Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
“Seems the more people you kill, the more you are in the limelight.”
That blog post on the email address of Oregon mass-murderer Christopher Harper-Mercer was made after Vester Lee Flanagan shot and killed that Roanoke TV reporter and her cameraman.
“I have noticed,” said the blog post, “that people like [Flanagan] are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who you are.”
Harper-Mercer had found the key to his future, and given us a truism for our time.
For the world now knows who Harper-Mercer is.
We have seen his face on TV. We have read how he murdered eight students and a teacher at Umpqua Community College, how those who admitted to being Christian were executed in front of the class with a bullet to the brain.
When detectives arrived, Harper-Mercer was wounded in a firefight, fled back to his bloody classroom and shot himself. From start to finish, the worst shooting in Oregon’s history lasted half an hour.
When the news broke, predictably, President Obama was back in the White House briefing room calling for new laws to control the sale of guns.
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel.
Yet it is hard to find an episode where new gun laws would seem less relevant. For what took place at Roseburg, Oregon, was a planned massacre by a man full of hate who had decided to end his life in a blaze of infamy, by suicide, or suicide-by-cop, so he could become as famous as the killers of Columbine, Ft. Hood, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson, Virginia Tech and Charleston.
Harper-Mercer wanted to die as a mass-murderer.
Is someone driven by such hatred, such determination to have us know who he is, going to be deterred by a new federal statute that says he cannot acquire the guns he needs to succeed, out of 300 million guns in America?
Roseburg reinforces the case made by the NRA.
Often, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That’s who finally stopped Harper-Mercer. Regrettably, none of the innocent dead at Umpqua was carrying a concealed weapon.
Prediction: We are going to have more of these massacres.
Why? Because we rewarded Harper-Mercer for his barbarity in the currency he craved, the only currency he cared about: fame and immortality in this world. Before Oct. 1, Harper-Mercer was a nobody, a loser, a recluse with no girlfriend. For a brief time, this nobody has become as notorious as John Dillinger and Jesse James.
The lesson of Roseburg?
If you are sick of life and hate the world, you can end it in a way that makes that world take notice of who you were. If you are willing to shoot a dozen unarmed people, and die in a blaze of gunfire, TV will interrupt its broadcasting to report on who you are, what you did, and to read on-air selections from your fiery final manifesto.
The Charleston killer Dylan Roof had photos of himself waving the Battle Flag shown to all of America. The Roanoke killer took cellphone photos while shooting the woman reporter.
Moreover, society is producing more and more dead souls like Harper-Mercer, who crave the same reward.
The child of a broken family, he was taught in schools from which the Ten Commandments had been ruthlessly expunged. He grew up in a deracinated society whose reverence for human life is testified to by 55 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, and by video games where killing of simulated human beings is treated as a participant sport.
In the country of yesterday, “Thou shalt not kill” was the word of God, and the penalty for breaking God’s law and man’s law was not only execution, but the loss of one’s soul.
How many still believe that?
We have a drug culture where those with mental illness are prescribed ever more powerful antidepressants. And modernity has no convincing answer to the eternal question, “Why not?”
Across the secularized West, in the thousands, young men are being attracted to the Islamic State to become suicide bombers. The drawing card? Footage of anti-Islamists being beheaded on a beach.
And the reward that Islamists offer to their suicide bombers?
Not too different from ours. We make our monsters media celebrities of the moment. The Islamic State makes them martyrs for Allah who spend eternity in paradise.
In a de-Christianized America where no higher law exists, killing is a commonplace occurrence, and the popular culture is polluted by raw sex and violence, what answer does society give to the Harper-Mercers who are willing to kill in large numbers to become famous?
We are not the rules-based society we once were. We have junked the Christian code, embraced absolute social freedom, and dispensed with the moral sanctions.
Yet instead of the Great Society of liberalism’s promise, we seem to be approaching a society that is sick unto death.
