Tragedy Of Mass Shooter Is Morality Play Of A Disconnected Society
I knew a mass killer or someone who had the potential to be a mass killer. You probably had him in your school, too. He sat at his ninth grade school desk in the back of the room, always staring out the classroom window, seemingly disconnected, locked in his own, secret world. He looked different, his hair always seemed messy, his clothes were unstylish, he smelled. The way he carried himself was different, he clutched his books tightly to his body, fearful that someone might try to knock the books to the ground. The way he walked, he always seemed to amble warily on the side of the hallway, along the lockers, as if he wanted to become a part of the wall, staring down, never making eye contact with classmates passing by. The way he talked, his voice was high-pitched, his speech was clipped and fast, all different and in the world of adolescence, he was raw meat for bullying and ridicule.
This potential killer in waiting was faceless, nameless, picked on, bullied, unable to make friends, unable to defend himself, seeing himself as powerless in a violent, aggressive world. His world is dark, lonely, without a future. He is desperate and angry, very, very angry. We’ve all seen him, we’ve all met him and we’ve done nothing for him, just turn our gaze away and hope he will disappear because he is so inconvenient or maybe the more unfeeling among us will knock the books out of his hand and laugh. He may walk strangely, muttering to himself, smiling a strange unhappy smile, like a pressure cooker about to blow. He is lost in an ocean of faceless anonymity and he is powerless to deal with the hostility he senses coming from everywhere. He is not like you and me and that makes him frightening and it makes us avoid him. Nobody signs his high school yearbook, the narrative under his name reads only “loves video games.” No notations of School Chorus, 4; or Football team, 2,3,4; or Drama Club, 2. He was not a joiner though he yearned to be one but was held back by a mile high stone wall of insecurity and self-doubt, so he didn’t even try.
He seemed so distant, so disconnected, so difficult to reach even by people of good will. His home life is lonely, filled with violence, no friends, parents who fight all the time, no siblings. He retreats to his room, hiding in his video game world, while his parents are ignorant of the tragedy of their child. Desperate for a friend, his despair turns to rage, and he needs a way to vent his rage without ever showing it to anyone or he feels he will explode. He escapes into violent computer games and begins to fantasize that he can seize power somehow, some way and there is no way out of his self-imposed exile.
He feels worthless but worse than that, he feels different from anyone else, like he came from another planet, like in the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” He is so desperate for a friend, desperate for a girlfriend but he doesn’t know how to be a friend and he feels utterly unequipped to attract a girl and soon he becomes so hopeless that he loses any anchors or any prospects for happiness. People say he’s shy or withdrawn or plain weird and adolescents are not the model of empathy. Some say he’s just going through something. And it is, something he has been going through for many years, building up exponentially, fear upon fear, hurt upon hurt, anger upon anger and he is keeping score. All he craved was love, friendship but instead he caved in.
I don’t know what happened with this sad young man. Hopefully, he somehow found inner strength to seek out something to make his life seem worthwhile, something short of violence.
He can be helped before it’s too late. So don’t tell me nothing can be done. I have seen how nothing is done, how the adults throw up their hands in surrender and frustration and how the stage is set for a horrible conclusion. You won’t stop it by turning schools into armed encampments or prisons. The only hope is to help these lonely, angry souls and show them warmth, show them they are not aliens, show them that they can have a life. It is not easy.
This may describe a future killer or it may describe a fairly typical adolescent who is trying to find a way through the angst that is the way of most adolescents.
Ever since the Columbine School massacre in Littleton, Colo., in 1999, all kinds of experts have tried to find ways to identify the troubled youths and to deter them from violence. And last week, yet another troubled young man, Robert Crimo III, 22, went on a shooting spree at a July 4 parade in a Chicago suburb, killing seven and wounding more than 36 people. Robert Crimo III was a self-styled rapper, whose parents were split and who lived with his father. Under the stage name “Awake the Rapper,” Crimo posted a disturbing music video in 2021 that featured drawings of a stick figure wearing tactical gear carrying out an attack with a rifle, and a newspaper clipping about Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated John F. Kennedy. People said he was a quiet young man. The signs were there but they could have come from any rebellious young adult who found music to be a way to let off steam and who would find a way to live after the flood of youthful hormones had subsided.
A detailed reports on school shooters, “The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective,” was published in 1999 by the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. It notes that there are no easy answers though the people in charge want easy answers.
As H.L. Mencken put it, “For every problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong.”
The FBI reported on the difficult if not impossible attempts to identify the young person so troubled that he will resort to violence. Of course the person is troubled but so are the many others who do not go violent.
“This is simple statistical logic,” the report said. “when the incidence of any form of violence is very low and a large number of people have identifiable risk factors, there is no reliable way to pick out from a large group the very few who will actually commit the violent act.”
The report could have been written today as it goes on to say that “at this time there is no research that has identified traits and characteristics that can reliably distinguish school shooters from other students. Many students appear to have traits and characteristics similar to those observed in students who were involved in school shootings.”
It cautioned not to be overly aggressive in trying to identify the most troubled who may be on a path of destruction and to understand that “the path toward violence is an evolutionary one, with signposts along the way.”
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail,” the report said.
The youth on a path of violence may make threats, “brooding about frustration or disappointment, (have) fantasies of destruction or revenge, in conversations, writings, drawings and other actions.”
Or it may be the signs of the typical adolescent “struggle with vulnerability and acceptance. (‘Am I lovable and able to love?”), with questions of independence and dependence and with how to deal with authority, among other difficult issues.”
The potential killer could be a student “preoccupied with themes of violence, hopelessness,despair, hatred, isolation, loneliness, nihilism or an ‘end of the world’ philosophy.’
However, the report notes, “many adolescents are fascinated with violence and the macabre and writings and drawings on these themes can be a reflection of a harmless but rich creative fantasy life.”
There are no simple answers other than for schools, families and friends to work harder to provide comfort to the most vulnerable and most troubled.