Yesterday, we had the tragic shooting of a 24 year old television repo
rter and her 27 year old camera man, one of whom was engaged and the other of whom had just moved in with her boyfriend. The assailant, another former reporter, filmed himself shooting the two victims, and then posted the results on Facebook and Twitter. Both Facebook and Twitter took the posts down almost immediately, but not before a few people managed to download them.
I could comment on the gun violence aspect of this story, but what would be the point?*
This, by the way, was not an act of domestic terrorism. This was an old-fashioned revenge killing. The perpetrator, who had been fired from the TV Station, claimed that he had been discriminated against for being a black man.
Maybe. Who knows. He filed a discrimination complaint with Virginia’s anti-discrimination agency and they had not validated the complaint.
We do know this guy had a screw loose. Maybe a lot of screws.
He left a 23 page manifesto, of course.
[Yawn]
This would just be another extremely unfortunate episode of workplace violence but for his filing himself and posting on social media.
Those tactics are straight out of ISIS.
How long will it be before we have some copycat asshole using the same tactics to film himself in some awful act of violence?
Not long, I predict.
This is what our world is coming to. A world populated by unreconstructed narcissists with access to social media and who understand no proportionality to their petty grievances, whatever they are.
Have you noticed that the grievances of these self-appointed assassins are always petty. They’re always something like:
Someone didn’t pay enough attention to me.
Someone didn’t make friends with me.
Someone didn’t want to date me.
Someone made fun of me.
Someone didn’t employ me.
Someone didn’t attend to my every need.
Grow up, narcissists! Your every need is not at the center of the Universe.
But that’s not going to happen.
They’re not going to grow up.
They’re just going to keep buying guns, keep arming themselves, keep justifying their childish rage, keep wreaking havoc in a world they don’t really deserve to live in.
One bad person can do so much more damage than 100 good people.
And so it goes.
*If I did comment on the gun situation, I would just quote John Oliver, who said this: “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”
I could almost agree that there is no point in complaining about the gun violence aspect. But there is a point, and that is that it will never go away if people are willing to let it continue. If the NRA is allowed to dictate to our (OUR) legislators because they scream so very loud when anyone opposes them, they will continue to scream when opposed. The first battle in this fight for the return of national sanity is to put the NRA out of business. Close them down. Ban them from public discourse. Make them the pariahs they have chosen to become. Let the legislators who bow to their demands know that come next election, they will be unemployed. The NRA was a good organization in years past, but they have become too threatening to this country with their insistence on uncontrolled proliferation of guns. But, then, who is it that is pushing the NRA to do this, to make it so profitable to manufacture gun? There are many behind the scenes powers to be reckoned with. But as long as their screams are loud enough, they believe themselves to be untouchable. Are they? Are they really?
Speaking as a UK citizen who loves to visit the USA and who spent a tear in Texas in 1072-73. I can only feel your pain and understand your words. Its the cultural difference that has driven the gun lobbyists to live in a time warp. But the number of good citizens in the USA will win out one day.
woops sorry typo! 1972-73 not 1072-73
Uhm… Obviously you do have a point, what he did was totally inhumane and society would be a much safer without people who can’t see past the immediate state of their circumstances. However, I do not thing that you calling his rage petty is fair and the analogies that you listed are arguably shallow compared to his racial discrimination claims. It is sad how you are so quick to dismiss his plight just because he had “a few loose screws” and that his complaints were invalidated. What if the same people who did not pay attention and dismissed this man’s complaints were part of the system that discriminated against him or even the masters of the ship? So instead of incurring the danger of having their names and the company’s name slurred with racist allegation decided to eliminate the problem and declared him insane and his claims invalid…