Bang! You're Dead
Published April 18, 2007
It's really quite simple, isn't it? Aim. Squeeze. Pop! Someone's dead. How great is that? You walk into a room. You're the only one with a gun. You can call all the shots. Literally. You become the 900-pound gorilla. You can do whatever the hell you want. You can make everyone else do whatever you want them to do. You can kill them. Some of them. All of them. Pop! Pop! Pop!
You dream about having that power, even if only for a moment. It needn't take long. Just thinking about it is intoxicating. It makes you hard. Hard as blue steel. You could penetrate a post. It's so bloody simple. Pop! You revel in anticipation. You see the incredulity, then terror, panic. The mad scramble for safety. You love it. Total control. This one lives. That one dies. Pop! You get goose bumps. They're all groveling assholes. You are the King. You needn't say a word. The gun says it all. Pop!
You'll probably die from the muzzle of another gun, but that's okay. That's the glory, isn't it? That's the moment of reckoning. Add up the score. Monday it was 32 to 1. You could even say 33 to zip since he offed himself. How sweet, no? "Made it, ma. Top of the world." Pop!
- Bang! You're Dead
- Published: April 18, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Crime and Court, Culture: Society
- Writer: Baritone
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That is scary...you really gotta wonder what goes through the mind of a madman...
and you might wanna get that checked...isn't that like one of those priapism things???
I certainly don't know that the thought processes I created above came close to that of Cho Seung-Hui's. But the videos and written material he sent to NBC are proving to be revealing. It seems that he lacked coherency of thought. To Hui, everyone was the enemy. Everyone was corrupt, guilty and worthy of death.
That a similar madman (or madwoman - let us not be sexist in our madness assumptions) could be ready and willing to push the nuke button is not that hard to imagine. There are obviously any number of people who would be just as indifferent to millions of deaths as Hui was to 32.
Baritone
My boyfriend doesn't believe in Hell, but for this gunman, he's made an exception.
"You dream about having that power, even if only for a moment. It needn't take long. Just thinking about it is intoxicating. It makes you hard. Hard as blue steel."
Man, you got it! That's what it does for me! Like a Great American said "power is the greatest aphrodisiac!" Can't remember who, maybe it was Reagan or Bush Sr. , both accomplished swordsmen, if you know what I mean! But not that wussy Bush Jr., who can't seem to make it with anything other than the librarian (and we all know how easy THEY are!).
Get armed and get hard, man! That's the new 100% USA American red white and blue way!
He didn't decide who lived or died, he shot randomly at anyone he had free aim at. That's not decision making, that's robotic.
And he was a really crappy writer. Maybe it was this knowledge of ineptitude, uselessness and writer's frustration that drove him to it.
That, and being a raging fuckface piece of shit.
Dawn,
Don't beat around the bush. Say what you really think.
Baritone
It is fairly easy to either trivialize the Va Tech killer or to write him off as a "fuckface piece of shit." But these guys keep popping up, don't they? I don't think the quality of his writing skills had anything to do with his murderous assault. Over years of real or more likely imagined abuse from others Hui became totally disconnected from reality. In effect, he was living in a virtual world wherein he elected himself judge, jury and executioner. I truly hate these kind of people who take on a god complex giving themselves license to make life and death decisions about others.
It is tragic that what now seem like unmistakable warning signs were not responded to. In effect, Hui gave plenty of notice that he was a time bomb and his clock was ticking.
Unfortunately, it is a fine, sometimes squiggly line between an individual's rights and the safety of others. There is the very real danger of overreacting if we start pointing fingers at everyone who seems to us odd or out of sync with society. At the least it could come down to crying wolf too often, rendering such efforts as ineffective as doing nothing.
A couple of years ago a man who long suffered from a bipolar disorder in Indy was released from a mental facility, and was allowed to retake possession of several guns that had been confiscated by authorities. Within hours of his release the fellow killed a police officer, wounded another and lay dead himself on a public sidewalk. The local constabulary claimed they had no legal pretext for not returning the firearms to the guy.
Say what? The guy had a history of significant mental imbalance and had shown a propensity for agitation and violence against both himself and others. What other pretext is needed?
While there is the very real danger of Big Brother becoming even more of a reality, to foster greater security in our society, it may be necessary to make more concerted and cooperative efforts between law enforcement authorities, the medical community, our schools, etc., in identifying such individuals, getting them help, and for crap sakes, making every effort to keep guns out of their hands. Guns DO kill people in the hands of paranoid, hate filled nut jobs such as Hui, Klebold and Harris.
Baritone
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Interesting and fascinating commentary on the thought process of a mad man.
Just imagine someone with THAT thought process with the capability of deploying several megatons of nuke destruction one day with similar visions of glory. Think about that... while those centrifuges are spinning over in Tehran...