bring the shooters down
As a young child in public school I lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. We were rehearsed in methods to protect ourselves — crouched under our desks or collected into the sub-basement of the school building. We never knew when the attack might occur but believed both that it was inevitable and also unlikely that it would hit us. That fear, like any childhood trauma, never leaves though it churns through the sturm and drang of all our life’s epochs. In 1999 a mass shooting occurred in a Columbine Colorado high school. Key features of that shooting have become emblematic and inspirational, much like the complex iconic symbols of the Nazis. Columbine became enshrined by these features: the killing instrument an AR-15; the target: children in a public school; a prior announcement of intent on social media; a militia-style clothing in black; age of shooter: 17-18; the shooting as a last stand with shooter’s death or suicide.
The one word missing from most reports about school shooters: SERIAL.
Serial killers are, alas, popularly known and form a well-documented and publicly followed group. FBI Special agent Robert Ressler used the term serial homicide in 1974 in a lecture to police staff in England. The term soon migrated to “serial killer” and stuck.
“school shooters may take incentive from the possibility of outgunning their forerunners.”
There is more than the adjective that forms a commonality between serial killers and serial shooters. For one, each killer or shooter has studied the lives and famous crimes of their forebearers. Dennis Rader, one of the few living serial killer eager to declaim his origins, methods, and precursors, had studied Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy to gain both inspiration as well as methodological pointers, and especially to create a public figure that would compare and compete with these progenitors.
The school shooters match that profile. They are serial killers closely following their predecessors: most are near age 18; all procured an AR-15 assault rifle and a supply of ammunition rounds; most provided early warning of intent on social media; they dressed in black often with bullet-proof jackets or vests; perhaps all regarded the shooting as their last stand — some were apprehended, only one was killed by police, and most committed suicide at the scene; like serial killers competing against their lot, school shooters may take incentive from the possibility of outgunning their forerunners.
The search for signs that could serve as preventatives remains useless. For those shooters who had mental health issues or arrests prior to their shooting rampages there is no possible schema for signaling them as murderously dangerous. While many or most could be characterized as loners or outliers or even depressed young persons, nothing prepares the family or the community for the shift toward resolute killing. With all the drills by schools and by police, shootings occur in almost a split second where no preparation allows for a successful intervention.
The solutions rests with the removal of AR-15 level assault weapons from all hands except the military. The obvious glamour associated with the AR-15 must be a principal incentive toward the very concept of a mass school shooting with enormous numbers of fatalities achieved in short minutes.
This Is not an attack on the second amendment. It is a sane first step toward arresting the progress of serial shooters, if not aborting it entirely.
Please, stop killing our children.
