Carnage at Newtown, Connecticut -- Another Initially Seemingly Inexplicable, Irrational Mass Murder

Carnage at Newtown, Connecticut — Seemingly, But Not, An Inexplicable Mass Murder (Answers)
2012 DECEMBER 18

Another murderous rampage in a long string of randomly occurring mass killings by rapid-fire, chain-fire guns

( powerful automatic and semiautomatic guns not existing, nor envisioned or provisioned for personal household or individual possession and use by the founding fathers of the U.S. in and by the 2nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution established as the law of the land on December 15, 1791 )

Awry Emotions Gone Rogue, Awry Minds Gone Rogue, Translated into Awry, Rogue Behavior

Gone to, Vicious in Heart, Vicious in Mind, Vicious in Deed

Normally meek and shy 20-year-old Adam Lanza methodically shoots to death 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in the state of Connecticut, his hometown, on 12-14-2012, including 20 young children and 6 adults, and then shoots himself to death at the scene. Why? The ad-hoc worldwide cult of the macabre, as in culturally acquired necromania and sadism idiosyncratically precipitated behaviorally, running amuck? Cult of the macabre and the supply-demand market of and fan and subscriber base for the macabre are the same thing.

Clearly, Lanza’s act constituted the assumption of the power of commanding fear and the selection of a venue and class of victims in which and on which he could and did deliver swift and mass kill power. A surface analysis of his frightful, bloody act would find it to have been ostensibly perpetrated in a spiteful drive to exercise frightful negative, destructive and deadly power. His act very closely resembled a human massacre event by a raging monster in a scary story or movie and was analogous to a savage and terrifying Godzilla monster bursting onto the tranquil scene and springing into action with a blazing rapid-fire machine gun and wreaking ruthless wholesale slaughter, striking terror into the eyes, ears and minds of the multitude of people at hand and sending them into panicked, desperate, run-for-your-life dispersed flight in whatever directions affording them any escape, shielding or protection from the mayhem and murder, and the monster.

Some clue as to the psychological motivation for this massacre, as well as mass murders in general committed by individuals or buddies acting in unison, comes to mind from giving thought to the collective-victims style of this kind of act, in part symbolizing a violent and homicidal striking out at, attack on and punishment of the collective, or a select collective within the broader collective whole, and its institutions and communal spaces, indicative of a grievance and hostility against the social collective or a select segment of it. These acts when viewed at their face value but in this context may be credibly interpreted as ad-hoc, personal, personally conceived and executed, combat or military operations against the social collective, or society or an aspect or unit of society — combat operations that are often storm-trooper, homicidal-suicidal (kamikaze) missions in which the perpetrator derives satisfaction in his or her sense of competence and accomplishment in having succeeded in his or her objective and deed of having dealt a grievous multiple or mass death blow (against society or an aspect of it) before or upon his or her own death, incapacity or capture (the ego orgasm from his or her gloating self-congratulations of “mission accomplished”) at or by the hands of society’s official or momentary agents of law enforcement.

Financial condition and economic status of perpetrators must not be overlooked, dismissed or downplayed as dynamic elements involved in the motivational basis for these killings, even if astronomically larger numbers of people in the same financial or economic predicament do not resort to the same mass-killer behavior, as it is noteworthy to me that, to the best of my recall from my readings on this type of killings over the years, I cannot cite one instance in the U.S. of a financially well endowed and secure individual of having engaged in such conduct, although some perpetrators may have had a middle-class upbringing and may have come from a middle-class home. Mass killers may be more of a sub-population of economically troubled people than of mentally disordered people, or may be as much of a sub-population of the economically troubled as of the mentally disordered. Economic class status and standard of living, job status and level of pay or income, level of formal and informal indebtedness, inventory of financial assets, level of savings and equity in assets, necessary living-expense bills and all spending, et cetera, and significant changes in these, all need to be examined in a forensic financial accounting and audit on mass killers for their relevance to incitement of perpetrators to engage in mass killing. Maybe it is the case for many of the perpetrators of these rampage, massacre killings that there is an issue with them of their being “(indefinitely and hopelessly or helplessly) out of financial gas,” dealing with “a chronically food empty or impoverished refrigerator and chronically food empty or impoverished kitchen cabinets” and being “at the end of their financial rope, and at their wits end financially and/or the end of their ability to cope, disposing them to not want to face the future and to freak out.” The instances I am familiar with of an affluent individual having had perpetrated a massacre are of Nepalese crown prince Dipendra who, in 2001, slaughtered 9 people, including his direct parental family (possibly including grandparents), the ruling royals, by automatic, rapid-fire guns in an intoxicated rage reportedly in reaction to a tiff at a family party and his parents’ disapproval of and opposition to his choice of an Indian woman for a bride for himself, and American physician Baruch Kopel Goldstein who carried out a massacre of 29 and the wounding of 125 Palestinians with an automatic rifle in a mosque or Muslim temple in Hebron, Palestine, in 1994.

