is much less now than it was during any period of the past. The difference, as VDH says, is that modern communications makes it possible to know all of the lurid details almost in real-time, no matter where the atrocity occurs. This isn’t even a situation where the media deserves to be criticized, since the public demands it. You can argue that the publicity encourages other maniacs, but it’s an irrelevant argument, since there is no chance that the publicity will ever abate.
The alternative to knowing little or nothing about the shooter, is to know those things that trivialize him.
How many others would attempt to duplicate this man’s actions if they knew in advance (with certainty), that every publication in the world would immediately portray him as a fool, a bumbler, a pervert, a failure or a sick individual.
Mocking this man’s failures in life would not look attractive to the next potential shooter. The demand for endless stories that normally feed only the violence market would be replaced by endless stories that humiliate the witless bumbler.
Mainstream media has multiple ways of making outstanding individuals look like stupid screwups (remember Dan Quail?). It should be child’s play to make this jerk look like an overripe zit to any copy cat.
The idea that this atrocity may be the result of demon possession may not be PC or acceptable to the modern world view. However, it seems to fit and explain what little we know. The strange voice message he left to the owner of a shooting range would support that. I do not believe that being ignorant of the details of this tragedy has any great benefit.
I agree, although my definition of “demon” is probably not the same as yours.
I have to disagree with Mr. Hanson on his use of Batman and Alien. The whole point of Batman is that he is a vigilante but his goal is the restoration of law in lawless Gotham. His goal is to apprehend the Joker not kill him if possible. That is why the underworld gravitated to the Joker. He had no rules. Of course that is the challenge of law. To have strenght based on right and not fear.
As for Alien. It is meant to show what happens when people are the prey animal and not the predator. The whole purpose of the violent realistic kill is to show that the Alien was simply looking for a food source and was not a political or moral opponent. The implied dehumanization is not supposed to be what the audience feels but what it should fear. Alien is about what happens when life gets reduced to simple survival. We are clearly supposed to identify with Ripley and not the Alien.
I agree with you in principle about Batman. If the comics and the movies made one mistake, it was in creating a villain, the Joker, who is infinitely more interesting, charismatic, and…let’s face it…FUN than the hero. Who has no conscience? Who gets to do whatever he wants? Who has more than a bit of style? Who (in one manifestation, at least) has a hot girlfriend? Who gets all the best lines? Who, when he’s not cooling his heels in Arkham Asylum, is as FREE as a human being can be? And who did all the critics and fanboys ooh and aah about in the last Batman movie? The Joker, that’s who.
Alien I’m not sure about. Most of the gore was offscreen; what was shown was very brief, just enough to frighten but not enough to furnish a report for Biology 101. Nothing realistic about it.
Actually I entirely agree with you about Alien although having a creature eat its way through someone’s stomach is hardly non-violent. Much of the violence does happen off-screen once the fact that the creature is dangerous is establish. My point was that Alien was not meant to be desensitizing to violence and I would not include it on a list of films that are. It is in no way a slasher flick.
As for the Joker, he is a great character and does seem freer than everyone but everyone familiar with Batman knows without Batman, the Joker is not the Joker but just another nut. I would also say that in some way that was the genius of Heath Ledger’s Joker. It portrayed him as an incredibly disturbed man out to destroy everyone and he was also a manipulator of the mentally ill and himself clearly suicidal. At the end of the film you did not want to be the Joker, Two-Face or even Batman. You were left with what it was like to be in the screwed up world of Gotham. I’m not trying to be pretentious but I know slasher pr0n when I see it and The Dark Knight Returns was definitely not it even though the villain was the best role.
True about Alien. Also true about the last Dark Knight movie – NOBODY really won that battle. Or Batman won but paid a high price for victory. It’s actually a situation that needs to be resolved. Does the new movie address it at all?
Why do the insane always go after the innocent? Why can’t the nutjob once, just once, take out a group of their own? Why don’t they turn that seething self-loathing at those that made them what they are? Why can’t the mentals take aim at the manipulators? These murdereres prey upon us because we as a society are sheep stupid.
As a very sensible man once said, insane does not equal stupid. And even a paranoid schizophrenic, Type 1A, violent ideation, generally has a reasonably well-developed sense of self-preservation. In fact, a paranoid, by definition, has an over-developed sense of same.
They will not attack anyone they see as able to defend themselves; that is the province of the suicidally depressed type, and the usual result is what we call in law enforcement a “suicide by cop”.
Attacking fellow sufferers from mental problems? I assure you it happens all the time in group homes. Of course, they don’t have access to weapons there.
I would also point out that thanks to deinstitutionalization, a mentally-unbalanced individual’s behavior has to become very obviously aberrant for them to even end up in a group home environment. The philosophy of “post-modern” psychiatry does not recognize any right of society to be protected from the behavior of someone with a bone to pick with the world in general. In that philosophy, it’s all our fault, anyway, so we have to accept the consequences.
In other words, we pay, so the deranged- and the “superior intellects” who dream of remaking our society in their own Utopian image- can play.
And no, they do not believe in the concept of “this is not a game”.
clear ether
eon
VDH writes of “the modern rampage killer”. Bill Ayers (and wife Bernadine) worked hard to try to break into that exclusive club and ended up as a “distinguished professor” at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Today we learn of the destroyed reputation (deservedly) of Joe Paterno who will never become a “distinguished” anything but Ayers is. And we wonder why are values, civility, and morals have gone off the track? The Batman movie killer and distinguished scholar Bill Ayers and wife Bernadine. What the hell is the difference?
Perhaps this trend is teleological—a mass psychobiological preparation for the cool application of real mass slaughters soon to be carried out.
Your article eloquently expresses many of my feeling and frustrations about media violence. I would mention the career of James Garner. James Garner often played a detective (The Rockford Files) or a cowboy (Maverick) on TV. In the plots of his shows, violence never solved anything. The violence was always stupid and dehumanizing instead of solving the hero’s problems in some cathartic fashion.
I always admired him for this.
