Over the course of a few weeks, assassins with murky motives have murdered strangers with guns. Robin Westman, an 18-year-old, shot up a Catholic mass in Minneapolis, killing two children and wounding 18 more. Tyler Robinson, age 22, allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk, a young, conservative Christian spokesperson, while he was speaking on a Utah college campus. Then, more recently. Joshua Jahn, twenty-nine years old, shot into a Dallas ICE facility, killing a Hispanic detainee and wounding two others.
Two of the assassins--Robinson and Jahn-- shot themselves at their killing sites. Tyler Robinson, the man who reportedly killed Kirk, was captured alive.
Politicians and the legacy media have attempted to identify the political ideologies of these murderers. Some commentators blame right-wing politics for the violence, while others argue that political violence is most often associated with leftist ideologies.
I don't think the political leanings of these madmen explain their violent actions or are even relevant. They're all nuts.
Without exception, the killers are young men suffering from mental illness, although a few identify as women. They are isolated, lonely guys who spend too much time playing video games, and most of them probably smoke too much marijuana. They don't have a girlfriend or romantic partner. None of these killers has a clear vocational identity or any hope of joining the workforce. None of them dream of owning a home, marrying, or raising a family.
In short, all these sadsacks are losers, not in the perjorative sense but in the existential sense. These guys were never going anywhere in life, and they all know it.
So, why not get a gun, preferably a semi-automatic assault rifle, and start killing people? By committing murder, at least they'll get their 15 minutes of fame, a brief burst of online notoriety.
Every time a school shooting or mass killing occurs, left-wingers call for gun control. But that horse has already left the barn. The United States has almost 400 million guns in circulation, more than one gun for every man, woman, and child. We will never get those firearms out of circulation, even if we had the political will to try.
And rifles and pistols are cheap. Even a guy working at McDonald's can afford an off-brand assault rifle.
Our society is to blame for all this carnage. What kind of world have we created that has caused some men to invest in killing tools rather than marriage, a family, and a vocation?
