Rampage Nation: The press shouldn't be shocked when it happens all the time
April 03, 2009 5:21 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
The sad news from Binghamton, New York, has once again turned the media's attention to the scene of a gun-fueled mass killing. But once again, the rampage coverage seems to be context-free, in that the press rarely connects the most current killing spree with all the ones before it, or steps back to wonder what is going on nationwide.
As I recently wrote:
The press now covers shooting sprees the way it covers killer tornadoes: They're one-day stories, they're acts of nature, and all people can do is try to stay out of the way.
The fact is, the shooting in Binghamton is the third killing spree this week. Nearly 30 Americans have been shot dead from mass murder rampages in the last six days. But the press pretends each bloody incident is completely isolated. They're not. There have been at least two dozen mass murders in the last 25 months. Here's a look at some of the U.S. shooting rampages that have unfolded in just the last 30 days:
April 3: Reports indicate a gunman Jiverly Voong backed up his car to the door of the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, in order to make sure people could not escape when he walked in the front door, killed the receptionist and then went from room to room assassinating as many as people as he could. The gunman, wearing a bullet-proof vest and a satchel of ammunition, later killed himself. Fourteen dead, four wounded.
March 29: In the upscale Santa Clara, California, neighborhood, Devan Kalathat shot and killed two of his children, three other relatives and then himself. Six dead, one injured.
March 29: Heavily armed suspect Robert Stewart, entered a local retirement home in Carthage, North Carolina, and began randomly shooting patients and employees with his high-powered rifle. Eight dead and three wounded.
March 15: A Miami man, Guillermo Lopez, barged into a birthday thrown for his ex-wife's boyfriend. An argument erupted. Lopez cornered some party goers in the back yard and opened fire, killing four people, including his ex-wife. Lopez drove to his home, set his pick-up truck on fire, and killed himself. Five dead.
March 10: Firing more than 200 rounds from two assault rifles, a shotgun and a handgun, Michael McClendon went on a two-hour killing spree in south Alabama, killing family members, strangers, and then himself. Eleven dead, seven wounded.
March 5: Ex-con Davon Crawford killed his new wife, his wife's sister, and her sister's three small children during a killing spree in downtown Cleveland. Days later Crawford killed himself. Six dead.
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I took a quick gander over at freeperville today and their major concern was anti-gun groups gaining traction.
Upset the NRA? What about the 40% of homes that own guns. Or the 260+ million firearms already in the hands of Americans. I'm sure they won't be upset when you restrict their rights. New York state already has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation.
People have been killing each other for thousands of years. It is the people that are broken, not the guns.
Correction, hundreds of thousands of years.
When people run out of money and they don't have any support system, it makes them desperate and if you IDENTIFIED so closely with your job and your life trajectory, then a great upheaval like the Economic Crisis, can make you snap. However, there has to be some pathology present already for your "snap" to involve loading up like Commando and setting off to kill your family.
We will see more like this.
This latest one was at an "immigration center" and it makes me wonder if this isn't a Beck soldier who was told by God to go take out the furenurs that are contaminating their bodily fluids.
It is the people that are broken, not the guns.
Easy access to guns doesn't help. It's like building a bar down the street from a flophouse. I blame the bar for making things worse.
That too-- and the media has been mostly silent about this-- just tonight, David Sirotta was handed a great opportunity to opine about this on CNN, how the Right foments so much hate.
Instead, this new village wannabee reassured us that too many guns is not the problem (!)He's the new sell-out, obviously, and if HE doesn't say anything, who will?
The hits just keep on coming - in Pittsburgh a man killed 3 cops ambush-style after he made a 9-11 domestic disturbance call. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest, used assault rifles, and his friends said that he was scared that Obama was going to take his guns away.
The murderous phuck in Pittsburgh, who shot two cops dead the second he opened the door to them, as they responded to yet another in a series of "domestic disturbance" calls to that particular home, and then fired on and mortally wounded a third Officer who was on his way to his nearby home, and was simply there in the background, to help if it was needed...
The murderer used among his several weapons, an AK-47 assault rifle.
Now, the single thing I want to read, and have emphasized in these media reports, is a single fact so important to the Law Enforcement authorities involved, that they usually uncover this fact before the tragic day is ended: the fact of exactly where and how and from whom, this phuck got an AK-47 assault rifle (and for that matter, the same facts surrounding his possession of any and all other firearms he used or otherwise had).
It's extraordinaily important to know this fact. It is the basis of any talk we might make, about how to prevent such murderous firearm rampages as the ones we are seeing too much of right now. It has to do with the sale of the firearm, and all the circumstances surrounding that sale.
I do not mean to imply that anything at all about this fact in this particular instance (the AK-47 purchased owned and used by the Pittsburgh phuck) would inform us in any way about anything that needs address, regarding gun sales and the Regulation thereof, in America.
But if there is anything about that sale that would concern us, and help us to prevent these tragedies from happening (help us by way of Regulations and other Laws), then it would be found in that simple and known fact of Public Record, the fact of where and how and from whom, this murderous Pittsburgh phuck got an AK-47, so as to kill three cops who were simply doing their job and never had a chance.
And this fact is all but ignored, even blacked-out and covered up, in our corrupted corporate media: and I wonder why.
And if that fact should find it's way here, under my comment, then that's all well and good, but not at all what I'm talking about: as it is the strange neglect of that fact in the reports of our national (and corporate) media, that is what has me wondering about it.
A fact that might form the basis (if any basis there is), for any Regulatory discussion about gun sales in America, and about the sometimes murderous phucks who those sales are made to, and lobbied for, by the National Rifle Association...
Of course I might be misunderstanding this particular case: maybe this murderous Pittsburgh phuck didn't buy his AK-47 anywhere and from anybody... maybe he built it himself.
And it's sort of a waste of time to conjecture much about the "mindset" or about most of the other personal circumstances that surround these murderers, when they lash out in a murderous rage, at anybody and anything nearby (whether known to them or not), with a firearm.
It's not because those circumstantial things are not contributing factors or even the cause of what the murderer did, but because we are terribly misled in our thinking, when we think we will understand and know the cause, from the circumstances of the murderer's screwed up life.
Because if we conclude the murderer did what he did, for reasons as various as depression or social alienation or because of his distressed career situation and money woes, or even because he was insane, then we conclude wrong, and are misled...
Because for every murderer who you say did what he did, because he was depressed alienated broke or even insane, there are hundreds and thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people, every bit if not more depressed and broke etc., who lash out at no one, violently or otherwise, and kill nobody as a result, whether friend or foe (real or imagined) or complete stranger...
There are millions upon millions of Americans who may be in circumstances as bad or worse than any of these murderers you wish to cite: but seeing as those other Americans (many millions of them) never kill anybody because of their circumstances, and may not even own a firearm, or want to, or ever even imagine themselves shooting or killing anybody because of those difficult life circumstances...
Doesn't that truth then render our speculations about why the guy did it, was it his "mindset" or poverty or whatever, behind it all...
Isn't all of that nonsense a waste of time, given the fact that millions of people worldwide, are in situations as bad if not worse than the murderer's, and yet they never kill anybody because of it... doesn't that fact negate the assumption that you have found the cause of these things, and instead mislead you into thinking you have?
Very insightful commentary.
I believe that people use their personal circumstances as an excuse to do what they want to do. Their moral code is turned inside out somehow. Those that choose this unbelievable violence against innocent people have some mental illness going on that leads to this irrational behavior. I don't know if its possible to prevent it. I cannot be rationally explained, since nothing can justify their actions.