Whereas I enjoyed James Garner as well, if violence never solved anything… why does it solve the riddle as to who is better in the boxing ring?
If violence never solved anything, who would dare tell the Great Generation they were wrong to violently oppose the Axis Powers!
And when I was a kid, and liked to beat on my little brother, how come I learned to stop doing that after my best friend beat me up in front of my kid brother?
One time somebody told me mantras never solve anything. In reply, I told him violence never solves anything. He beat me up. Then I learned what he was saying about mantras was true! ;)
The Liberal idea is to let deranged minds roam about freely while being monitored by weekly visit has put society in peril. I know we have an aids epidemic, but we have a larger one not addressed for those with severe mental problems.
We euthanize rabid dogs. I don’t see much difference. The press is referring to him as the “alleged shooter.” Really?! This should be over in the next 30 days. It will probably drag on for years. The Army officer that went on a rampage last year will go to trial next year! Really?! He’s another one that should have been euthanized within 30 days. The usual trail and jury thing seems stupid in cases like this.
The man is a killer.
But in our convoluted “justice” system the dead don’t get represented. Only the killer does. Back in the day (as “they” say) the Founders of the United States formulated a justice system that was charged with getting to the truth and dealing with it quickly.
Today, this contemptable killer will spend $50,000,000 on taxpayers’ money and twenty – thirty years before coming to “justice”. Many, many lawyers will use him and his killings as springboards to further fame and fortune — all on the taxpayers’ dime (or millions).
I am sure there is no reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt or doubt at all that he did the killings. For what reason? Who cares? The man needs to be put to death and quickly. Put him and what he did out of our minds.
But no.
All by itself this is reason to vote out EVERY Democrat. After all, it is their ilk that has created this lack of justice.
There is the off-chance that some lefty superstar defense attorney will show up to represent him for the publicity, especially if the state seeks the death penalty, but most likely he’ll be represented by a Public Defender or some member of the local bar dragooned by the Court to represent him pro bono.
The criminal that gets off is the one we hear about, but usually the PD or court appointed attorney just tries to keep the death penalty off the table and make the best plea deal s/he can get the defendant to agree to.
God knows I don’t have much use for defense attornies but it is the rarest attorney who’d try to become a superstar over this one – except if the death penalty is on the table. There are lots of attornies that would try to move Heaven and Earth to keep a perp from being executed, and I don’t totally disagree with them in lots of cases. I spent my career using the same tools and rules to take people’s jobs as a prosecutor uses to take people’s liberty and even lives, and I practiced before skilled arbitrators and ALJs, not a lay jury. I won one Helluva lot of cases I should have lost and lost quite a few I should have won. An adversarial proceeding before a judge/arbitrator/ALJ or a jury is an awfully blunt instrument with which to take someone’s life.
Heh — if the glove don’t fit.
O. J. had money and celebrity, which guaranteed enormous publicity for his lawyers.
That said, I believe to a moral certainty that the prosecution threw that case. Either Marci Clark and Chris Whazzisname were so busy playing gropey fondly that they couldn’t be bothered to put on a decent case or they were told to put on a lousy case. I was preparing for a big damn deal labor board hearing at the time of the trial so I was working at home most of the time and had the TV on; I’d have fired anyone working for me who put on the prosecution’s case and I was only dealing with firing single mommy clerks who didn’t come to work on time, not with brutal murderers.
There is no doubt in my mind the Marcia/Chris team were assembled to lose that case (as they had bumped what appeared to be a pretty good prosecutor). All that jury tampering that went on, that joke of a judge. Bottom line, LA decided it was in no frame of mind to handle any more riots; thus, it was imperative that OJ had to walk……..
The only way to prevent this atrocity or others is to have an armed citizenry.
The Israelis learned that lesson in the wake of the Japanese Red Army attack on Lod airport.
Mayor Bloomberg whom, I will sadly say, is very representative of the Johns Hopkins ethos, is anti-gun to the bone. When some deli owner saved a man’s life with his shotgun, well Hizzoner stayed mum.
“Gunslinger” is from Katie Lee’s “Songs of Couch and Consultation”. Circa 1959 or so. As of a year or so back, she’s still alive, living in northern Arizona and involved in environmental issues.
Apologies for the drift. :-)
My only comment is in regards to people like Michael Bloomberg who immediatly demanded more gun control laws. Had citizens in that theater or at any of the mass-murder scenes like Virginia Tech been armed per our Second Amendment rights, someone may have been able to take out the killer(s) before the murder toll(s) got as high as they did.
The reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment to our Constitution is so we can defend ourselves from “enemies foreign and domestic”.
Despite all the gun control laws we have throughout the Unites States, criminals and those with evil intent always seem to get guns and explosives. While some citizens wait months for permission to buy a handgun, criminals can get them albeit illegally sometimes within minutes.
McVeigh used fertilizer to blow up a Federal building and kill as many as he did.
The only Law that will truly stop murders like this is God’s Law; Thou Shalt Not Kill. Guess this horrible incident is another example of what a atheist society looks like…when church and state are really separated…
“Guess this horrible incident is another example of what a atheist society looks like…when church and state are really separated…”
Absolute bigotry. What part of Brian Ross don’t you understand?
I want to make two short clear points.
Whether or not execution deters anyone else is not the issue; execution sure as heck deters the murderer from ever doing it again. Period.
Whoever the theater executive was who declared that theater chain to be a “gun-free-zone” should be charged as an accessory to murder since it prevented honest citizens from carrying their own weapons for protection.
HOLLYWOOD TRAINS THE NATIONS ABOUT FIREARMS, UNKNOWINGLY
It is the mechanics of drama at work, the introduction of the major props.
The hand reaches in the desk drawer for the hip flask, and further back in the shadow is the butt of a S & W product! You know what is coming soon, and from whom. Every adult has seen about 10,000 repetitions of this. You believe that the firearm is the father to the action.
