Entertaining Demons Unaware
There are some interesting revelations coming out of the trial of the 'Batman' murderer.
[A]nyone looking for a trigger or tipping point with mass killers is usually disappointed, said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego.
"There's no such thing as someone snapping," said Meloy, who is not involved in the Holmes case. "What we know now is that even if a person is psychotic, they can still plan and methodically go about the preparations to carry out a mass murder."
Mass violence is usually premeditated, following a path that begins with a personal grievance and is complicated by narcissism and paranoia. But only 1 in 5 of these killers is psychotic, Meloy said.
Psychosis is something Holmes knew all about. Before the shooting, he was preparing to give a class presentation on "MicroRNA Biomarkers" that provide a biological basis for psychiatric and neurological disorders.
About the same time, he was amassing deadly firepower: Two Glock pistols. A shotgun. An AR-15 rifle. Boxes upon boxes of ammunition - 6,295 rounds in all.
That statement, in a nutshell, explains why background checks are nothing more than a placebo for making people feel safe from mass murderers. An 'on-scene' citizen's only hope may come from a ready service firearm — not from a "background check", or any other bureaucratic procedure. This category of murderer is not 'insane', but cunning.
"What the hell happened?" Arlene Holmes [mother of the murderer] writes..."
"How can the kid who read about the Berenstain Bears and John Stewart's Earth and Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, how could he change?" she asks in another, "Jim's Room." "I leave his room untouched because I need the memories and tangible evidence that he was a good person."
And that statement, from the mother of the murderer, suggests a familial lack of ability for dealing with evil, with a latent potential for growing a murderer.
There is a cure for the madness!
/fl