Take someone who is mentally ill/unhinged, add rage, and paranoia, then weaponize this individual, and you’ve got a murderer/mass murderer on your hands.
The “rage + paranoia” is a highly incendiary combination. In these mass murders it strikes me that “paranoia” is almost surely present and necessary—the murderous individual believes that it’s “him against a world” that has “screwed him over,” the world (and everyone in it) becoming a global, generalized “object” and “target” of his violent contempt and rage.
His is a worldview in which he is the “outsider” and everyone else is “on the inside;” in his paranoia, immaturity and narcissism, he has divided the world into these rigid categories—himself on the “outside,” and everyone else “on the inside” (literally and figuratively “on the inside”); the latter become “fair game” for the vengeance he has accumulated and the plans he incubates to ventilate it.
This is how innocent people, and small children, seemingly inexplicably get lopped into the vortex of his rage: as members of the “inside,” everyone in his warped mind becomes a “target”–a generalized, deserving target of his hatred (again, by virtue of merely being “on the inside,” where he, alone, is not.)
I worked for two years, weekly, with a client who, two years after I last saw him at the community mental health center where I worked, gunned down seven children at a hotel swimming pool. He had been full of rage, paranoia and was mentally unhinged. He found himself some weapons, big surprise, with perverse ease. Having weaponized himself, he went to town and shattered the lives of these innocent kids and their families.
He was on the “outside,” perceiving himself to be alone there; where the world, and everyone in it, had it easy, he perceived himself as a “victim,” as an “outsider,” as not belonging, as ignored and persecuted; blatant paranoia and delusions warped his thinking terribly; his rage was chronic and rose as implacably as flood-waters, becoming uncontainable.
Finally, easy access to weapons was the final stage of what, in retrospect, seemed an almost inevitable outcome.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
There are no words to express my deep sadness.
Our love and prayers are with you Sandy Hook.
http://news.yahoo.com/one-one-shattered-newtown-buries-dead-002517432.html
Katydid, When I was little my older brother thought it would be fun to see how close he could shoot at my head with his bb gun without actually hitting me, well I stood up against the wall and got shot in the ear. My brother isnt a mass murderer but he did turn out to be an asshole.
IMO if a hunter cant hit a deere with one or two shot’s he better just go home for the day. Hunter’s dont need machine gun’s….but then again when we live in a world where gun’s are made to kill masse’s of people..we live in a fucked up world,.
MoonDancer my dearest cyber sweetheart,
I am a country girl. If a guy can’t drop a deer with a bow, he’s not much of a hunter. Yer right, a hunter doesn’t need a machine gun in order to get his own meat. But my weapon that I use for personal protection has ammo to do the most damage on a wide spread. It means I don’t have to depend on perfect aim to kill the person attacking me. It is the ammo that people want to take away from me. So I stocked up. ps I will say I am more afraid of my government than I am of a LEGAL gun owner. How many people do not know yet that the police do NOT HAVE to answer a 911 call, it is up to their DISCRETION.
Yer right. We live in a phkd world. But it has ALWAYS been so. MAD WORLD. Adam Lambert. Youtube it. pps. Hope yer brother married my sister. THAT would be divine justice for BOTH of them.
KatyDid, thanks for the letter…I hope that he never gets out but you are right, 99% of them DO get out at some point in time. I will keep him in as long as I can, but it is not up to me, unfortunately.
I just have to keep as much pressure on the politically appointed parole board and hope that they will try to cover their own arses by keeping him in prison. Maybe the letters from all over the world protesting his parole will make them think that if they let him out and he does try to kill me, or does kill me, that they will face an international hew and cry. But you never know, I just think about the judge that let Dr. Amy Castillo’s x husband have unsupervised visits with her kids after threatening to kill them, and HE DID KILL THEM. What happened to that judge? Is he still on the bench? Can he sleep at night? I hope he has the fleas of 1000 camels in his crotch for the rest of his miserable life and I hope there is a hot spot in hell for him. Unfortunately, there are more incidents of that kind of thing than we realize until we start to look at it.