My guess of cause for this category of killing is that of a convergence of a combination of factors (causal factors): a personal crisis come to a peak or breaking point (including crisis conflict, frustration or aggravation), breaking-point stress (including financial stress), temporary-psychosis-inducing drug use or misuse (not barring, or entirely barring, arguably, psychiatric prescription drugs and their unknown or unacknowledged and unintended dangerous, neuropathological effects or side effects as well as their known adverse side-effects of brain-cell destruction and brain shrinkage), absence of or loss of or in social conscience, chronic, perhaps often hypo-digestible or indigestible, junk-food malnutrition and/or undernurishment, persisting or lasting toxic constipation (literally, full of shit — stagnant, festering shit), a raging oral or other body area infection or raging pain or both, and critical-point sleep deprivation or deficit, resulting in a peculiar, if not symbolic, generalized lashing out or backlash, perhaps directly fueled by seething rage and cumulative hormonal-system adrenaline, androgen and/or testosterone toxicity or intoxication tied or induced obsessive-compulsive aggressive thoughts, fantasies and action impulses. I also propose that a fascination or obsession with or a fetish for firearms, as well as, or an overindulgence in or addiction to horror and/or violence entertainment media (including patronizing violence, anger and hate agitation, encouragement and suggesting mass media and public figures), especially interactive such entertainment media (the amoral, if not psychopatically immoral, purveyors of violence, sadism and death media, who profit and make a living from it, will never acknowledge its mind, emotions and behavior poisoning harm but will do all they can or whatever is necessary to discredit attribution of such harm), may be a significant contributor or significant contributors to mass-murder, or massacre-murder, syndrome or disorder (a purely psychological dimension of influence) — as disgusting and heinous as these killings are to the vast majority of the public, the psychologically healthy and mentally ill alike, to the perpetrators they appear to be grisly, bloody drama or a real-life horror show they are staging and acting out.

In any event, the act of slaughter to some extent would likely constitute a form of perverse catharsis, with catharsis being the emotional, contemplative and acting-out venting, dissipating, resolving or purging of a probable haunting or nagging sense of grievance and hostility, or internal conflict, frustration or regret and hostility, and the stress, tension, or anxiety attendant to these.   In psychotherapy catharsis is typically accomplished by talk therapy -- that is, by talking out, most often, of issues of guilt, shame, hurt, victimization, anger and blame, referred to as “abreaction,” and crying. Catharsis of grievance and hostility, or other, sought or experienced through violence and killing may make sense to the perpetrator, though often it might not make any or much sense to most others or anyone else. Sometimes the hostility is self focused or directed hostility, as in self hostility or hostility that is about one's self. The perpetrator’s psychological consumption of hostile, macabre and horror media would likely constitute a fixation on or attachment to hostility and death sublimation media (vicarious experience media) for arousing, titillating, reinforcing or priming a savored acquired violence and kill desire or drive; and the would-be or latent perpetrator’s passion for, preoccupation with and an identification with and allegiance to guns would likely constitute a psychologically unhealthy identification with and allegiance to instruments and objects that are the instruments and objects of death and destruction, for meting out death and destruction, and that are the symbols and embodiments of kill and destroy power — altogether constituting a socially negatively charged (or loaded), dangerous mindset, conscious or unconscious to and acknowledged or denied by the affected person or persons. Fixation on, love of and the worship of guns is a dangerous and sickness mental condition (a pathology), even if some or a majority of mental health clinicians and professionals, politically and commercially compromised in their integrity, say otherwise. Cults of the gun are just subspecies of the cult of the macabre — ultimately, that is, the cult of horror and death.

