A promised discussion

Ten days ago, I touched briefly on the recent spate of high profile violent crimes, specifically instances of mass murder. In the end, I promised that we'd explore the topic further in the days to come.

I'm not exactly enthusiastic about spending time on the subject with Christmas just a few days away. However, the Von Maur store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha reopened yesterday, so I feel it'd be more appropriate to offer this for consideration today instead of closer to or after Christmas.

In USA Today this morning, an article appeared on the second or third page discussing a wave of fear these well publicized incidents have caused. In a nutshell, it can safely be said that random mass killings share a common trait with airplane crashes. The odds are very, very much against them happening, but the normal person wouldn't know it when the scant few occurrences make international news every time they happen.

So what are your odds? On a strictly numerical basis, all things being equal, lets take a figure from Time magazine in about 1988 or so: 464 deaths from firearms in one week of that era. That would be sixty six per day, meaning slightly more than one per state in a given day, or about one in four and a half million if you base it on a U.S. population of three hundred million. Wouldn't you say that anything with one in a million chances would be a 'freak' occurrence?

Let's take a look at a few other odds:

In 2005, in the United States,

*HEART DISEASE killed 696,947 Americans, or .2% of the population of 300 million.
*CANCER claimed 557,271 lives - .185% of the population.
*TOBACCO lead to the demise of 435,000. This is .15% of us.
*MEDICAL ERRORS were the COD of 250,000 patients. .083% of us died that way.
*ALCOHOL led to 85,000 deaths in our nation, or .028% of Americans.
*60,000, or .02% of us, succumbed to AIR POLLUTION.
*Firearms, at a rate of 557 per week, killed 29,000, or .01% of us. That's right, one in ten thousand of us, in a year's time.

When you ruminate on that one in ten thousand figure, remember that those numbers assume all things are equal, but you and I both know that's never really the case.

A firearm may have been the precise, ultimate means in the deaths of 29,000 Americans, but they were not the cause of the deaths.

Some people used a gun to commit suicide. Depression and bouts of other mental illness causes people to kill themselves, not the firearm they use to do it with. No normal person intentionally harms themselves -we wouldn't have survived as a species if that was normal behavior!

A fair number of those deaths were related to criminal activity. Murderers misusing firearms in an unlawful manner killed their victims, who would've been just as dead if they were killed in any other manner. Dead is dead, regardless of whether you're shot, hung, stabbed, bludgeoned, poisoned, run over, pushed out a window, or what have you. There's a lot of ulterior motives driving criminals, but the guns killers use are just the tools with which the deed was consummated, not the cause. At least not any more than a crowbar or bolt cutters causes a burglar to enter your home. The crook had his reasons for breaking and entering; the burglary tools he employed were just pawns. When manufactured by a tool company, they'd been intended to end up on a farm or in a carpenter's tool box. They very well may have been stolen from either of those places, anyway.

Some of the people killed were doing stupid things with guns that they knew full well they shouldn't have been doing. The gun didn't cause the mishap, stupidity caused it! Believe me, men manage to find all kinds of crazy ways to injure and kill themselves and those around them and it sure doesn't take a gun to do it! Not thinking and taking unwarranted risks in order to prove your manhood to your family and friends is all it takes...

As I observed, the odds are never even. If you want to die by gunshot wound, there are a number of things that will GREATLY increase your odds.

The most effective way is to run with a dangerous crowd. Drug dealers are the best for this. Get involved in that lifestyle, then push the envelope by not keeping your word and double crossing everyone you deal with. Become a liability to the organization you affiliate yourself with. Give someone 'above' you some reason to think that you'll expose them to the scrutiny of the authorities. Something bad is sure to happen to you that way.

Offer to do the gang's dirty work. They need 'foot soldiers', right? When someone encroaches on your organization's turf, make loud threats to all who may be concerned then try to make good on them. Be macho about it and go it alone. Take on all rivals single handedly. That'll send a few bullets in your direction sooner or later.

Actually, just keeping company with the wrong people is likely to do you in. Dr. Reinhardt Schwimmer, a Chicago optometrist, learned this the hard way on February 14, 1929. Gangsters fascinated him, and he allowed himself to become obsessed with the lifestyle. I don't know that he did anything unlawful, he just liked to hang around with them and watch them go about their, um, business. He was present in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street at about ten thirty that morning, waiting with half a dozen others for a shipment of bootleg whiskey to arrive when a police sedan pulled up. Three uniformed police officers and a couple of plainclothesmen alighted the car and walked into the garage. What followed wasn't pretty. George 'Bugs' Moran saw the vehicle arrive as he approached his headquarters, the garage, and ducked into a coffee shop while the 'cops' sprayed Dr. Schwimmer and the remnants of the Moran gang with .45 caliber bullets from the Thompson submachine guns they carried. The uniformed 'officers' then escorted the men in suits to the car and drove off, appearing to the rest of the world to have effected an arrest. What the casual observers didn't know was that two of the 'officers' were probably John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, two notorious hit men delivering a Valentine's Day greeting to Bugs Moran, compliments of Al Capone! Both were themselves found dead shortly thereafter. What goes around comes around, doesn't it?

