The Irrationality of Violence...

An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (originally featured in the Washington Post) cited a study of mass shootings which tied a great majority of them to persons who had long histories with domestic violence. Most mass shootings are perpetrated by men. That is just a fact. So, researchers began to look into the criminal histories of mass shooters, and what they found was startling. James Hodgkinson, the shooter who attacked the Republican senators and congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game, had been cited for stalking and at least one instance of striking a woman. Similar findings of violence, stalking, and/or domestic abuse were tied to: the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho; Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista, California shooter who killed six and wounded 13; Cedric Ford, who shot 17 people at a Newton, Kansas plant last year; and Omar Mateen, who murdered 49 people in Orlando, Florida at the Pulse nightclub. All of them had various incidents of legal citations for domestic violence.

It would be easy to demonize these people--as we typically do with sexual predators or child pornographers--and want to "lock them up and throw away the key." While some might say that these people are "deviants" who could be "cured" by having a religious conversion experience, the truth is that many of them are also religious, sometimes reaching what we would call the fanatic stage. One thing seems clear--these criminal acts are committed by people with an established pathology. Is this pathology genetic? Is it a form of mental illness?

There is no doubt that deadly criminal acts should be prosecuted by our legal system, although many of the shooters take their own life at the end of their killing spree. And there is no doubt that society should be protected from them, to the best of our ability. The NRA says the answer is to arm ourselves, even dramatizing the Virginia shooting, saying that without the Capitol Police who were present and armed, that baseball diamond could have become a killing field. Yes, but the Capitol Police are well-trained officers, not just people with guns. Had there been more citizens with weapons on the scene, there may have actually been more injuries due to untrained people discharging their firearms. If there is an answer, it is not in more citizens carrying guns.

Nor am I suggesting that those perpetrators of deadly acts--at least the ones who survive--should be simply confined to mental health facilities. While the pathology they exhibit, which according to the study cited in the Washington Post article is possibly a root cause of what can escalate to more serious acts of violence, the actual crime needs to be addressed according to the rule of law. However, the question I believe the article begs is: Should we require some kind of mandatory intervention for these individuals when they are first cited for stalking or domestic incidents? Could it be that the "secret" to getting ahead of the increasing number of senseless killings is to get persons who exhibit excessively controlling and violent behaviors HELP as early as possible?

One thing I do know, though: a recent act by the current administration and Congress to allow persons who have been treated for mental illness to buy and own firearms makes no sense. NO sense. You can cite all of the Second Amendment legal arguments you want, but in so many cases, this is just lighting the fuse. Almost all of the mass shootings have been carried out by persons using legally-owned weapons. In a perfect world, persons who run afoul of the law due to domestic violence or have court ordered PFAs because of stalking would not be allowed to own or possess firearms. We are not a perfect world, and for all of our bluster and rhetoric about this being "the greatest country on Earth," we are far, far from being a perfect country, especially on this issue.

It remains to be seen if the Virginia shooting makes a difference in Congress's views about gun violence, or whether the "bipartisanship" it has temporarily spurred, lasts. While we pray for the survival of Congressman Scalise, we might also pray for our better angels to whisper in the ears of our leaders about heading off the apparent root causes of these deadly incidents, and finding ways to stop arming those with a pathological history.