Check this in yourself by watching 1930s movies and some early 1940s movies, comedies involving rural homes or rich people vacation homes in the country or on Long Island or something. The lovely upper class room will have a rifle on the wall or guns in a case and they are only decor and not props. What is your reaction when you see this? Firearms as decor disappeared somewhere with the rise of the Film Noir movies. Apparently they cleaned up the sets to not muddy up the storytelling and increase the evil at work by confining the prop to the control of the evil character.
Children of this basic principle of drama are fixations on specific hardware items. A cigar butt is in George Peppard’s face as he grips his industrially-menacing machine-pistol with its giant magazine. White flame sausages rapidly blink from the muzzle as the spent 9mm brass twirls and dances in the air. Far off in the distance, inherently evil enemy, who are shooting fecklessly, fling arms into the air and twirl in death agonies. Every bullet finds a mark. From this, the audience (and the military) learns that firepower is target statistics.
In Vietnam, line-soldiers pulled back for R & R were tested at a rifle range to see how many hits they could put on a stationary paper target 50 meters away in one minute. They stepped to the line and blasted away. They proved their firepower was 300 rounds a minute. This was 75 times the firepower of the mid-Atlantic exurbanite riflemen which Gen. Washington had Congress form into a company and, bringing their personal rifles, go to the troubled siege of Boston. (NOTE: There were no rifles in settled areas then, and they were basically unknown in NJ and north.) The tested M16 shooters with 300/min. firepower had target statistics of one (1) hit a minute. The flintlock riflemen of June, 1775 had target statistics of 4 hits/minute.
Giant magazines do not mean anything.
The public focuses on the hardware. The perps are either people who have brain tumors growing near the amygdala or who are entering paranoid schizophrenia. Those with severe personality disorders usually have a long trail of behavior. The Texas Tower killer had a brain tumor. The scanty information on the Aurora perp suggested brain tumor. However, the fact that he had a reported 300 devices in his apartment suggests paranoia with some mania.
Legislators want to strike quickly against hardware and move on to the next triumph. That is like smashing a spider on the wall and moving on, without finding out if the spider is a symptom of something else, like the house perimeter being full of spider-friendly gaps, or a child into unusual collections.
How to recognize a person’s deterioration and departure from reality is more important than imagining results from hardware manipulation.
The cafe killer ran the victim numbers up with careful, aimed shots. The Texas Tower killer got treatment for his homicidal ideas. He went to a psychologist instead of a psychiatrist.
The public should be educated. When jammed in a space without freedom to flee, they should be taught to throw things. For example, laptops, shoes, cell phones, books, plates, opened pocketknives, purses, foodstuffs etc. A school would be money ahead to reimburse for damaged laptops if students are encouraged to throw them at a perp. It will be a break in the perp’s fantasy. When the perp’s fantasy is interrupted, will they have a preconceived method of dealing with it, or not? If not, what will they do next? Leave the classroom?
A certain section of the havoc-loving class of people look at violence movies like training classes. Do these people see a sign saying “No firearms allowed” and have it turn in their minds into, “This is a threat-free zone for perps”?
I agree with the article but it does have a sharp contrast to the (count them)Eight advertisements on the right sidebar for the occultish “War Craft” game, which will contain images quite graphic and bloody I am sure.
There is no rational analysis of insanity. Good luck trying to outlaw narcissism, delusions, hate, savagery, and murderous intent. The jails would be inside-out.
Deterrence,historically, works when society says that we will kill you if you murder. That raises the risk for the average most sane criminal. Unless one is opting for the 110% police state, the psychos are still going to go off, we will mourn the victims, curse the chances, and wonder about the hands of providence.
“know nothing”.
Your words.
You convict yourself.
Hm. What if he really does turn out to be schizophrenic? Or has a brain tumor?
the victims names and pictures …
http://thpatriots.blogspot.com/2012/07/cbs-sunday-morning-events-of-aurora.html
I feel a great affinity with/for? you Mr Hansen! I am not educated as you are. But have lived in the Fresno/central valley ares all my life. Grad. High
school 1967. I know all about the “hunter gatheres” and no driving after 10pm,
rural or otherwise!
I’ll bet you $ to doughnuts that there was at least “1″ person in that theater with or without a CCW! But did he/she have a good chance for a clean shot? Were they close? Fighting the stampedeing crowd? Or did they think, as I have come to believe now, that even if you saved many lives, “The Authorities”
will bring the full power of the state and do their best to Hang You!?
They don’t want us to be independent, take care of problems ourselves!
We might just find that we don’t need all that law enforcement! or Government!?
Thanks for your great writing, and good perspective, keep it cumm’in!
Heaven forbid the day that I become so dehumanized that when I see somebody captured on surveillance holding up a grocery store then pulling the trigger on a compliant cashier that I first think: society must have led him to it. But in this bat-massacre I really have a hard time developing any anger at the guy. He’s lost his mind. Its pretty obvious though no less unfortunate that, inso having lost it, he was driven to kill. Do I think he should be locked up forever? Yes. But it doesn’t come from outrage, it comes from knowing we have no cure for someone this far gone that carries with it a guarantee that the person will never crack up again.
This is like short attention span theater. Doesn’t anyone remember Jared Loughner. He shot congresswoman Giffords. Care to guess why you haven’t heard much about his trial? It’s because he hasn’t had a trial and he’s not going to have a trial. Loughner is a paranoid schizophrenic. It is very likely that this guy here is also.
He is in a state of severe psychosis, people should save the philosophical analysis. The thread connecting them to shootings have nothing to do with guns or popular culture. It has to do with dangerous psychotics being allowed to walk the streets. This is a mental health issue. 1% of the population is schizophrenic about half and half, men and women. It strikes men between the ages of 18 and 30, women from 25 to 40. It is incurable and very difficult to treat.
Theoretically it can be treated with drugs and therapy, there is one glaring drawback. Victims of the disease are typically over 18, legal adults, and cannot be restrained or treated against their will.
Ask yourself this; what do you think the chances are that a severely psychotic paranoid schizophrenic is going to take his medicine or show up for therapy? Right, zero. Consequently, there are thousands of dangerously psychotic young men walking the streets all the time and all the chatterers can do is talk about guns and movies.
