Texas and Las Vegas: A Tale of Two Similar Massacres

Remember Charles Whitman, the "Texas Tower Sniper"? The Vegas shootings seem reminiscent of that awful massacre decades ago. And what distinguished that shooting, besides it having been conducted from an elevated location, seems as though it may distinguish yesterday's as well. Neither shooter seems to have undergone religious or ideological radicalization, to have had a longstanding obsession with guns and violence, or a lingering history of criminal or domestic violence. It turns out that Whitman had a large brain tumor that arguably caused him to do what he did. Will an autopsy, if there's enough brain left, reveal similar organic causation of the Vegas shooter's "out of the blue," homicidal frenzy? Stay tuned...

Did Jared Fogle Get What He Deserves?

Jared Fogle became the face of Subway after he reputedly lost an ungodly amount of weight on a Subway sandwich diet, and he was, for a time, arguably one of America's most beloved pitchmen. But now he's become America's boogeyman in the wake of a 15 years and 8 months prison sentence resulting from a plea deal for soliciting and paying to have sex with minors and for possessing and trading in child pornography.

As one might expect, people are alternately vilifying him and celebrating his judicial fate. But I take no more pleasure in Fogle's predicament than I do from contemplating the harm he's caused his family and the children he allegedly abused. For I believe that Fogle's actions were the result of a sickness he couldn't resist and that this makes him as much a victim of that sickness as are any of the children he may have molested.

Thus, I have grave misgivings about his harsh sentence if it was imposed for retributively punitive reasons, because it seems to me unfair and unjust to inflict retributive punishment on someone for doing something he couldn't help but do.

I also doubt that such a lengthy sentence is a significantly larger deterrent than a much lesser sentence would be. I wonder if any research has been done in the area of the comparative deterrent effect of various prison sentences for these kinds of crimes.

One thing that such a long sentence WILL accomplish is prevent Mr. Fogle from abusing any more children for the duration of his incarceration. But if it were possible to know with certainty that he wouldn't abuse more children after he got out, I'd support letting him out far sooner.

It's my understanding that federal sentences like this tend to be carried out to the full or nearly so, and, indeed, I've read that Fogle will have to serve a minimum of 13 years no matter how well he behaves himself behind bars. And then he may face an even sterner test upon release as he confronts extreme social ostracisim and feelings of profound shame as well as the severe residential restrictions, occupational limitations, and other monumental hardships that attend having to register as a sex offender for the rest of one's life.

So, I'm thinking that he has a tremendously difficult road ahead of him as a result of his sickness, and, again, I feel sorry for him as well as for the children he abused.

Come Together Right Now to End Gun Violence

I have nothing brilliant or original to say in the wake of last Friday’s bloody apocalypse in Newtown, CT. Yet, I can’t let that horrible tragedy quietly recede into my personal and the national subconscious without saying something about it, disjointed as it may be, that registers my grief, anger, and despair and my sketchy thoughts regarding what may have caused this calamity and what, if anything, we might do to prevent something similar from happening again.

After the shopping mall shootings outside Portland, Oregon earlier last week, one of the first things that came to mind was, How soon before it happens again? And even if I couldn’t have foreseen how soon it would happen again or how bad it would turn out to be when it did, I wasn’t terribly surprised when it did.

That some mentally disordered person somewhere would lug one or more semi-automatic firearms into a crowded public place and start blowing away innocent people had all the inevitability of a seasonal hurricane or an earthquake in a seismically active region. We know it’s going to happen, we just don’t know exactly where, when, or how bad it will be. Yet, it stood to reason that it could well be sooner than later, exploding from the critical mass of the theater and mall shootings in Colorado, Oregon, and other recent locations.

This points to something I fundamentally believe about all such events. They ARE the human equivalents of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. No one freely chooses to go out and gun down a bunch of innocent adults and children. They do it because a rare set of internal and external conditions coalesce, like they did in Hurricane Sandy, to cause them to irresistibly erupt in catastrophic violence.