The New York Times Advocates Suicide
By Karl Denninger
Yes, they actually do advocate suicide. Suicide by madman, that is.
On Tuesday, Ben Carson was on “Fox & Friends” and was posed this hypothetical: “If a gunman walks up and puts a gun at you and says what religion are you, that is the ultimate test of your faith,” as the Oregon shooter reportedly did to his victims.
It wasn’t a question per se, but the interviewer obviously wanted to know how Carson would react in that incredibly stressful circumstance.
Carson responded:
“I’m glad you asked that question because not only would I not probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’ ”
Then Carson chuckled.
Oh, Ben.
Do you not see why so many people saw this as a callous, thickheaded blaming of the victim? The statement doesn’t honor the heroism of Chris Mintz, who did exactly as Carson suggested — charged at the shooter, was shot seven times, but wasn’t able to incapacitate him — and it also devalues the lives and reactions of all the other victims who didn’t or couldn’t charge the shooter.
Horsecrap.
Go read Lessons again.
Read it as many times as you need to before it sinks in.
Let me be clear and unambiguous: When someone points a gun at you at that instant the only logical conclusion you can draw is that you are dead.
That is their intent and, absent some action you take, that is the likely outcome.
You can sugar coat this all you want but this isn’t a matter of simple public policy as was the case when Cruz nailed the Sierra Club in a hearing on their refusal to face data — that is, facts.
No, this is more-serious in that your life is about to end and if you sit like a sheep it will end without you offering any resistance to that event whatsoever.
There was no “devaluation” of those who didn’t or couldn’t charge the shooter. They made their decision and in the judgment of hindsight, which is always correct, it was wrong. That’s not “devaluation” it’s a dispassionate evaluation of the facts. You don’t learn a damn thing and thus make no progress if you refuse to dispassionately evaluate past actions and their results.
That Blow then intentionally misquotes Homeland Security is even more outrageous. Yes, if you have a clear means to escape that’s not a bad idea. Of course doing so means that everyone who can’t escape is then without your potential assistance, but you have no duty to help others in such a situation. Indeed, even the Mariner’s legal duty to assist others in peril when upon the seas does not require you to risk your own vessel, or your own life, in rendering said assistance.
We have to deal with all of the issues that contribute to our epidemic of gun violence in this country — everything from better assessment and treatment of mental illness, to sensible, national gun-control measures, to addressing a fame-obsessed, violence-soaked culture.
Our politicians won’t stand up to the gun lobby. But we can’t simply, as Carson recommends, throw our bodies at armed men.
Let’s talk about that for a minute, shall we?
First, as I noted, virtually all of said “mass-shootings” have happened in Gun Free Zones. Obviously mass-murderers look at these zones and their signage differently than peaceful citizens do. The latter, fearful of going to prison for carrying a firearm, don’t do so. The former read them as “Unarmed Victim Gun Range” zones and select them as their preferred place to attempt a massacre.
You and the rest of the mainslime media, along with the entire left in this country don’t want to deal with this but it is a fact that virtually every mass-shooting has taken place in these Unarmed Victim Gun Range zones and you bastards are the ones who wanted those zones established in the first place and advocated for their passage into law.
For this you should be indicted as accessories before the fact to murder.
Second, most of these mass-shootings have been perpetrated by people who are (1) between the ages of 15 and 25 and (2) are on, or withdrawing from, psychotropic medication that has a black-box warning related to suicidal ideation and rage, mania or mixed-manic states in that specific age-range of patients.
Of those who are not there is an overrepresentation of Muslim nutjobs (e.g. Hasan, the assault in Paris, etc.)
Take those two sets of shooters out and we have had, for all intents and purposes, no mass-shootings at all.