There is some evidence that the earlier and more consistently schizophrenics are treated with antipsychotics, the more likely they are to recover or at least not be as bad off. But making involuntary commitment so terribly difficult makes this unlikely. Professor Segal at Berkeley published a paper last year demonstrating that about 1/3 of the difference in murder rates state-to-state could be explained by how strict the involuntary commitment standards are: relatively easy commitment laws reduce murder rates.
“… [the modern cinema bad guy's] evil is sometimes “cool” in a way that his plodding victims, who simply got in his way, are not…”
Sorry, but this phenomenon existed in pre-1950s movies that glorified swashbuckling pirates, Robin Hood, and tough-guy killers. The phenomenon existed in ancient folklore. Does anyone believe that fourteenth century Norse storytellers mentioned anything about the noncombatant victims of Viking raids (except, perhaps, the physical attributes of the captured women)?
Are the violent movie-watching or video game-playing youth of today as desensitized to human suffering and death as the early Americans who treated public punishments and executions like circus events, the Romans who watched malcontents and criminals get maimed and killed in colliseums, or the peoples around the world who have participated in stonings?
Many people today are desensitized to human maiming and killing because they usually see it at two removes: distance (watching on a screen) and nonreality (the victims are actors or video game characters). Such desensitizion is less than that from directly witnessing maiming and killing and much less than from participating in maiming and killing.
What are we to make of a pundit that doesn’t seem to understand that Alien, Predator, and the Terminator are fantasy characters? And so are Batman and the Joker. When science fiction or comic book characters go over the top in a movie, it’s not going to desensitize the viewers because we know that there are no real aliens, cyborgs, superheroes or supervillians in real life. They become morality plays at best, fairy tales at worse.
While Will Kane was fictional, the historical realities of sheriffs vs gunfighters was real enough. We expect the directors to give the characters more depth, and the consequences of their actions more realistic. By comparing apples to oranges VDH dilutes his point.
Consider this: Which was the scarier element in From Dusk To Dawn? The human criminals Clooney and Tarentino in the beginning of the film, or the campy vampires that appear later? The ruthless and psychotic are among us. Vampires disappear with the final credits.
Sory Dr. Hansen.
It might have been wiser to hold off writing this column.
There has been a lot of rationalizations but not very much rational thinking in the responses this time.
They missed your point entirely.
If the Aurora killer had used a bomb instead of the more dramatic AR-15, the casualty toll would have been greater. His insanity provoked less lethality than a relatively sane Muslim terrorist would. That’s what we have to look out for, explosive devices in crowded places.
Dear Professor Hanson,
In 1770 Captain James Cook discovered the strange history of “running amok” in Malaysia. Young men would violently attack innocent people, who in turn… killed their attacker, if the attacker didn’t commit suicide.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok
So normally, the problem of a non-suicidal attacker was solved by bystanders killing the attacker.
Nothing new here except that which is always new, which is modern people who forget history’s remedies.
Dr. Hanson,
I won’t criticize your writing in this for any differences I have, but perhaps my own lack of comprehension. I tend to blame my own fairly single-minded focus on some particular aspects. I agree that we do not need this waste of protoplasm gaining fame or the inevitable Leftist adulation as an anti-Hero. But we do need to look at him closely; or at least professionals do, and those who may have less than total trust in the political impartiality of those professionals. Over at BELMONT CLUB, it has recently been noted that we have been lied to so often by those in power, that they may not know what the truth is themselves anymore.
There are objective investigative leads that cry out to be followed.
1. funding, for an under-and-unemployed grad student, leading to possible accomplices and leadership.
2. ideological and political background and history, leading to possible accomplices and leadership.
3. skill sets used that he did not have, leading to possible accomplices and leadership.
and there are other matters.
Looked at objectively, mass killings have templates and various modi operandi based on who is doing the killing and what the motivation for the act is. There is reason to look at these matters.
We are in times that may well make our country resemble Gotham City, right smartly. Parts of California have already become a rural version. And there are those who will claim power over us based on a supposed ability to protect us from the evils being done. Knowing the truth, independently arrived at, will help us from “choosing poorly” in who to have faith in for protection.
Once every ounce of information possible to be extracted, is extracted; then he does deserve execution and … ignominy. Only about half of our society, and very little of our body politic recognizes this. Thus, the discussions of the death penalty above.
I find it … interesting, that while it is the expectation here that this thing will escape punishment because of the softness of our society; reports from the Arapahoe County Detention Center are that the other inmates really, really want to kill it themselves for his shooting a 6 year old girl at point blank range. Criminals and sociopaths can have more of a sense of Justice, than the Eloi that we have become.
If we cannot stand to defend ourselves from evil, because it means making a decision and using force [and facing the physical and moral consequences thereof]; we will be destroyed by those who are evil, and who have no such doubts.
I wonder if the Romanized Britons watching the approaching Saxon hordes were paralyzed by the same qualms. We will never know, for they did not survive to tell us if their superior sense of morality was worth it.
Subotai Bahadur
True. I try to be good, follow the rules, obey the laws – but I draw the line when someone asks me to die for HIS principles.
In troubled times, perhaps we should look, as Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, suggests to our Founders.
America’s Founders believed in the Natural Rights of Man, which of course, include the right of self defense, and that right involves firearms, and that right extends beyond one’s home, hence to “bear arms” is the thing to, yes, do!
In the past 30 years, the right to bear arms outside the house has grown in the laboratory of states through concealed carry permits, Florida being the champion of such rights.
However, what has not grown is a full, mature understanding of the rights and duties of the Rights of Man.
Our Founders understood the bearing of arms on ones own person, because their forefathers had been doing it for 200 years or so in the New Country. They understood the idea fully. My guess is, they were personally armed when the Declaration of Independence was made and signed, and they were armed personally when they wrote, framed and perfected the U.S. Constitution. [perhaps a true historian could tell me if I am wrong, or right in this specifically.]
