U.S. Shootings: Why They Killed

- An Alabama man goes on killing spree at the start of last week. At least 9 dead.

- Another man barges into a birthday party at the end of the same week on Sunday, the 15th of March, shoots his separated wife and three others to death, then kills himself. Four dead.

It’s not the dead count that matters as much as the reason killings happen. People kill for different reasons. For fun (kicks), for revenge, out of frustration, hunger for power, need to dominate, proving their supremacy (to others, to themselves).

Now, why did they do it? The two killers from last week. Let's us try to get into their minds. It could be that they were genuinely hurt by the world, or it could be that they were genuine psychopaths; either way, it’s a screwed up world we’re living in.

Alabama’s Michael McLendon went on rampage across two Alabama counties, burning his mother's house down and shooting strangers before killing himself. In all, he killed nine victims, including four members of his family. He had apparently gone to the metal plant, where he once worked, to do some more shooting as he had plenty of ammo with him.

Now, McLendon obviously wanted to cause maximum damage, what with all the ammo and guns he had with him. It’s a fair guess that he had just lost his mind. He couldn’t take it anymore; the frustration and the need to get back at society for messing around with him. Ditto for the birthday party shooter from early Sunday, who, like McLendon, killed himself after his killing spree. They both came from underprivileged working backgrounds--Mclendon was a metal plant worker, and the birthday man was a cook-turned-electrician--and both had a disturbed family life. They had similar lives that ended similarly. You might say that I’m reading too much between the lines, but I see a pattern there.

People need affection and understanding from the family, and acceptance and appreciation from the society. You don’t kill your family members unless you’ve completely lost faith in humanity. Society functions as a whole, and it has its own way of screwing up certain people who behave out of line. Those who refuse to play by the society’s stupid rules get pushed into a corner, where they can only implode or explode.

Regardless of what the religious gurus and doyens of justice tell you, killing for revenge or out of frustration is understandable. I say that because we, the humans, are a screwed up race to begin with, and one is tested to the extremes in this most stupid world of them all sometimes.

And we are screwed up majorly due to the machinations and manipulations of those who govern the society. Of course, their motivation in governing society is two-fold: A. to make sure humans, being the animals that they are inside, don’t start running amuck and wipe each other out; and B. to attain their psychopathic selfish ends.

The doyens of society, since they have to keep the masses civil in order to rule over them, have fed a few fears in people. Three to be precise: fear of God, fear of police, and fear of society itself. God to control people’s wayward motivations--their inner actions or morals, and police to control their physical actions. And everyone has to conform to the society's customs, beliefs, and conventions for the masses to stay disciplined and for the chieftains to continue to rule.

Their propagandas work with the masses majority of the times, but, once in a while, it’s only natural for some wayward human beings to go astray, and stay out of the grip of police, too, for a space of time. And this is the time when violence takes place; when individuals somehow break free of direct and indirect behavioral bounds.

By Harpreet Bhagrath

The writer is the Chief Editor at themoneytimes.com

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