If you stay clear from the criminal element, the odds of being affected by violence are lessened dramatically. The vast majority of homicide victims were known by their killers. This means most of us don't have a lot to worry about. However, as can be illustrated by young Matthew Murray's rampage at Youth With A Mission in Arvada, Colorado, if you're receiving threats from someone, DO NOT IGNORE IT. If they're idle threats, they may go away if you pay no heed to them, but if that happens, you weren't likely in any danger, anyway. Someone who is going to attack you will only take your lack of a response as further justification for their planned assault.

Actually, the threats are a blessing in disguise; an opportunity for you to act. Truly dangerous people often make no threats whatsoever. Al Qaeda didn't let us know they were going to strike on 9/11/2001, did they? If you're receiving any kind of message from someone who's threatening to harm you, you absolutely need to let the police in on it, regardless of what the sender may tell you that would result in. Unless you've screwed up many times in the past yourself and no longer have any credible reputation with them, your local law enforcement agencies take these things VERY seriously! The youth mission apparently put up with Mr. Murray's hate mail for three years, and look what happened to them.

Advice I often give: If you have a bad feeling about someone, listen to the voice inside that tells you to stay away from them! If they look like trouble, they almost certainly are.

There are certainly no guarantees in life. I can't give you any pointers that would ensure your absolute safety. In any case, we're all going to die sooner or later, anyway. I prefer to enjoy life while I've got it, so I don't obsess about the things which may be beyond my control. Most anywhere in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia is a much more dangerous place to be than much of America. There are a lot of guns out there, but most are put away, haven't been fired in years, and many aren't going to be fired anytime soon. We have some active gangs that are very dangerous if you tangle with them, but they've got their hands full keeping after each other and evading arrest. If they're nowhere near you, they're probably not interested in having anything to do with you, either. Stay out of their way, and they'll stay out of yours.

In the very unlikely chance you end up somewhere where shots are fired, you and most everyone around you will be so taken by surprise that you won't know how to react. I assure you that most everyone in the Von Maur store didn't realize what they were hearing was gunfire - it sounds far different in real life than it does on TV or in the movies. If you've never been around it, chances are you'd think someone had detonated fireworks or the building was collapsing when you first heard it.

The reason nineteen year old Robert Hawkins, of Bellevue, Nebraska was able to kill nine people with a stolen rifle was that once he started shooting, every one of his victims was standing there in utter disbelief wondering, 'What the...'. The idea that that could be happening to them was unthinkable because no one expected it to happen to them, or to happen there. And on some level, Mr. Hawkins knew that. He didn't make a threat, he just went somewhere he knew no one would see it coming. There's a reason he went to a shopping mall and not a police station, a large bank, or an airport.

Hawkins relied upon a psychological barrier. Stealing is a barrier to many people; it wasn't much of one to him. Easy. Most of us would take great displeasure in contemplating a mass shooting incident, but as a society, that barrier was broken long ago. It's been done. Using a Kalashnikov type rifle to commit mass murder? Done, several times over, since at least 17 January 1989, when deranged Patrick Purdy killed five Cambodian and Vietnamese refugee children and wounded twenty nine others on the Cleveland Elementary School playground before killing himself. Shooting in malls? Also done, more than once, including at the Mall of America, a mere two hours from my home. Shooting in the Westroads Mall? That was probably fresh territory. I don't recall hearing of any previous shootings there; it's not all that far from where I live, I could drive there and back in a day. If he'd been in Israel, everyone would've ducked and covered at the first shot and armed security guards as well as citizens probably would've killed him within moments. The Israelis have experienced many, many incidents such as that and they've become, I dare say, relatively used to them.

For the sociopath Hawkins, his primary psychological barrier may have been firing the gun, especially indoors. Not too much unlike preparing to jump from a great height. Once one works up the nerve to do it and follows through, you've committed to the act once you start. There's no going back! The noise of firing a rifle indoors is deafening and stuns most people, but once a perpetrator starts it, the adrenaline is pumping so hard and they're so focused on their objective, nothing else seems to matter. For all we know, the kid was screaming as he fired, just like a person in a freefall might.