Anyway, the best of our states don’t require much of a concealed carry permit. They just allow carrying. One state, Utah, allows 25-year-olds to concealed carry firearms in private and public schools, universities and colleges.
Our socialist schools taught us not to yell fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire. But our socialist schools did not teach us Natural Rights, Natural Law and the duty to bear arms in public, to prevent “running amok” massacres.
Our socialist schools did not teach the History of Theater in the correct light. Since 1864, April 14, we know bad things happen in theaters. Bear arms! Did Abraham Lincoln die in vain? Are we slaves to socialist thought that embraces “Gun-Free places as Zombie-Perp-Killing-Zones”?
Since 2002, Moscow Theater Siege taught us 129 innocents can die, and 39 terrorists as well… in a packed theater.
In 2004 Chechen terrorists took over 1,100 hostages at a school, resulting in 380 dead people.
Utah can teach the other 49 states why 380 people will probably not die from armed terrorists at schools, universities and colleges in Utah… because Utah allows 25-year-olds to conceal carry in places where terror has been known to occur.
The brilliant thing about Natural Law, Natural Rights and our Founding Fathers, is that they, as leaders, allowed the citizenry to be armed IN THEIR PRESENCE.
College Teachers, professors… as well as legislators and governors and senators of all stripes, all states… need to give up their distrust of the citizenry… and prove they are good and right and abide by citizens armed in their presence.
The point is, God gave each and every soul the right to not be aggressed upon. America’s Founders made a country work on that principle, by naturally allowing armed citizens to bear arms in the public. The citizens grant limited powers to the government, never granting the government the power to take away bearing arms in public places, which would be to give away a Natural Right to a sovereign… which is illogical, not right and never accomplishing good.
We can run away from this principle, as shown in Aurora, and it causes death, and with death: confusion.
But since 1776, the answer innocent Americans can give to unjust aggressors is a simple and non-verbal: BANG!
Undereducated people don’t understand that particular sound of freedom. But it is the sound of individual freedom.
If you are asserting that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock etc were carrying when they assigned the Declaration, then you have a rich, er, imagination. John Adams may have grabbed a gun once when he was in peril when a British ship was closing in while he was sailing to France, but apart from that I (and I have read considerable in his journals) know of nothing about him carrying a weapon. Do you just make this stuff up?
Firearms
In 1785 Thomas Jefferson wrote to his fifteen-year-old nephew, Peter Carr, regarding what he considered the best form of exercise: “…I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.”[1]
Evidence exists to show that Jefferson was a fair marksman. At twenty-five he noted in his accounts: “Won shooting 1/6.”[2] In a later contest during a muster of Captain Jacob Moon’s Albemarle County militia company he lost 2/6.[3] But as he grew older, Jefferson limited his exercise to horseback riding while restraining his attachment for firearms and hunting.
References to ownership of arms and accoutrements may be found throughout his manuscripts and accounts. A cursory compilation shows that he owned a shotgun called a “two shot-double barrel,” purchased in France, a number of pistols and other shoulder weapons. Further evidence that he used these may be found in the columns of his account books. In 1775 he paid to have a pistol repaired; a year later he bought a “double barrel gun-lock” for £5-5; in 1799 he had Henry Yost, a Staunton, Virginia gunsmith, mend his pistols (possibly those he carried for protection when traveling) and, as late as 1817 he was charged eight dollars for having a gun put in order by a Charlottesville repairman.[4]
Unquestionably, the finest arms that Jefferson owned were a pair of Turkish pistols received from the estate of General Isaac Zane in place of a money bequest. He described them and, at the same time, modestly alluded to his ability as a pistol shot: “They are 20. inch barrels so well made that I never missed a squirrel at 30 yards with them…”[5]
1790. Shipped back from France (Grevin list): one pair large pistolet in leather case, one pair plated pistolet, one fusil à deux coups, one pistol and its case, two pistol cases, one powder horn, one morocco ammo pouch.[7]
1803 October 9. (Jefferson to Verdier, innkeeper at Orange Courthouse). “I left at your house, the morning after I lodged there, a pistol in a locked case, which no doubt was found in your bar after my departure. I have written to [illegible] Mr. Randolph or Mr. Eppes to call on you for it, as they come on to Congress, to either of whom therefore be so good as to deliver it.”[9]
1803 October 9. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr.). “I left at Orange C. H. one of my Turkish pistols, in it’s hoster, locked. I shall be glad if either yourself or Mr. Eppes can let a servant take it on to this place. It will either bind up in a portmanteau flap, or sling over the back of the servant conveniently.”[10]
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/firearms
I responded here once before, but it got lost in cyber space. I am beginning to think that if you post twice on an article without gong back to the Home page that one of them may not get posted???
I like the Jefferson site and examples, but there is nothing to indicate that he was carrying in the room when he signed the Declaration. Also interesting that he advised his nephew to sport with a gun, rather than crude ball sports, which were bad for you. The only time I know of Adams mentioning a gun, I believe, is when he grabbed one when he thought he would have to help defend the ship on the way to France. It is also clear, that as a rule, southerners were much more into guns and shooting than northerners. After the Sumner caning by Preston Brooks, people did carry in the Senate and House, but, despite their differences, North and South were not THAT much at each others throats at the Founding.
For what it’s worth, a Yankee Rev. War soldier, whose journal we have transcribed, often is buying, selling, or swapping guns and ammunition, but does it the same way he deals with watches or books. He prefers to arrive home with more money and less weight in what he has to carry.
James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46…
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
I too usually like your articles, and find the writing often brilliant and passionate. This time, not.
It helps to understand what made him tick, even if it will not necessarily prevent more incidents like this in the future. But it might, if for example it leads to better treatment of schizophrenia.
