How Can Some Individuals Bring Themselves To Mow Strangers Down With Assault Rifles Like They’re Nothing

by E. Marmer
posted Oct 12, 2017

The massacre in Las Vegas may well be the event that finally shakes Congress into action to curb gun violence, even if in just some small way. Perhaps the prevalence of defective people who are capable of using guns in this way is finally sinking into our collective consciousness and will persuade paranoid Americans that having access to guns to make them safer from a suddenly metastasizing government or American hunters and gun enthusiasts that holding an assault rifle to feel a surge of power, are simply not important enough to make all of us sitting ducks. I suddenly needed to understand how it is that someone could mow down strangers with assault rifles. How could a human simply cease to consider other humans as… humans? How can a person turn strangers into ciphers with no value, no history, no soul, so that they are expendable? I searched the internet in my quest for an answer, and came across this very interesting article by Dr. Allen J. Francis, published in Psychology Today in 2014. It’s worth a read, in this age when mass murders seem to have become a ghastly, permanent blight. Despite understanding the phenomenon through the words of Dr. Frances, I can’t help but wonder if at bottom it simply indicates our failure as a species to have evolved far enough from the brutes we once were, or, even more sadly, signals our decay.

Allen J Frances M.D.

Allen J Frances M.D.

The Mind of the Mass Murderer

Mass murders are becoming a depressingly familiar routine in the United States- we can now expect to experience a media grabbing shooting about once a month. And the frequency can only increase as future cohorts of copycat killers are spawned by the seductive opportunity to temporarily gain the spotlight.

Amidst the anguish and heartbreak felt by the victims’ families, there are always two haunting questions. What motivates someone to kill strangers wholesale in a seemingly senseless way? And what, if anything, can we do to stop these tragedies from recurring?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/saving-normal/201405/the-mind-the-mass-murderer