One speculative scenario I’ve pieced together from what I’ve read is that the shooter, whose name I won’t print, had Asperger’s syndrome; was painfully alienated from his family and society by his extreme social awkwardness and shyness; felt lonely, angry, bitter, hateful, and spiteful over what he perceived as widespread social rejection; was part of a Gothic subculture that magnified his alienation and its emotional outpourings; loved to play violent video games that aggravated his violent tendencies while desensitizing him to acting them out; had a careless, “prepper” mother with a gun fetish and an in-house armory; may have given off signs that he was on the brink of something awful but no one was paying attention or caring enough to do anything about it even though there may have been something they could have done; believed that he was a contemptible nobody in a society that glamorizes “somebodies”; paid close attention to the theater and mall shootings in Colorado, Oregon, and elsewhere and fantasized about them; and decided that if his lonely, miserable life as a hopeless social outcast was not worth living, he might as well end it by venting his anger and hatred for a society that marginalized and ignored him, and do it in a way that would make him a somebody that people would never, ever forget even if he wouldn’t be around to bask in the notoriety.

Like I said, this is all just speculation, but I would like to think that by examining all the available facts, law enforcement and behavioral scientists might be able to assemble a pretty accurate and insightful picture of the shooter and of what caused and enabled him to act as he did and that this understanding might prove useful for helping to prevent future shooting rampages.
In the meantime, after thinking about this awful story and reading articles and editorials about it and related issues such as gun control and mental health care in America, here are some of my ideas about steps we should consider taking to decrease gun violence in our society.

First, if we’re as sick and tired of gun violence as many of us say we are and, in any event, should be, why not declare that we, as a society, will no longer tolerate criminal gun violence and follow up by instituting severe, even draconian penalties for illegal gun selling, purchasing, possession, and use? For instance, why not summarily execute anyone who uses a gun to commit a crime? And why not incarcerate for life or for a very long time anyone caught carrying a loaded firearm in public without a legal permit?

Second, why not ban ALL sales of firearms and ammo to anyone who hasn’t been thoroughly screened and hasn’t passed stringent tests of firearm knowledge and proficiency, and why not require people who own firearms to be periodically re-screened and re-tested in order to keep them, just as we have to pass re-screenings and re-tests to maintain our driving privileges?

Third, why not ban the sale and possession of all high caliber, semi automatic assault weapons and high capacity magazines for civilians who have no exceptionally good reason to own them?

Fourth, why not refrain from publishing in the television or print media the name of anyone who commits such heinous mass murder, thereby discouraging would-be mass murderers from seeking their fifteen minutes of fame that will never come to them by name?

Fifth, why not follow Rabbi Michael Lerner’s advice and inculcate non-sectarian values and powerful psychotherapeutic, social, and conflict resolution skills in our children in our public schools?

Finally, why don’t we take it upon ourselves as individuals and as a nation to move far enough away from our enshrined “Greed is good,” libertarian, dog-eat-dog, “rugged individualism,” and “personal freedom” ethos to at least provide far better for the common good in terms of physical and mental health care and other social welfare while also becoming more empathic, compassionate, and caring as individuals toward our neighbors and all humankind throughout the nation and the world? For surely, whatever religion we embrace, or even if we embrace no religion at all, we would almost all agree that we’re lacking as a people in terms of how we care for “the least among us” and for the troubled, and the horrific events of last Friday should make this all the more evident.


Of course there are counterarguments to each and every one of my general suggestions, and some of them may even be cogent. But surely there are things we can do or should at least try to do to protect ourselves and our children not only from gun massacres but also from gun violence of all kinds, and surely there is no better time than now to draw upon the energy of our anger at the status quo and of our desperation for change in the wake of last Friday’s bloodbath of the innocent to come together and seek viable answers and solutions and not let the proverbial perfect be “the enemy of the good.” As President Obama eloquently stated in his moving memorial service eulogy last night, “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this. If there’s even one step we can take to save another child, another parent, or another town from the grief that’s visited Tuscon and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.”