In the end, it isn’t the movies. It isn’t the television. It isn’t the video games. It’s something in the minds of those people, something in their hearts. Look here: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-03-03/news/9903030134_1_rwandan-rebels-ugandan-bwindi-national-park
In 1999, Rwandan rebels went on a rampage through a park campground, killing at least 8 people listed in the report, with others alluded-to. Their weapons were apparently largely knives, machetes, clubs, and firebrands. Only later did “modern” weapons seem to come into play. In the same area and 5 years earlier was the so-called “Rwandan Genocide,” an act of horrific violence that dwarfs the event in Aurora. The preferred weapon seems to have been machete, though guns and even bulldozers were used. We can go back to the Nazi regime, and farther. What we cannot do is to say that ANY of these events were influenced by fictional radio, television, film, or video games. What we cannot do is to say that these events were performed solely by wielders of guns. What we can do is to say that there are people in this world who do not think or behave like the majority, people who take some sort of grotesque delight in killing, people who apparently have no empathy or compassion for any other living thing. Is it narcissism, or something else? Is it mental? Is it physical? Or – gasp – could it be spiritual? I think maybe it’s high past time to quit looking elsewhere to fix blame and look squarely at the individuals who committed the crimes.
BUT with a semi-automatic and large clips as a force multiplier, ONE looney individual can kill a lot of people fast. With more, rather than fewer loonies out there, for reasons already discussed here, the idea that you could buy a lot of this stuff online, without any kind of background check or registration does not make sense.
It’s not clear to me how you would catch a Loughner or a Holmes on a database BEFORE they show their symptoms, but you still should have a system in place. Many will say that the price of keeping Big Brother completely away from our guns is a nutjob slaughter every so often and that you can’t stop all of them anyway. We have to jump through quite a few hoops, including two written references to get a CC permit in Mass; such scrutiny might well catch a Loughner or Holmes, but Holmes would not have needed a CC permit here, if he did not have handguns. We have to think of these guys as terrorists. I don’t know all the facts regarding how Holmes acquired all his stuff, but the ones I have heard, do disturb me.
Loughner’s mental illness was already well-known to police. They simply made no effort to commit him because it is so difficult to make it happen.
What about a suicide bomber?
And… Do you need a permit to buy gasoline? A Molotov Cocktail at the local bar? Or in a High School English class, a backpack containing a gallon of acetone?
In other parts of the world, mass murders have moved away from guns. Why not here? Or when, might be a question?
I believe that you do now have to register large purchases of fertilizer. In any case, are you defending anonymous and/or background check-free purchases of firearms and ammunition?
Large clips could be dangerous, to hedges? To hippies? To monster toe-nails?
Try using “magazines” next time.
So you mean that metal thing I have been filling with bullets in my .303 British Enfield, bought mail-order from Klein’s in 1966 (not that I shoot that thing much any more), has been a magazine, not a clip? Some distinctions, like automatic vs semi-automatic are important. Magazine vs clip is more toward gun snobbery, but whatever. O’Reilly flops around trying to define heavy weapons, and will be mocked, you can be sure, but it is also likely that the reporting of purchases piece and mandatory owner check will (and should) be tightened up.
Don’t be so quick to judge. He may be a paranoid schizophrenic. They cannot control themselves.
Colorado has the death penalty, but guess how many people have been executed since 1976? One!
The town of Aurora has strict gun laws and a guy mows down unarmed citizens at will.
Colorado has the death penalty and has only executed one guy since 1976.
Maybe Aurora should allow citizens to be armed and Colorado should execute murderers?
As Joseph Stalin said; “one,two three dead is a tragedy/ a million dead is a statistic. Salvadore Dali, in Surrealist Manafesto; “What is Surealism? a madman firing shots into a crowd….! I believe a Cat Scan would establish that our Killer had Schitozophrenia. I believe !million Volt electric shock treatments would cure him. Meanwhile, “did you enjoy the show Mrs. Lincoln”?
I would have preferred that the first officer that found this maggot cowering in the parking lot beside a car would have done the world a favor and placed a rapidly accelerated slug of lead in the bastards head. No questions would have been asked…
1st: prayers and blessings to the victims. My heart is breaking.
2nd: holmes a patsy?
ruby ridge, waco, okl city, ff, az, and now.
who benefits the most from this? UN gun treaty.
There’s no shortage of bright young people who suffer schizophrenic breakdowns in their teens or 20s, and become murderers. Really smart ones who retain their abilities after breakdown are especially dangerous.
The perps are motivated by schizophrenia or brain tumors. The lawmakers are motivated by Hollywood training.
Big magazines increase firepower. Firepower is Muzzle Statistics, something which has only a weak connection with Target Statistics. For example, full auto firing puts everything high and to the right, unless someone is highly trained in doing full-auto fire and able to do a bit better.
I am one of “the sophisticated with university degrees”, A.S., B.S., M.S.
However, I’m one of those oxymorons, an intellectual redneck. As such, my education merely reinforces my pragmatic view of the world. I know that hanging a nightmarish criminal when convicted is barbaric, that it offers no evidence of deterrence; that’s NOT the purpose of execution.
What I do know is the killer will no longer be able to parasitise the society he or she terrorized and injured. And that he or she will NEVER commit another crime.
Although I kind of like science fiction author Larry Niven’s idea; after conviction, take him to a hospital, sedate him, and then take his body apart for transplants. Toss what’s left in the compost heap.
I think burning at the stake would be a better death not only for Mr Holmes, but anyone like him.
Dwight
We have to think of these guys as terrorists. I don’t know all the facts regarding how Holmes acquired all his stuff, but the ones I have heard, do disturb me.
Actually, that is the point I am making. And as such, the terrorist will always a) have access to resources outside the scope of the: “It’s not clear to me how you would catch a Loughner or a Holmes on a database BEFORE they show their symptoms, but you still should have a system in place.”, and b) depending on sponsorship they may have the coercive organs of the state looking the other way deliberately.
We have had mass murders throughout our history, going back to the days when you loaded firearms from the front end. It is not the weapon itself.
And of the ones in recent times, many are by means other than firearms. A database/control system to cover that would have to create a police state that, well, would make Leftists soil themselves with joy. And still not be foolproof because fools are so bloody ingenious.
