Guns 'n' Loses

From The Christian Science Monitor, troubling observations about an apparent trend in the nation: the economy seems to have played a particularly negative role in the shooters’ lives. And they're not saying that as an excuse, just a common factor cited by friends and relatives of the murderers.

But it would also appear that with these shooters - forty-four people have died in a string of five such incidents in the past month, from Oakland, California to Alabama to North Carolina - there is always something troubling them besides the economy. In Binghamton, New York, Jiverly Voong, 41, barricaded the back door of the American Civic Association Friday morning, then went in the front door shooting at everyone in the room, killing 13 and then shooting himself. Initial reports say the gunman was deeply upset over being laid off and for being disrespected for not speaking English well.

So he shoots up a place where they try to help immigrants fit in.

In Oakland CA, a guy gets mad at his parole officer and feared going back to jail.

So he shoots four police dead with a gun.

An Alabama man strolled his town with a rifle, looking for victims.

Seven seniors were shot dead at a North Carolina nursing home.

And on that same Sunday, six people, including four kids, died in an apparent murder-suicide by gun in an upscale neighborhood in Santa Clara, CA.

The Center for Public Integrity claims that President Bush and his sidekicks made 935 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States.

How many times did the counterfeit cowboy from Kennebunkport worry about the weapons of mass destruction being stockpiled within these borders?

How come no one was following Richard Andrew Poplawski around to document his actions? According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, " Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry."

"Crazy to me is going through the motions," he wrote on his MySpace profile three years ago. "Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless."

Pointlessly, Poplawski lured three police to a trap on Saturday morning and shot them all to death in his defense of his Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, as part of a well-regulated militia, of course.

"He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples' right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill," said Edward Perkovic, who described himself as Mr. Poplawski's lifelong best friend.

The Post-Gazette also says that both Poplawski and Perkovic appeared to share a belief that the government was controlled from unseen forces, that troops were being shipped home from the Mideast to police the citizenry here, and that Jews secretly ran the country.

"We recently discovered that 30 states had declared sovereignty," said Mr. Perkovic. "One of his concerns was why were these major events in America not being reported to the public."

(Experts agree this these major events are being kept from the public on the grounds that they do not occur.)

"For some time now there has been a pretty good connection between being sucked into this conspiracy world and propagating violence," said Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center and an expert on political extremists. She called Mr. Poplawski's act, "a classic example of what happens when you start buying all this conspiracy stuff."

Some thoughtful people have suggested that people ought to stop listening to corpulent radio hosts with their whack-job theories. These people who are "really into politics" and really "into" the Constitution are often ill-informed, poorly thought-out, and really need to be "into" learning what they are talking about. But instead of taking time to read and learn apace, it's easier to be force-fed fallacy in a Rush. No need to stop listening. Just a need to stop believing.