Many people find positive or constructive catharsis of stress, built-up tension and anxiety in ecstatic religious performances, Yoga and mediation, therapeutic massage, therapeutic writing, aggressive sports and so forth.

Blood, skin, fecal and urine test samples need to be taken of the bodies by paramedics of these calculating, planful, by-surprise, ambush and blitz rampage and decimation killers, as soon as they are accessed, dead or alive, for biochemical and psycho-physiological analysis. Those taken into custody alive should also undergo an immediate galvanic-skin-response stress test, with longitudinal follow-up such tests, and every perpetrator should undergo a whole-body MRI examination, for compiling a bio-medical data base on this class of killer for study and referencing for preventative public-service intervention, including public education information for families, health services professionals and institutions, schools, employers and individuals.

This grotesquely aberrant and seemingly inane kind of conduct probably may not be the result of merely interpersonal social or psycho-social factors, and may not be sufficiently explained by a background check on these, but may be the result in major part of biochemical and psycho-chemical morbidity, with awry emotion and emotion-driven mentation, or vice versa, gone rogue — a condition similar to but more thoughtful and worse in magnitude than the out-of-character, short-fuse, reckless, violent and deadly impulse behavior expressed by some highly alcohol intoxicated individuals (pleasant and peaceful for the very most part when sober) that is externally triggered situationally. The tactical execution of the killings by these individuals reflects a forethought, deliberative and organized frame of mind or cognitive process that is not present or is much less present in destructive and deadly individuals highly intoxicated on alcohol — a slow-fuse, contemplative, crafty berserk as opposed to a short-fuse spontaneous, impulsive, eruptive, outburst, temper-tantrum spur-of-the-moment berserk or freaking out and berserk. The objective of these individuals seems to be to perpetrate a blatant act of shocking horror and socially blasphemous outrage that is simultaneously a complementary unforgettable or memorable act of infamous heroic villainy, with a focus on “horror,” “social outrage,” and “multiple or numerous (plural) victims” — in brief, an intentional heinous atrocity. Copycat inspiration and behavioral contagion (psychological) from the example of predecessor such killers no doubt exercise some part in the how of and the commitment to the commission of this kind of murder.

We must remember that at their very base these horrific acts of aggression are “assault” upon others with whatever artificial and advanced weapon used (from rocks and sticks, to knives and clubs, to axes, darts, spears, bows and arrows, and swords, to guns and bullets, bombs and missiles, to injury, sickness, disease and death causing bio, gas and other chemical agents, to laser, heat or radioactive-radiation beams and sound frequencies, etc.) being a more effective and efficient, deadly, and often brutal, weapon substitute for the human animal’s natural assault weapons of teeth, fingernails, hand slaps, fist punches, kicks of the feet, and arms and legs in wrestling (human animal assault weapons of attack, mutual attack, and defense or defensive counterattack). Ultimately, violence arises from the fight-or-flight dynamic or instinct (or reflex), with initiator fight often associated with survival predation and economic, sex, familial and ally territoriality — which is a perception-, cognitive-, emotion-based survival response dynamic, reflex or instinct. In viewing the intentional mortal belligerence behind the acts of massacres, mass murders or mass shootings by singular individuals in terms of the fight or flight mechanism, behavioral scientists would include among their hypotheses of explanation that this mechanism got stuck in the alarm and fight (belligerence) mode and on the switched-on position regardless of whether the perpetrator had a background of having been long-term mentally healthy or normal or long-term mentally ill prior to the perpetration of any of these psycho-socially unhinged deadly acts — mental health refers to the state of one’s perceptual-cognitive, emotional, personal and social functionality as well as behavioral health and fitness. The basis of the alarm component of the mechanism need not necessarily be a dangerous creature or other physical threat but could just as well be a circumstantial, social or psychological threat, like a threat or critical threat to one’s sense of security or competence in one’s ability to manage one’s essential affairs or to cope, or to one’s self esteem, or sense of self or social worth (respectability), or equanimity or sense of peace with one’s self or peace of mind, etc. The mechanism may have become stuck in the alarm and belligerence response mode in reaction to regular and/or enduring actual physical or psychological injury to one’s person, such as in being the object of bullying, harassment or disrespectful treatment, or of personally important social, interpersonal or achievement-related failure, or of important, traumatic and intolerable loss, or of traumatic and unforgivable personally unfair, unjust or callous treatment, or of traumatic and unforgivable discrimination or disenfranchisement, etc. Incidentally, the fight or flight response to a threat or danger is not an immutable dynamic but may also be expressed as a fight, freeze, hide or flight (“hide” often subsumed under flight or freeze but may be distinct from these) response as well as a fight, freeze, hide, negotiate or flight response.