Responding to Gary

I posted an entry yesterday about the Bernie Ward case. Gary responded with a comment. Normally, I briefly address comments in the comments section, but today I want to do something a little different. I want to post substantial passages from Gary's comments and respond to them in this entry. I want to do this because I believe that the subject is important and because I believe that Gary's thinking on this issue is shared by many, and I disagree with most of it. Gary's comments are in italics; my responses aren't.

Pedophilia is a sickness that is true, but it is a sickness that can not be treated.

I think you're right that pedophilic desires can't be cured, but I think there are treatments that can stop or prevent some people from acting them out. But let's be clear about Bernie Ward. He was not indicted for child molestation, and, indeed, after a thorough investigation, he was allowed to stay in the home with his children. He was indicted for possessing and distributing a few sexually oriented photos involving minors. Having and even distributing a few such images doesn't necessarily mean that someone is a pedophile, much less a dangerous one who must be removed from society for the rest of his life.

Now I'm aware of the recent Dan Noyes report alleging that Bernie came on to a couple of teenage girls years ago when he was a priest. But these are only allegations. He was never convicted of sexual harassment or molestation of children or anyone else. What's more, even if the allegations are true, as bad as it would be for him to have acted as alleged, being attracted to pubescent high school girls is not pedophila. If it were, most adult males would be pedophiles. Pedophila is attraction to prepubescent children.

It truly is sad that these people do what they do. If you could put them up in a condo complex where they could live and work(without ever leaving the premises of course) I would be all for that. But they can never be allowed out in society. The harm they do is extraordinary.

I agree that child molestation can be extraordinarily harmful and that a case could be made for locking away for life anyone who has shown a pattern of child molestation suggesting that he or she can't prevent himself from continuing to molest children. However, I agree with you that these people are mentally ill and do not deserve the punishment of a life sentence in federal prison for their actions. They need to be placed in another kind of more humane facility, and they should not be blamed and held in contempt for their illness or its manifestations. But, once again, Bernie was not indicted for child molestation.

You also have to remember that most pedophiles do not think they are doing harm. They honestly believe that they love the children and that they are not harming them. How do you treat someone who has those beliefs?

Doesn't your preceding statement imply the answer to your question? If someone molests children because they don't understand the harm it causes to their victims and they can be made to understand it, they won't molest anymore.

I truly feel sorry for Bernies family and friends(especially his childrens friends) but for Bernie I feel nothing but contempt for he of all people should know exactly what his actions will do.

I don't understand this statement in light of what you said previously. You believe that Bernie is a pedophile (even though there's no proof I'm aware of that he is), and you say that pedophilia is a sickness; yet, you feel "nothing but contempt" for him. Do you also feel "nothing but contempt" for someone who breaks out with a rash as a result of having chicken pox? Isn't acting out one's pedophilic desires analogous to breaking out with chicken pox? We may need to isolate a contagious individual until he no longer poses a threat to the public, but we don't hold him in contempt for being sick. Why should we hold Bernie in contempt? If he really knew "exactly what his actions would do," don't you think he must have been awfully sick to go ahead and commit them anyway? And if he didn't know exactly what they would do, then why scorn him? Because "ignorance is no excuse"? Why isn't it? If not an excuse, then at least a mitigating factor?

You also need to do a little research on the case. Bernie actually was storing the images in cyber space on his AOL account and was in possession of at least 30 images.

Thank you for that additional information. But have you seen the images or read detailed descriptions of them? This touches upon an issue I raised in yesterday's post. Not all pornographic images are of equivalent severity, and this should be taken into account. What's more, no matter how extreme these images may have been, Bernie was not indicted for nor did he plead guilty to playing any role in creating these images. I don't believe that someone should spend years in federal prison for merely possessing or even distributing a few such images to consenting adults. He should face some legal sanctions, and, indeed, he already has, along with numerous social ones. But not prison.

He harmed children, some grievously(just imagine his children reading the transcripts of what he was saying to Sexfairy about them and their friends) even if he did not do the actions he describes, the mere fact that he could come up with these alleged "fantasies" should outrage you!

