Madman or Victim – Where is the love?

On December 14, 28 people died in the small town. Newtown, Connecticut. However on social media sites such as facebook and twitter the focus has been on the faces of 20 school children who went to school happy and who never return home.  Other memorials recall the heroic acts of the six teachers were gunned down in there attempts to save the lives of their students. There are a few who included the mother, of thus man who took 27 lives using three of her four guns.  Only the odd tweet and posts remember a young man, who was hurting so bad that the only way he felt he could express his hurt was to take the lives of 27 people before turning the gun on himself.  He was so angry that taking his own life was no enough.

As a community and perhaps humanity begins to look for clues and answers of how to stop these mass killings from occurring, the truth is we will never know why or fully understand why this man, choose  this day, at this time to take 27 lives with him to the other side of life.

While thousands are blaming gun laws and other blogs are debating who is a good person and ‘what is a bad person’.  Deciding the children are angels in heaven and the ‘bad man’ has gone to hell. The real question is how did society fail this man so badly that he killed 27 innocent people? It is this thought that leads me personally to label the man the 28^th victim.

Was this the action of a madman? I am not sure as I have not seen him as a patient for psychological analysis. However one would be hard pressed to say these were the actions of someone with a sound mind.

Rather the events of Dec 14 were planned by a young man full of pain, hurt and anger. The question is not why he did this. I doubt there will be a logical answer. But what were the cirmstances that lead to this powerful display of violence? I like many can’t help the questions my mind has asked since the shootings? Why, was he hurting? Who hurt him and how?  How many times was he hurt?  Was it one person or was he abused over many years? What was his mother like? Why, was she a gun collector? Did he hate his mother? If so, why did he hate his mother? Was he jealous of the school children?  Did he wish he wasn’t home school? Where is his father? Did he blame his mother for letting someone hurt him?  All questions to which we will never for certain know the answers.

Was he a ‘madman’ or just a ‘bad man’, as others have suggested.  Being so young some may might be tempted to ask if this young man was just ‘born evil’. As a Christian and a Behavioural Scientist I do not believe a person is born ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or just plain bad.  The bible tells us That all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Daniel Scott whose daughter died in the Columbine School shooting describes the balance of good and evil present in each of us; "Since the dawn of creation there has been good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of violence.  The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scoot, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain, Their blood cries out for answers."

When we are born we have an inheritant natural to do the wrong thing.  Our parents are usual the first ones to help us understand right from wrong.  Later there are school teachers, pastors, Sunday school teacher, Principals, policeman and bosses who help shape our understanding of the concepts of ‘good’ and ’evil’. Sadly not all people who influence our children’s lives are the types of influences we would choose for our children.  So often we here the phase “he or she has fallen into the wrong crowd’.  This is what is known as the ‘nature’ of the child vs the ‘nurture’ of a child.

To blame this young man’s parent’s for his unstable mind and any faulting thinking would be wrong.  A person’s behaviour is generally the end product of the chemical make-up of the brain and the sum influence of their environment. In other words society as a whole shapes who we are as individuals.

Sadly for some people their personality make-up might be such that the negative influence of even one or two people can determine their choice to perform what we may call bad acts.  However others seem to undergo tremendous trauma and go on to live what we might call good lives. Of course we know there are times when human behaviour is chemically altered by illegal drugs and alcohol.

Nor will the call for tighter gun control prevent further school shootings.  Again the voice of Daniel Scott expressed this so well to Congress "I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don't believe they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believe they had anything to do with Rachel's muder I would be their strongest opponent."

It is interesting that Conneticut has some of the strongest gun laws in the USA, and yet they did not prevent this tragic event.  This man first tried to buy a gun, but was unable. Not living in a 'gun culture' I do not begin to understand why anyone would want to own a gun, other than sporting reasons.  I am sure individuals have a variety of personal reasons for gun ownership.  Australia has some of the toughest gun regulations in the world and yet their were two separate shootings on the news this morning.  Our gun laws fail to provide us with full protection to pretend otherwise is foolish. "Guns do not kill people! Other people kill people". Guns just mean hat killing on a large scale such as we saw in Newtown is possible.  The are many of ways people find to murder people for whatever reason. 

Hopefully the thoughts I have expressed here show fruitless the search for answer is with complex individual such as ourselves.  For whatever reason this man was hurting and we as a collective society “unintentionally” fail him.  Leaving me to include him in the count of victims in the Newtown School shootings.
 
   

'Perhaps hate is best describe as the absence of love'
Please take every opportunity to let your children know they are loved.