But, apart from Charles Manson, I am willing to bet that almost no one can name any of their victims- and the only reason you can with Manson is that one of his victims (Sharon Tate) was somewhat famous.
Now, why is that?
A lot of folks get on a rant after a particularly gruesome or troubling murder about a host of ancillary topics- and, all with good intentions. We don’t want it to happen again. We want to stop it before it happens. We need to control guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them in the first place- all of these are extremely noble gestures, and I can’t take that away from anyone- especially the ones who champion these things in the names of their loved ones who have been killed.
And yet, it continues. And, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think it was getting worse. But, I think I know why it is getting worse, and I have a theory about this.
There has always been, throughout history, people who are crazy. And, when I say crazy, I don’t mean in kind of a “oh, isn’t that quaint” kind of crazy. I mean bat-shit nuts. Rational thought escapes them at every turn- some of this is because of metabolic and chemical issues, some of it is upbringing and some of it is environmental. But, with all that, most criminologists will tell you that in the pantheon of killers throughout history, the true fruit-bats are not commonplace. Most of them- like Dylann Roof and the ass-hat that killed the reporter and camera man last week- they were fringy and not as easily identified. (I have a friend who regularly sold gasoline to Ted Bundy and described him as “weird, but not nuts”)
So, for every obvious nutball out there, there’s a host of pseudo/semi nutballs who are circling, waiting for their moment.
The press, in their infinite wisdom of bringing us “news” always does investigations on these perpetrators. Some people think that it’s because the press is evil- I’m not so sure. I truly believe that the press is trying to find causality that can allow people to process these heinous acts, and in doing so generate even more hype- like the aforementioned tangential objectives that always follow these sorts of things.
But, the end result of that- whatever the reason- is that the killers become famous. And fame, to a pseudo/semi fruit bat is a “green light” for them to go and achieve it. And so they do, and the vicious, sweaty, stench of death cycle starts all over again.
Think about it- in 1966, Charles Whitman climbed a clock tower on the campus of the University of Texas and killed 14 people, wounding 32 others after having killed his wife and his mother in their homes earlier that morning. He held the police off for 90 minutes, and was finally killed by a police officer wielding a shotgun. The country was stunned. It was later discovered that Whitman had a brain tumor, and while it was never confirmed that the tumor had caused his erratic behavior, there was no outcry for weapons control for people with tumors, no “gun free zones” established- this was a tragedy plain and simple, and people moved on with their lives. Moreover, the public (and probably anyone reading this) have all but forgotten Charles Whitman and what he did.
And, I think that this is the root cause- the hype that is given to the perpetrators. They get “immortalized” on our collective psyche for the momentary actions they commit, and the victims are forgotten. We get a nice set of “things we can do to prevent this from happening again” and yet, it does not. Cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. banned handguns years ago, and they had the highest amounts of shooting BY FAR in the country. (So much so that if you eliminated the shootings in those cities and a couple of others, you’d see that the number of gun deaths in this country move us to 4th from the bottom of world statistics instead of being #1 like we are now) No matter what we are foce fed by people who think that this behavior can be changed with laws and regulation do, I think that they are aggrandizing and immortalizing these perpetrators even more by doing that.
So- what do we do about it? Hey- I actually have an idea:
I frequent the site Imgur.com a lot, and right after the shooting of the news crew in Virginia, someone posted a thread about ignoring stories about the guy who did the shooting, so as not to make him even the slightest bit of the story. That really resonated with me- take this guy completely out of the equation. Instead, let’s pay attention to the people who were killed- they were remarkable people who had vision, drive and passion about what they were doing. Let’s not forget them- let’s make THEM the story. I’ve taken it to the point of whenever I see or start to hear something about the shooter, I refuse to read it and I change the channel. I want to know a whole lot more about Alison Parker and Adam Ward, and I want the other guy to have completely not have existed. (Yes, I get that if he didn’t, this wouldn’t have happened)
But, my actions here are far from enough. I’m actually going to write an editorial to my local paper and implore them to consider the thoughts that I have ascribed here. I’m not stopping with the local paper- I’m going to go further and write to the networks, too. It might be futile- I don’t know- but the point is to try.
And, yes- if you agree that I may be on to something, then I ask you to join me.
And, here’s the deal on the bag of shit that committed this crime- he was NUTS. He was CRAZY. He may have had a bad hand dealt to him- haven’t we all? Get the fuck over it. Pull up your big boy pants and figure it out. For those of us on the outside looking in, the thought I am providing you in this blog will actually do more help in identifying ass-hats like this because you won’t be so jaded by having heard stories about them that have colored your view of them. They’ll be stark and easy to recognize and report and take down for all the right reasons before they do any harm.
God Bless the families of Alison Parker and Adam Ward. May they find God’s everlasting peace in the knowledge that their family members are being well cared for by a loving and caring God.
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