It was an eerily similar story on Dateline. Unstable man, violent, threatening, abusive to women (and a child in the Dateline case) and someone who resorted to violence long after the initial circumstances. A terrible story and thankfully, that woman and her son are now safe as the perpetrator of all that horror killed himself after murdering 6 others.
I don’t dispute that he had a personal grudge that he couldn’t let go of. Point is, lots of people have personal grudges they can’t let go of, but they don’t murder five people because of them. Why did his personal grudge lead to mass shooting, and why now? Was it because he heard someone say to murder journalists? Was it because he heard someone say the media is the enemy of the people? Or did it have nothing to do with inflammatory statements that some people have made?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I think it is at least a reasonable hypothesis that he was mad at the newspaper, so the suggestion to murder journalists, the enemy of the people, sounded like a good idea to him, even though it would sound like mere ranting to other people.
A reasonable hypothesis would include reasons to believe committed this (alleged) crime because of being instructed to do so. So far, there is no reason to believe he felt he was following orders. So far, the evidence only points to his personal grudge.
We all seem to agree he felt the newspaper and its employees were evil. Do you feel, CF, that he was pushed over the edge of sanity by former President Van Buren, who said: “No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration.” ?
I’m speculating that the suggestion to kill journalists might have influenced him to kill journalists.
Maybe we could look at this quote from Former President John F. Kennedy: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” He is advising us not to jump to politics too quickly.
The crime is not “alleged;” crimes were most definitely committed.
Some people are just mentally unable to live in society. The Unibomber, the Aurora theater shooter, the Newtown shooter, and yes, the guy on Dateline last night.
Many of them seem to be brilliant so can figure out how to stay inside the law until the final act. That appears to be the case with the Annapolis guy. I found the comments from the lawyer who had represented his first stalking victim (high school classmate). The guy was just unable to be reasoned with but knew how to stay inside the law, annoy, harass, threaten, disrupt lives, but never get arrested for it.
Others are not so brilliant but just evil. I worked with a guy who had been a public defender. They are pretty hard to ravel and always look to the good in their clients. One of his previous clients was arrested, with his brother, for a horrible murder. My co-worker said he’d never encountered a more evil family, with the mother being the worst of the bunch. Some people cannot be rehabilitated, can’t be made safe for society.
My “alleged” was misplaced, thanks for catchint that, Nrds. The allleged part is the suspect believed to have committed the crime. You are absolutely right. Nrds shooting people, and killing people is against the law. Anybody willing to go into a newspaper office and shoot people is willing to break the law.
The hypothesizing might have some legs, with the killer stating it wasn’t just a random voice in his head but one a lot of us recognize. Till then, it might be about as useful to ponder how many angels will fit on a pin.
Things are usually simple rather than complex and, sad as it is to say, there are no end of stalker/harassers that don’t need an external trigger.
This man had a lot of people worried that he might do something like this. It reminds me of the Florida shooter, who also had many people predicting future violence (and he had 40+ visits from police).
One small step we can take regarding people like this is pretty obvious to me - a federal no-gun list.
So do some feel that it wasn’t just a mentally ill guy with a long-time personal grudge, but was instead the President’s words that sent this fellow over the edge? President Martin Van Buren, I mean. (quoted post 62)
Was the alleged perp unwilling to tolerate the evil that he felt the newspaper had done to him? Was he following ol’ Marty’s advice?
Greenwitch (post 69) may be on to something though. Perhaps the Federal gov’t could set up judges to hear cases of people that “might do something like this” and if after their due process, they are judged to be too dangerous, they could then be put on a federal no-gun list. Then anybody on that list would be breaking the law if they obtained a gun.
How do guns get taken from folks who end up on a no gun list? Who takes the weapon(s) if they don’t voluntarily bring their weapons for disposal? There are a LOT of guns out there.
Maybe Greenwitch has the answer, HiMom, Greenwitch presented the idea in post 69. As I said in an earlier post, the shooter in the newspaper office was willing to break laws about shooting and killing people.
Yes, having a list can be part of an answer, but again, how does one get weapons back from someone on that list.
@younghoss - there are laws like that in 5 states. CA, OR, WA, Indiana (surprisingly) and one other that I can’t remember.
Family members and/or law enforcement could petition the court to not let someone buy guns, or to temporarily confiscate their guns, if they are going through a crisis where they could harm themselves or others. It was brought up recently because law enforcement would surely have made such a petition after one of the 40+ times they were called about the Florida shooter.
But more recently, I heard of a case where a young man’s guns were confiscated temporarily, and given to his father to hold. The young man got them back. Clearly, that is not an ideal situation but we should keep trying.
As I undetsand that case, the father broke the law by permitting the son access to guns that had been taken away. And the son, then broke laws by shooting and killing people.
Maybe Greenwitch can post the answers to the questions in post 72.
They are called Red Flag laws …
https://everytownresearch.org/red-flag-laws-helping-prevent-mass-shooting/
This could have turned into a disaster:
@greenwitch, I think you are referring to the WaffleHouse shooting in Nashville. The shooter’s father had been given his guns, but he returned them to shooter later. I would be very much in favor of the kind of law you are suggesting. I would also favor laws holding gun owners or custodians responsible for access to these weapons.
The school shooting in my area earlier this year was possible because a parent had left their weapon in a non-secure setting. Many people say they keep their weapons secure and their ammunition secure in a different setting, but family members know where keys are kept, what security combinations are, etc. While this seems to have been a factor in our latest area school shooting, this failure to maintain secure storage is even more problematic for access to weapons used in suicides.