Initiator assault not perpetrated for objective gain (material as well as social gain, including the exercise of dominance, influence and control) would be interpreted by psychodynamic theory practitioners as perpetrated to vent hostility and punish the source or object of the hostility (the aversive external-world stimulus/stimuli experienced or perceived by the perpetrator to be the cause, or source, of the perpetrator’s internal emotional response and state of hurt, or pain, and hostility), punishment of the source or object (which may be plural) even by direct or indirect embarrassment and humiliation, or to displace the venting of the hostility onto something or someone valued or highly valued by the source or object of the hostility, or to displace the combustible, combusting hostility onto a convenient and available target (which may or may not have symbolic significance), as on strangers or even defenseless children or animals for the latter, or against inanimate objects, as in punching or kicking through walls (sheetrocked walls), thrusting or knocking over furniture or throwing and/or smashing dishes or bottles.

In our honesty we can all agree to one certainty about the perpetrators of gun massacres and mass shootings: that they are indeed gun nuts. Incidentally, proportionally a small incidence of each the populations of those considered long-term and stably psychologically normal and healthy and those so considered mentally ill are perpetrators of gun massacres, mass shootings or personal bombings and the perpetrators of these acts may come from either of these populations in like proportions but both types (the normally, long-term mentally normal and healthy and those so mentally ill) may be of a similar malicious or dangerous and destructive, or perhaps even a virulent psychotic, state of mind, and underlying awry emotional state gone rogue, while contemplating, planning and executing these acts. Disturbed mentation may engender disturbed emotions or emotionality and disturbed emotions or emotionality may engender a disturbed state of mind or mental process, whose end product, in either case, may be disturbed or rogue behavior.

However, it is questionable that these acts legitimately can always be diagnosed as insane (technically speaking, the acts of mental decompensation and dissociation), whether perpetrated by individuals of either long-term good mental health or mental illness, when they are committed out of an objectively-based and precipitated action-reaction attitude or sense of grievance, spite, grudge and/or revenge and when considering that every human experiences acute emotional states and stark emotional ups and downs and could become negatively emotionally and behaviorally disposed and dangerous given the right circumstances (so to speak, “rubbed the wrong way”) and the at-hand means to be dangerous — mood, personality and behavioral disorders are not essentially conditions of insanity but mainly may be conveniently termed at times mental illness or psychological disorders that may afflict anyone on a transitory or intermittent basis, occasioned by adverse circumstances. Anyone, regardless of his or her mental health background, with a fascination or obsession with or a fetish for firearms, or who hunts (kills) for enjoyment, is a potentially dangerous person or a such latent killer and may be associated, past, present or in the future, with the exponentially many, many, many more common gun killings and shootings of other humans getting little or no communications and news media or public attention in comparison to massacre killers and mass killing. More guns in society will not ameliorate the problems of gun-related killings, maimings, incapacitations and other injuries but will escalate them.