What other psychological barriers are there to be broken? This is where things get scary, friends. The main reason a lot of atrocious things haven't happened is because they haven't happened. Believe me, as soon as someone does it, others will follow; it will no longer be unthinkable. A great example is Roger Bannister running a four minute mile in 1954. To that time, it was thought to be impossible. Then he did it. Since then, quite a few athletes have run a mile in four minutes or less. A lot of it really is in the mind. If you believe you can do it, you probably can. If you don't believe you can do it, you more than likely won't!

In a Westroads Mall like scenario, if a Kalashnikov wasn't available, could this crime still be committed? Absolutely. It's all about those psychological barriers. Almost any firearm could have done the job if everything was done to make it work. Most any hunting rifle would've had the same results, with one reload, for a total of ten cartridges, all aimed, with one miss. A double barrel shotgun, with shortened (as in 'sawed off') barrels and the most conducive shot load could've been used kill nine people and injured a few more if the assailant was patient and waited to whip the 'scattergun' out and fire both barrels at the time and from the angle where everyone was congregated next to each other. A very basic .22 rimfire rifle such as could be bought at any sporting goods counter for about $100 could've done the same thing, again, at close range and with well placed shots. This is no big chore in this instance, as the distance was so short all Hawkins had to do was look down the barrel at his victim before pulling the trigger. He just about couldn't miss if they were in front of the muzzle, even if he was a thoroughly lousy shot and couldn't hit a tin can at thirty feet.

If no firearms were available, there are still some very frightening options. These are very viable, and very, very scary. I won't even tell you what they are. Do please forgive me, but I have no idea who all is reading this and I sure as heck don't want to be anyone's inspiration.

In a clothing store, hiding places abound, especially in the fitting room areas and in those numerous circular clothing racks on the sales floor. Several very ancient weapons that can be found or made almost anywhere (and I mean almost anywhere, believe me) could very easily be used by some black hearted individual like Hawkins who could hide and take his victims by surprise from behind. If he could compel himself to do it, no one would hear a thing. Hardly even a whimper. The mess would be considerable, and that alone deters almost every civilized person who may be 'teetering on the edge' of insanity. We might think we get mad at people in general, but we don't reach the point where we can do something this crude and grotesque without feeling very, very guilty and ashamed of ourselves either during or very shortly after the act. But someone who truly hates other people, a genuine sociopath, can overcome this barrier and accumulate victims very quickly with very little chance of anyone figuring it out. In other parts of the world, trust me, these techniques are old news, indeed.

From a similar hiding place, there is another couple of very old offensive concepts that are, for better or for worse, still very much with us. They've come a long ways in the last thousand years; most new ones contain a fair amount of plastic, though anyone halfway handy could build either from more basic materials. These are a silent projectile weapons, not very large in the configurations I'm alluding to, but capable of killing a person from a moderate distance. Deployed from suitable concealment, the kill would likely not be entirely clean since I imagine that half of the victims would react loudly when stricken. No one would be expecting to hear a startled scream in a mall clothing store, and when the next person came along to investigate, the assailant could've easily reloaded the weapon(s) and proceed to catch them by surprise, too. Again, nine people could be maimed or killed with relatively little trouble and before anyone really knew what was happening, and most likely no one would really know where it was coming from. In fact, in the ensuing bedlam, the miscreant doing it could probably escape if they played it right from start to finish.

The other very possible approach a true cretin could resort to is much used elsewhere, and if you're older than about twelve and have watched much network news in your lifetime, you've seen video of these being deployed in third world riots. Again, it hasn't happened here because it hasn't happened here, and as soon as it does, we're going to be plagued by it for years afterward. No, I'm going to tell you what it is! What I will tell you is that it can kill a room full of people, leave many others with horrendous permanent wounds, and when used expertly, contains an unbelievable amount of destructive power. One ingredient is in contact with your skin right now as you read this, unless you are very, very strange indeed. No, you're not ALWAYS in contact with this, but when you're not, you're very unlikely to be using the Internet. The other three ingredients are going to be within no more than 100 feet of just about all of us, though you probably wouldn't be able to truly access any of them right away if you knew what they were. They might be nearby, but you'd go to some effort to obtain them for such use. Gathering these items specifically for this use would be a very quick errand - a half hour at most if you live in town. I offered that statement of truth merely to illustrate how ubiquitous the necessary components are.

Let's hope we never have to experience someone so evil, so indecent, with so little regard for their fellow human, that they would be willing to act out these atrocities where we live and work.

Remember, things may sound dire and the world can look bleak, but it really can be a whole lot worse. Compared to what people elsewhere have been through in history, we Americans have been most fortunate to enjoy as much peace as we have in over 230 years!

Pray for nothing worse to happen.

The TiGor