I believe that what he wrote about his own children and their friends was actually far worse than the pictures from a "moral" standpoint and from the standpoint of what is likely to have done the most psychological harm. But this was not illegal and he was not indicted for it. What's more, I don't feel "outrage" over this; I feel great perplexity over why he did it, and I feel great sadness for him and his family that he did it and for the fact that they all are now having to deal with the consequences.

I have a 2 year old daughter and you know what I have never had a thought like that, EVER!

I have suggested, although I don't claim to know for sure, that maybe Bernie posted those things not because he really wanted to do them for real but because he wanted to shock his "mistress" with his naughtiness. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that he really did entertain those fantasies. Now I think it's wonderful that you don't entertain similar ones. But what if you or someone close to you did? It's easy to condemn other people for desiring bad things you're fortunate enough not to desire. But suppose you had these desires. Would you believe that you should be condemned for them? And how do you know that you could control them any better than Bernie did with his online sex chat?

Have you actually sat down and thought about what he did in a logical non emotional way? Unclouded by your personal feelings for the man?

Yes, I think I have done precisely this. Have you? Or are you the one who has let his reason be clouded by emotion and "personal feelings"?

Imagine how outraged you would be if you found out it was Dick Cheney who was doing these things.

I think Dick Cheney has done far, far worse than Bernie Ward. I think he has contributed more than his share to the deaths of countless thousands of people who didn't deserve to die and to the misery of countless millions of others. Compared to that, Bernie Ward's actions are an infinitesimal blip on the radar. Nevertheless, if Dick Cheney had done what Bernie has, I truly believe that I would feel the same way about his having done it than I feel about Bernie having done it.

That's the difference between conservatives and liberals(I am a rational anarchist) a conservative when presented with evidence like this demands punishment for the person involved regardless of political party.

What is a "rational anarchist," and just how "rational" could such a stance be? Beyond that, I mildly agree with part of what you say. A conservative is likely to urge punishment (although I suspect that he's likely to be more punitive toward a liberal than toward a fellow conservative) than is a liberal. And I think this is because so-called conservatives tend to have a more simplistic and false understanding of human nature and behavior than do many liberals who better understand that cultural and social conditions interact with our genes to shape who we are and how we behave and that unadulterated "punishment" is not necessarily the answer to all misbehavior.

Liberals refuse to believe that their people are really bad and make all kinds of excuses for them.

Again, I think, or would like to think, that liberals are more likely to understand the complex concatenation of factors that go into shaping a person's character and conduct and that just blaming and punishing people for "bad" character and behavior is neither fair nor effective.

Or more laughable of all they claim some "government conspiracy" has brought there person down. I mean come on....when are you folks going to grow up?

You folks? When have I said that I believed the legal action taken against Bernie was the result of some "government conspiracy." But I do submit this question for your consideration. If Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Prager had done what Bernie did and the government became aware of it, are you altogether certain that it would have responded as severely as it did to Bernie?

Bernie's Crime and Punishment

Bernie Ward pled guilty yesterday to a single charge of distributing child pornography and will remain under house arrest until a sentencing hearing in August. It's expected that he'll be sentenced to a minimum of five years in federal prison, and he could receive as much as nine years.

I've posted about this case several times. I've learned more about it since my previous entries. I've come to believe that Bernie has been a troubled man for years and has shown a self-destructive propensity. Furthermore, I agree with those who say that child pornography is egregious exploitation of children and cannot be tolerated.

But the question that comes to mind is how the law should deal with those who are involved with it. I was listening to a talk radio program this morning on KGO, Bernie's old station. One of the guests was a former FBI profiler and child sex abuse investigator. Her stance was that any adult intentionally involved to any degree in child pornography deserves to have the book thrown at him.

I can understand where she's coming from. She's investigated very serious cases of child pornography and seen firsthand the awful and permanent damage that this kind of exploitation can wreak on a child's psyche. And she makes a good point when she says that the child victim continues, in a sense, to be exploited and violated every time his or her image or video is passed along to someone else.

