Sunday, January 9, 2011

A Bit More on "The Shooting"


Jane performs cartwheels to try to explain the Shooter's motivations through analysis of his writings (on the YouTubes) which say to her that he was mentally ill and angry about being expelled from Pima Community College, and so became violent because of that, not for any political reason at all. Just because he shot up a constituent meeting with a congressmember, in the process killing a federal judge and a congressional staffer, it doesn't mean he was acting on any political impulse. When people suffer from untreated schizophrenia, as the Shooter apparently did, they do crazy things. No politics involved at all.

Well, I don't agree with her rather superficial analysis, but I think she has a point nevertheless. As I see it, it's probably less than useful to focus on a political motivation, though it might be worthwhile to understand the overall political melieu.

No, for some time, I've had the sneaky suspicion that these repeated "psychotic break" shootings are potentially not motivated at all. Instead, I see these repeated "shocking" Shootings as "triggered" events, the shooters being effectively acting on someone else's command, without any consciousness of what they're doing.

Manchurian shooters.

Which may be less far fetched than random psychotics who snap.

It would be great to find out, but I have no idea how that might be accomplished.

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