I am just doing what I can to keep myself and my sons safe…and I too sleep with a gun near by head and one in every room of the house, and a trained guard dog by my bed (as long as she lives then I’ll get another dog) and if the day comes that he or one of his friends comes to my door, I will do what I have to do. You can only back a badger so far back into its hole before it comes out fighting, tooth and claw. I’ve backed down as far as I intend to go.
I do wonder how people can live with themselves when their actions freed the person who murdered the innocent, the person that others BEGGED to be protected from. For the few cases I’ve heard, they rationalize. I do agree with you Oxy, about backing a badger back into it’s hole. I realized when I had nothing left to lose that anyone (my husband or anyone he sends) who comes on my property to harm me will find themselves in more danger FROM ME. I don’t have a guard dog but I do have a sensitive dog who runs to me for protection. That’s all I need to go on alert.
I have my 3 wiener alarm system ~! Nobody can come on this place that I dont know about it. If they can get past that and my shotgun they can have what ever they want. I will even help em load it up.
I wish all Patrick wanted was money or stuff….but this old badger is backed as far down her hole as she intends to go…so I hope he doesn’t stick his nose in the opening to see what’s there. LOL
Oxy,
if enough people back you up with letters, he won’t see the light of day for a long time.
Furthermore, this could be another opportunity to get media attention on the problem of psychopathy. Your son was actually diagnosed as anti-social, right? The timing is right, unfortunately, because of the recent infanticide/matricide.
Skylar,
I am hoping you are right! I have written and re-written my own letter over and over….and re-re-re-written, and I don’t know how to approach it. I don’t want to “tell the same story” over and over, I want to put something PERSONAL in it…yet some how I seem to end up retelling the story over and over….and maybe I will just start from scratch and tell it from the point of view of Alan Lanza’s DEAD mother…
Rather than try to educate the parole board about ASPD so much, and quoting Hare and Cleckly etc, as in just looking at it from the point of view of the mother who tried to get her son “help” when there was NO help for him and look at what happened. While last time I focused on educating the board about psychopaths, this time I may just focus on the school shooting and the MOTHER who cried out for help and no one listened. Apparently she DID try to get him help, and when there was none forthcoming she tried to take care of him herself and look what happened.
I can’t imagine being a professional who dealt with one of these mass murderers prior to their attack. It would be so difficult and a load to carry. On many levels the cards are stacked against help for the people who need it. They themselves hinder help for them.
I am frustrated with those who don’t believe in true evil. Dr. Drew is a voice that from what I am seeing, is more trouble than help. He’s nice and all but he’s in denial about what humans are capable of and he’s still believing those false teachings we have overcome like “everyone’s good deep down inside” or “with the love these people never got they can change”. I really see him as reckless but wanting to do good.
This is why this website is so essential for getting the word out. I fear the overreaction now that everyone is standing at attention from what this guy did to those kids.
As far as the guns go, I am glad I know what weapons are being used. I FEAR guns being taken away as I can totally see these psychos with bombs, poisons and any means of destruction they can think of when they decide to do this. An attack with poison or bombs can take a whole heck of a lot more innocent people and these guys haven’t been stupid. These most recent killers have been very smart.
OxD, I don’t feel believed about the father of my child. He is holding that job making $180k per year (of course as it’s 4 times any pay he ever made) and he spent the first 3 years of prison release with us as targets so he was having revenge, destroying lives, while getting a life. He has since started abusing others but nobody seems to wrap their mind around THEY DON’T CHANGE! It’s not what we want to believe. It’s just the darn truth. It’s so difficult to stay strong against all who look at me like I am the disgruntled ex now! It’s even been said I only wanted money (child support) but I didn’t ever even file for child support! It came with the attack. I feel like it’s blood money. What about the decade I got nothing? I begged to forego child support to just be left alone but that just fed the beast. What about the attorney bills we all pay to protect ourselves? Why don’t people get it? It’s exhausting. I am struggling with this holiday season. It’s the one where you are left looking around at the wreckage and wondering what’s gonna happen……