Of mass murders in modern times, more than a few have … unsettled investigative results. Evidence points to far more than the “lone whacko” that is the official explanation for pretty much every incident. Absolute trust in the integrity of the intersection between politics and law enforcement is misplaced.
#71 Wishkah 39
The perps are motivated by schizophrenia or brain tumors. The lawmakers are motivated by Hollywood training.
With all due respect, both of those statements are too broad. Charles Whitman who committed the Texas Tower shootings in 1966 did in fact show brain tumors on autopsy. I can’t think of any other mass killing in this country where brain tumors were involved. Schizophrenia can be a factor in some cases, but by far not the majority, unless is it considered an automatic diagnosis based on having committed a mass killing, “because only a crazy person” would do that.
Evil, deliberate evil, exists. As do political calculations and motivations such as self-interest, and sociopathy. And politicians not only are not exempt from them; it can be argued that the ego and enhanced self image of those who become professional politicians make them more susceptible to those motivations.
What we may consider the norm for conduct and reactions to events is a product of our own variation of what has been called a “trust society”, which is unique in the world. I seriously recommend the novel The Last Centurion by John Ringo as laying out the differences in an accessible way.
We are no longer an even vaguely homogeneous society. Leaving aside the fact that there are actual meanings and consequences to a society becoming “multi-cultural”, we have a large portion of the upper levels of our society, the powerbrokers and the opinion makers and shapers and their supporters who not only do not accept the “myths” [speaking in terms of sociology and the process of "socialization" in the political science sense] of the barely mainstream culture; but actually have open contempt for them.
Perhaps, and only perhaps, in a trust society that was homogeneous it would be possible to impose a control regime stringent enough to prevent more mass killings. Because the population could make a reasonable assumption that the control regime would not automatically be used to oppress them. That condition does not obtain today in any way. Those who oppose the mainstream culture view objective equality before the law as “oppressive” because it does not favor them, or their constituent groups.
There are no easy solutions, so long as the dichotomy exists.
Subotai Bahadur
“Schizophrenia can be a factor in some cases, but by far not the majority, unless is it considered an automatic diagnosis based on having committed a mass killing, “because only a crazy person” would do that.”
Actually, the New York Times survey of mass murders found a majority were clearly mentally ill. Many of the others probably were, but there wasn’t enough data to tell for sure. I can tell you that when researching my new book, there was no shortage of mass murderers who were clearly mentally ill, and for which there was an abundance of evidence of this already known to police, family, or friends. Many were known to be schizophrenic (hallucinations, delusions, previous psychiatric examinations); for others, the data was strongly suggestive.
Now I’m hearing that this Joker dropped his rifle after the cheap drum magazine *jammed*. For some reason this alleged fact seems ill-publicized.
Xystus von Rott
“Motivation?” Simple – they were once hurt by someone, somewhere, so they pretend to feel justified in wanting to hurt someone – or everyone – ELSE, anywhere and everywhere. Shrinks call this “Objectification” where ‘The Others’ are not human like the subjective self, but are only objects which want to cause one pain – and so deserve to be removed.
This is the same false, victim-blaming justification used by all criminals everywhere all the time… the pretense that a specific incident merits a generalized response, simple because the opportunity for an appropriate, specific response is impossible. Crap travels downhill – dad slaps mom, who hits child who kicks dog who bites cat who eats hamster. “Might makes right.”
Liberals (and their moslem brethren, who claim that “god” told them to commit their crimes) are especially adept in the use of such irrational tactics (idolatrously pretending effects are their own causes) – never having any facts which would ever agree with their perpetual irrationality, the left must always resort to the slanderous evasions known collectively as the critical thinking logical fallacies (the deflective ad-hominem personal attacks, the distractive strawman red-herrings, and of course the immoral relativist’s favorite, the tu quoque – i.e: “islam isn’t evil because we all do it too! Whee!”).
Isn’t it funny that people who actually have facts, rarely (if ever) seem to feel the need to indulge in fallacies?
Often, the idolatrous excuse is groupthink aka the mob mentality:
“I didn’t do it – ONLY The Group did it!” Government minions prefer the synonym of “The System:” i.e: “It was a Systemic Problem – We didn’t do it – only The SYSTEM did it!”
Many liberals will pretend it’s a “mental illness” problem: “I didn’t do it – ONLY my BRAIN did it!”
…because they like to pretend that “there are no real criminals, since we’re all really only victims anyway!”
So, to them, there can never be any real personal responsibility – “because” there’s always such a diverse multiplicity of causes and effects, that we can never really know anything for sure – which means that, “since” all facts are really only opinions anyway, my subjective, fact-free opinion is the diversely opposite equal to your objective silly facts! Whee!”
Which means that, to them, it should be illegal to accuse any criminals of their crimes, if doing so might hurt their feelings!
Thus their insistance where, in making HATE CRIMES illegal, they’re really only trying to make it “illegal” to HATE CRIMES!
The whole, false category is just another childish logical fallacy: ‘Haters:’ (some people just get up in the morning to hate). NO, ‘hate is only the perfectly natural human response of perpetual anger towards ongoing INjustices (like islam). Without it, we’d never bother to accuse criminals of their crimes, and so end them. They also have a new puerile term for rational people: “anti-” people, as if being anti-anything (even anti-crime) is a crime in itself!
Contrast these evasive excuses for the right to be irresponsible with:
THE GOLDEN RULE OF LAW and MORALITY 101:
All crimes are forms of theft: offensive attacks that deny the attacker’s victim something they, not the attacker, are entitled to; basic robbery is theft of one’s stuff (and so is arson); kidnapping, assault, and rape are all thefts of one’s bodily autonomy, murder is theft of one’s life, and lying (fraud) is only the most basic form of theft – it’s the theft of the Truth. (And lying includes presenting one’s merely subjective, unresearched, fact-free opinion as if it were objective fact)!
And even all threats are psychological attacks (aka: coercion, duress, extortion, “terrorism”) which are thefts of one’s peace of mind and security, and all non-defensive attacks are already classified as crimes.
After all, when you attack the Others first, then, by definition, you are the predatory criminal aggressor, and they are your innocent victims – there’s no two ways about it!