However, it seems to me that the law needs to consider more than it does the motives behind someone's involvement with child pornography as well as the extremity of the pornography and the degree or frequency of one's involvement with it. For instance, the only pornographic image in Bernie's case that I've seen described in any detail is of a topless woman, a naked teenage boy, and a fully clothed young girl, and they were not engaged in any kind of sexual or simulated sexual acts. Contrast this with a video of a prepubescent child being, say, gang raped. Possessing and even distributing the former seems far, far less egregious than possessing and distributing the latter; yet, I'm of the impression that the law makes little or no distinction between the two.

Another issue that came to mind as I listened to this morning's program concerns what kind of sentence offenders in general and Bernie in particular should be dealt for their crimes. The talk show host opined that Bernie appears to be a sick man in need of treatment but that this in no way "exonerates" him for his actions. But the question I continue to struggle with is, If someone commits a crime because he's sick, why does he deserve to be punished for it? Treated? Yes. We treat people for sickness and its symptoms. But punished? Should we punish people for being sick and for exhibiting the symptoms of their sickness?

The only reason I can see for punishing someone for their sickness is if the punishment is either part of the cure or, in the case of incarceration, quarantines the sick person from harming others with his sickness. But then, we're not talking about punishment per se but about aversive conditioning as treatment or about protective confinement, and that treatment or confinement is made as compassionate and merciful as possible while retaining its efficacy.

But is nine or even five years in federal prison merciful treatment (or punishment) for Bernie and his sickness? Not only that, but is it more effective than one year in prison or in a more humane institution of some kind or even under continued house arrest. Think of what this man has already suffered. He will never get to do talk radio again. He will never be able to teach children again in public or private school. He'll have to permanently register as a sex offender and be subject to all of the restrictions and indignities that go with it. He will probably be treated as a pariah by a large part of the community and will feel ashamed in public for the rest of his life. Would increasing his time of incarceration significantly increase the deterrent effect of his sentence? Would a nine year or twenty year sentence do that much more to deter him when he gets out or to deter others from committing this kind of offense, or does increasing the sentence yield diminishing returns of deterrence and quickly become unjustified punishment or vindictiveness for punishment's or vindictivenesses sake? I wonder if any persuasive scientific studies have been done on this question--i.e., the effect of prison sentence length on deterrence.

It seems to me, as it did to another guest on today's talk show, that Bernie's sentence is "draconian". In other words, it's far, far more harsh than what he deserves or than what is needed to bring optimal benefit to society.

What do you think?

Monsters and Victims

Some have called Cho Seung-Hui a "victim" of mental illness and of a society that ignored and shunned him. Others call him a "monster" and disparage those who call him a victim. But why can a monster not also be a victim, if we define a monster as "One who inspires horror or disgust," and a victim as "One who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency, or condition"?

Does anyone really doubt that Cho Seung-Hui was victimized by mental illness he did not freely choose for himself and by a society that, for whatever reasons, neglected his pressing needs, and that his illness turned him into a hateful and mass-murdering monster?

Some might say that even if Cho was, in truth, a victim of mental illness, this is a truth so overshadowed by the magnitude of his monstrous acts that to call him a victim dishonors those he victimized and also gives people excuse to succumb to their worst impulses. Cho clearly saw himself as a victim of others, and this surely sparked and inflamed his vengeful hatred and provided him with a rationalization for acting it out in the horrific way he did.

Yet if we do not acknowledge his victimhood, do we not only deny the truth but also encourage hatred to go unchecked by compassion to the point where it may well fester and push other sick people over the edge or, at the very least, make our society a meaner, uglier place for all of us?

I believe that the best course for society and for us as individuals is to view Cho and his like as human beings victimized into becoming monsters and to temper our rightful and cathartic condemnation of their deeds with empathy and compassion for them as persons so that we may soothe and help to heal broken hearts and minds.