So let me see if I get this right. First, we have a class of drugs that have a known and published association with extreme homicidal violence among a very narrow and specific age group, yet we hand these ****ing pills out like candy to people in the at-risk age group without any means whatsoever of monitoring them closely on a 24×7 basis for the emergence of this known risk. We could bar their use in said population subset or restrict use to residential treatment facilities where 24×7 monitoring is possible but that would (1) impair the profits of a number of drug companies and (2) probably lead people to demand that both drug companies and doctors face indictment as accessories before the fact for these incidents.
Then, having potentiated this risk through our refusal to impair the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry and hold accountable both that industry and the physicians writing all this wallpaper we then erect signs and make laws creating shooting ranges, including but not limited to the places in which we are compelled to send our children, so those who go insane on said medication have a free-fire zone in which to conduct their mentally-addled act of mass-murder.
What the holy **** are you smoking, jackass?
This is what you wish to defend or advocate?
If our politicians are unwilling to hold accountable the medical and pharmaceutical industry for their advertising and prescribing practices in light of known, black-box warnings on these drugs when given to people under the age of 25 then there is utterly no logical act remaining other than for the damn “Unarmed Victim Shooting Range” signs to come down and for everyone to carry as they are willing and able all the time.
It is for this very reason — to have a fighting chance when your life is on the line — that the Second Amendment exists and the words “Keep” and “Bear” in that Amendment are very clear.
Just as in the days of Noah…
i fucking love Pat Buchanan
This sort of thing didn’t use to happen, at least not to any significant degree, now it is happening.
Something has obviously changed and it isn’t the number or availability of guns since they were just as available before and thousands and thousands of gun laws have been passed since.
Yet no one in power seems to want to seriously ask in public discussion what is different now than then. Just too many things would come into discussion that aren’t politically correct to admit to I imagine.
So nothing will change for the better, but many things will change for the worse.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There have always been violent males committing similar crimes. The difference is that we now publicize them nationally, and the SSRI drugs which certainly are a factor also.
We should stop publicizing them, these are copy-cat crimes.
?oh=59baf5a6f216cd8afcf6d718f0f91f05&oe=568492EE
Having stared down the barrel of a Ruger Blackhawk ( 44 magnum) once, I can tell you that the first thing that flashes through your mind is…how do I convince this guy not to shoot me. That whole incident is kinda’ funny now…it wasn’t at the time
I guess folks have forgotten about this mass killing…all others pale in comparison ( except 9/11 )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
In all my many years of life -and every type of gun ownership- I’ve never felt even the slightest desire to commit a murder of any kind much less mass murder of innocent strangers.
Maybe it’s not guns in general that cause mass murder, just the brand of the gun involved?
I was on some military sites (Rangers , other special forces) they all seem to agree that in a situation like this always rush the shooter. You may get shot but you’re going to get shot anyway if you just stand there. It would be hard to do but it does make sense.
Hey Admin …………
We’re stating to get some traction on psychotropic drugs. This from your above 0631, 9 Oct post written by Karl Denninger.
“Second, most of these mass-shootings have been perpetrated by people who are (1) between the ages of 15 and 25 and (2) are on, or withdrawing from, psychotropic medication that has a black-box warning related to suicidal ideation and rage, mania or mixed-manic states in that specific age-range of patients.
Of those who are not there is an overrepresentation of Muslim nutjobs (e.g. Hasan, the assault in Paris, etc.)
Take those two sets of shooters out and we have had, for all intents and purposes, no mass-shootings at all.
So let me see if I get this right. First, we have a class of drugs that have a known and published association with extreme homicidal violence among a very narrow and specific age group, yet we hand these ****ing pills out like candy to people in the at-risk age group without any means whatsoever of monitoring them closely on a 24×7 basis for the emergence of this known risk. We could bar their use in said population subset or restrict use to residential treatment facilities where 24×7 monitoring is possible but that would (1) impair the profits of a number of drug companies and (2) probably lead people to demand that both drug companies and doctors face indictment as accessories before the fact for these incidents.”
Denninger gets it. Totally.