(Attacking second, in defense of one’s self and/or of innocent others, is always OK, and is in fact a mandatory requirement for having any sort of deterring justice in the world at all, ever! Without counter-attacks criminals have no reason to be deterred into ceasing theirs)! So it can be seen that “an eye for an eye” is the logical, proportional and just response to crime, and so revenge IS justice… the exact opposite of their ‘might makes right’ crime-creed!
(SO, in the example cited in the article above, YES the Batman should have run over the Joker when he had the opportunity, since he’d already accepted the role of the defender of the moral law, protector of the Joker’s future innocent victims. The Joker had already demonstrated, well beyone the reasonable doubt requirement, his intent to play the “crazy” card excuse to continue his murderous crime spree).
Thus, we have developed a natural law, which rationally depends on these cause-and-effect facts, known as The Golden Rule of Law, which, by defining situational morality as “Do Not Attack First!” enables trust, progress, and Civilization. It is often abstracted as “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!” (murder).
It’s opposite might be called ‘the brazen rule of chaos,’ which defines immorality as “only we have the holy right to always attack all ‘The Others’ first, so there, nyah!” and so inflicts distrust, stagnation, and Barbarism. It has been abstracted as “THOU SHALT KILL!” (murder) and the main example of which is known today as “islam”!
Islam IS crime. Liberalism is the willing accessories’ excuse to enable crime.
;-)
Well, it seems that Buraq Hussein Obama was correct in his statement after all.
“You didn’t create that massacre, the government did.”
If he wants to claim that individuals are not at all responsible for what happens, but the government is; then he owns this.
That said, then much is explained. The $26,000 government grant was supposed to cover tuition plus living stipend. The question remains, how much was the tuition [which may now be classified information, since the school has clammed up to the point of taking down the Department website], and also what portion, if any, was paid? It has since come out that he was not wearing bullet resistant ballistic armor from head to toe, as reported by Aurora’s Chief of Police, but rather utility tactical gear which is much cheaper. Thus the original estimates of how much he had spent to do this drops from the $10-20K range to <$10K.
A wonderful advertisement for the omniscience, benevolence, and care of the all-powerful State.
Subotai Bahadur
I wish to know nothing about this murdering bastard, except the time of his execution. Too much handwringing, determine his guilt and ghost his @$$.
I know about crazy people. There is a small cadre of the truly crazy that simply don’t think like we do. In fact a dead give away of the deeply crazy to me is it seems the person has to be kidding. But, sadly they are not. You can call them murdering bastards if it makes you feel like you understand them. Sometimes the ones I have met are filled with incredible rage and fear.
Just saying. One might argue if a person is dangerous and unfixable then the risk of letting them run free is too great.
I don’t think many killers fall into the lunatic category. No one wants to consider the possibility that a few brain cells miswired plus maybe a little too much coke or bath salts and free will is an illusion.
As Glenn Reynolds is pointing out on his Instapundit site, printing machines now can make very complicated parts… meaning it ends gun control… technology for a long time has outraced backward gun control legislation.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/07/28/the-end-of-gun-control/
An AR-15 receiver has been printed, and appears to work perfectly.
So what does this mean? In the future, weaponized technology will Increase the power of lunatics, lone or otherwise.
The solution, which upsets a lot of people unhappy with history’s undeniable truths, will be to always be ready as the Malaysians were in 1770 when Captain Cook discovered their understanding of “running amok.”
The Natural Law solution, which can be denied only at the cost of multitudes dying, is to have the means, desire and freedom (to not be sued) to stop any Lunatic and or Lunatics with appropriate arms. Usually this involves: BANG!
In other words, going toward the best of the future (think: are people armed in Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc., etc.??? Answer: ALWAYS) the most advanced citizens in the most advanced states of the Union (vs. California/ NY, the most Troglodyte) shall carry and bear to most all public places and have in their homes, farms, ranches and fields, always: arms (or phasers).
The sound of freedom, when being aggressed upon unreasonably and extremely, has for a long time has been and for thousands of years into the future will be: BANG! or perhaps just as likely: ZAP!
Aggressive lunatics (or even political tyrants,) in essence, can’t keep good Americans down: Actually, it’s always (in freedom-loving states) the reverse.
The whole topic of gun control vs. lunatic shooters… can be put into perspective by imaging the following scenario:
You are in a crowded, dark theater. Suddenly a lunatic starts shooting people. Sitting next to you to your left and your right are… General George Washington and Patrick Henry (folks known for carrying fire arms and/or swords. They dispatch the lunatic, or die trying. Their example succeeds, because even the unarmed men (& women) in the theater note the fine example and finish the task. The lunatic is defeated, eventually if not suddenly.)
Now, pick your pair of people to your left & right: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Michelle & Barack Obama?
Or would you prefer Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis as they play themselves, at any rate, on the screen?
Or, would you prefer Eric Holder and Sarah Brady? (They loath & fear weapons in the hands of citizens.)
Or, would you prefer, let’s say, a Jedi Knight or Star Trek crew member armed for an away (out-of-home: armed) mission?
Or, would you prefer Rahm Emanual or Michael Bloomberg? (Who love gun-free-zone theory above Natural Law.)
Let’s be honest, and admit: That if it were to be known in advance, and you HAD to go to the theater, even if you despised Sarah Palin and all she stood for to the very core of your being, in this case: you would love to sit between she and husband Todd, because there is something, after all, to “Don’t Tread on Me,” an Alaskan Hocky/Grizzly Mom and a 19th Century-style, Alaskan snowmoblie Tesoro Iron Dog 4 Time Race Winner after all.
And what is the difference between these couples we have considered as movie-mates? Unarmed or disarming Proto-Victims whose last words will be “Please Don’t”….. or hotdogs, apple pie and baseball-loving Americans who, well, er, are naturally armed… hence, having no need to speak, since they know their right to live is ensconced in America’s Founding Documents, Blood and Brains: All one might hear is the sound of liberty’s defense: BANG!