Reject the guns-unlimited gun-nut constituency, lobbyists and merchants and the firearms industry’s agenda of fear, a guns saturated society and raging gun sales. Gun nut in proper speech means gun fanatic.

Whoa!, throngs of exhibitionist, provocative gun-nut 2nd amendment distortionists, extremists carrying and/or wearing guns on beaches, streets, Amtrak trains and in national parks, and wanting to so go into Starbuck’s coffee cafes, and into bars and churches and to arm schools, as a start.

The paranoid, hyper-phobic gun-nut vigilante and violent revolutionary crowd argue they need guns, without limitations and restraint, to resist the potential of tyrannical government, while they menace and anguish our overwhelming-majority peace-loving society who do not want these savage-, bloody-minded lunatics to be our new, self-imposed government and to turn our social, economic and political evolution way back. We need our democratic-republic form of government, in a strong and stable form, to curb them from their longed-for revolution and itchy-trigger, trigger-happy guns and protect us from their would-be, with certainty, tyranny of us, nationally, hemispherically and worldwide, in accord with their dystopic views — if they had government control, these anti-gun-control folks would impose gun control against the majority as well as population censorship (purging [as in extermination and expulsion, or exile], persecution and silencing) of all they dislike, with impunity and without toleration for opposition or complaint. These are not the good guys they portray and presume themselves to be. The gun-violent career criminals, ideological terrorists, controversially deranged (episodic or long-term) mass killers by multi-round and chain-round shooting guns, and garden-variety ordinary gang-, transgression-, impulse-, mischief-, conflict-, situation-, confrontation-, cover-up-, alcohol/drug-crazed-, road-rage-, agitation-and-incitement-, temper-tantrum-, anger-, hate-, grievance-, grudge-, revenge-, jealousy-, envy-, bad-business-deal-, financial/job-loss-, infidelity-, divorce-, malice-of-heart/malice-of-mind-, other-passion-, etc.-, motivated shooters, in possession of or with easy access to firearms, all come from the general gun-nut herd and mentality of conflict-resolution and societal problem solving by firearms and fear and intimidation by firearms, whether with a background of generally intact mental health or chronic mental disorder. In short, their tipping-point (or disturbed-balance) state of mind, with the underlying awry emotional state, and access to particularly public and rapid-fire automatic and semiautomatic guns are the problem.

By the way, ours is becoming a nation of junk-food junkies and junk-food-junky imperialism, sacrificing and defending harm to our physical and mental health in the name of often high-turnover, insecure, low-paying and minimal-fringe-benefits “jobs,” “inexpensive, abundantly affordable foodstuffs” for those of low income and freedom of choice of individuals from the cautionary counsel of and purveyor regulation by the nanny state but really primarily for maximal junk-food company profits, stock shareholder earnings and company executives’ high pay, fringe benefits and bonuses, and for the sake of our kitchen-lab, sci-tech-manipulated craving for this food. Junk food is the insidious bane of American physical and mental health and fitness that the lead cup was to these for the Romans. I attribute to the junk-food diet the widespread dumbing of Americans, including politicians, professionals, the educated and highly educated, and broadcast media figures, observable in the now common and rampant interspersing or saturating of their speech with the interjection “you know,” “you know,” “you know,” “you know,” “you know,” “you know” ….

Breaking-point personal crisis; biological and psychological toxicity and morbidity; situational aggravaters and triggers; seething tantrum-motivated lashing out or backlash by mayhem and murder maximized by automatic or semiautomatic guns; malignant inspiration and behavioral contagion from infamous successful perpetrator examples of carnage, psychologically embraced and admired as villainous heroes of real-life grand or towering horror; overindulgence in or addiction to horror and/or violence entertainment media, especially interactive such entertainment media (which reasonably should sensitize zealously indulgent consumers to copying such behavior and desensitize them to the harm done to others by such behavior), including violent screen and video, music and game media as well as incindiary talk-show-host broadcast media; readily available rapid-fire, chain-fire firearms; a fascination or obsession with or a fetish for guns or firearms; absence of or loss of or in social conscience