On May 23, 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Roger killed six people
and wounded 14 in Isle of Vista, California. Roger’s motive was revenge for
sexual and social rejection. Roger sent an autobiographical manuscript to
family and friends detailing his frustrations over not having a girlfriend and
his hatred for women.
Roger, who had well documented mental health problems,
having seen multiple therapists since he was eight years old, may have been a
misogynist.
In 2011, he splashed his latte on two girls waiting at a bus
stop for not paying attention to him. At one point he told people that at a
party he tried to push some girls over a ledge after being mocked.
In his manifesto, written on April 30, 2014 some three weeks
before his rampage, he described his plan to kill people. He complained that at
age 22 he was still a virgin and had never even kissed a girl.
To say that the three men listed above were mentally ill is
painfully obvious, but the common thread in their illness is their problems
with women. This thread may be a clue to identifying potential mass killers.
This thread certainly underscores the need for a new, massive commitment to
mental health care.
* * *
The problem in analyzing the causes of school shootings is
that it often reveals a generous helping of incompetence and ignorance on the
part of senior law enforcement, school, and mental health officials. That is
certainly the case in the Appalachian School of Law murders and the Virginia
Tech rampage.
To quote Douglas Kellner in his book, Guys and Guns Run Amock, “Complex events always have a multiplicity
of causes and to attempt to produce a single-factor explanation or solution is
simplistic and reductive.”
So yes, part of the solution begins with enforcing the laws
and rules we have in place. But that is no excuse for failing to tackle the
plethora of causes behind the growing number of school shootings. (To be
continued)
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