I am sure you have all seen the news about several recent shooting.
In January a Los Angeles husband and wife who were fired for lying about their employment status to obtain child care planned and carried out the murder suicide of themselves and their five children.
The Oakland shooting by a convicted felon and parole violator took the life of 4 Oakland police officers. This was soon after the shooting of an unarmed black man at a BART station near Oakland which ignited a racially charge confrontations in the city.
Yesterday in Binghamton, NY a man recently laid-off from Shop-Vac and apparently ridiculed by his English as a second language classmates killed 13 people and wounded many more at a community center.
This morning three police officers responding to a domestic violence call were killed by a recently fired man wearing a bullet proof vest in Pittsburgh.
I have been trying to make a little sense out of it myself since I don’t see the rationality behind any of it. Perhaps there is none, but the one thing that is clear from these recent shootings is that there is a lot of anger, frustration and desperation being felt by people during this horrible economy. Whether the individual circumstances are brought on themselves through their own actions or forced on them, these few individuals see no other way out than to take themselves out.
I am a big fan of individual liberties and believe that if you want to take yourself out of this world through whatever mean that is your choice. But there is no justifiable reason to take other people or property with you. I don’t care if you lost your job, face possible incarceration, think cops are racist killers, people make fun of you, you fear the government? Guess what … you can get another job, you will likely get out of prison, cops are just as flawed as every other person on the planet, laughing at yourself is a good thing, and the government does not care about you at all. Really, truly, honestly. So what is wrong with these guys? Are they just plain old crazy to did something tip the balance?
The Christian Science Monitor had a great writeup on some of the possible rational. Men from the 20’s to 40’s (yep, that’s usually who does this type of thing) who are wrapped up in work trying to work make themselves successful move away from their families to pursue professions in other cities, spend more time at work than at home with their spouses or kids. They trade a home support system for a work based support system. Basically everyone that they know or are friends with is at work. When they are fired or laid-off they may feel isolated and abandoned with nobody to help them or probably more pertinently to talk some sense into them when they get crazy ideas like shooting up the local community center.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think people are “rotten to the core” “bastard coated bastards with bastard filling“, but since we have about 5.1 million unemployed people in the U.S. right now we know that not every guy who loses his job will go on a bloody rampage. Perhaps what we should really take away from these recent shooting is that everyone needs a support system of friends and family to help them through hard times. I am sure that everyone knows someone who has been affected by the poor economy whether they have been laid off, or lost their retirement money in the market. So while I doubt that your friends, family members or neighbors hit with hard times are bent on homicidal acts because of their recent bad luck they could probably use whatever support you can offer.
