Candace

Talmadge

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February 19, 2008

Lesson of NIU and Other Shooters: Post-9/11 America Not So Different

There’s been a lot of shooting-to-kill on a mass scale lately – not in Iraq, but right here in these United States.

• A gunman holding hostages kills three members of his family and then a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT member, and wounds another SWAT member in Southern California.
• A former graduate student of Northern Illinois University kills seven and wounds 15 before taking his own life.
• A nursing student in Baton Rouge shoots and kills two classmates before turning her gun on herself.
• An Oxnard, California eighth grader fatally shoots a classmate, apparently because of the latter’s sexual orientation.
• A gunman with a longstanding grudge storms a City Council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri, killing five and wounding the town’s mayor.
• A gunman in a Chicago clothing store orders five women into a back room and shoots them fatally.
• A gunman kills eight and wounds five, then takes himself out at a Nebraska shopping mall during the early December holiday shopping season.

Analyses of this widely publicized bloodshed and mayhem fall into predictable camps: Those who fault easy access to guns and those who blame cultural decay and lax moral standards. This either/or divide over the causes of the violence endemic to American culture is almost as long running as the violence.

It is also a false choice, and incomplete. Easy access to guns no doubt combines with a society steeped in images of sex, violence and sexual violence to encourage and facilitate these killing sprees.

There are additional factors, however. Some, like diagnosable mental illness or outright murderous pathologies, are already recognized, but others are not. One of the hidden roots of mass gun-based killings is the emotional derangement of feeling powerless and/or insignificant. That’s because how we feel about ourselves or our situation in life is the ultimate motivator for any actions we take, or fail to take.

Think about it. Anyone who can pull the trigger of a loaded gun instantly has the power of life and death over others. What better way to assuage the feelings of powerlessness that result from a divorce, or the loss of a job or from being constantly bullied or belittled? And what better way to feel significant – if only for a brief time – than to go out in a blaze of warped glory by taking others down, too? It’s one way to ensure at least 15 minutes of fame.

A second unrecognized factor behind our mass killing sprees is the dubious example of our own government. As a nation, we have been feeling collectively powerless since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Unaccustomed to and infuriated by such national impotence, our lust for payback is one reason we have not been overly concerned about using torture or gutting the Constitution to get the presumed “bad guys.”

Someone, after all, has to pay.

Even if we glorify revenge as a nation under the mantra of national security, we draw a line between the collective and the personal. Individuals are not to take out their unpleasant feelings on others. We label the latter criminal behavior.

But what, really, is the difference between small-scale revenge killings and national revenge policies of pre-emptive military invasion? They arise out of the same hidden motives and involve violence.

Most individuals are mature enough with sufficient emotional resilience not to go on a killing spree because they feel powerless or insignificant. What a pity our country cannot grow up as well.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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