Trench coats, loners, and a just society
My parents sent me to schools much like the one that was the site of a mass shooting on the 27th of March in Nashville, Tennessee. They did not ask me if that were my preference, nor did the fact that I had early on lost belief in their religion and was as a result an outcast at those schools enter into their calculations. I open with this piece of information to show my personal knowledge of what I am about to discuss.
What I found out, an experience that I see repeated over and over in stories from the deconverted, is that education has to come from somewhere else—in my case, books from the library and shows on PBS—and that the affirmation of community is only possible if the misfits gather together. The popularity of Stranger Things tells me that my experience is not unique.
And yet, I have not committed any mass shootings. The same statement is true about millions of my fellow gun owners and true about the vast majority of the uncounted outliers from the social norm.
Does this need pointing out? Apparently it does, given the reality that ever since the Columbine school shooting, there has been a popular impression that killers who wish to murder multiple persons in a single incident must come from the population of loners who do not fit in to conventionality. In the view of vox vulgaris, anyone about whom the song, “Subdivisions,” might have been written is potentially a mass shooter—and for gun control advocates, by implication is a proper subject of red flag laws. “Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone,” and he damn well might explode any moment.
Except that like pop psychology notions of the alpha male, this particular variety of outcast is not any more likely to commit acts of violence. And the Columbine killers did not fit into that category in any case. They were not members of the Trenchcoat Mafia. They were not even loners. One of them showed signs of being a psychopath—lack of empathy, willingness to exploit others, a desire to harm others—and the second was suffering from depression that apparently made him susceptible to following a bad leader.
And they both had drawn the attention of law enforcement due to their acts of theft and vandalism. They both made increasingly unveiled threats against classmates. What they did not have in their records, perhaps because of their age, was a history of violence against romantic partners, a characteristic that along with an increasing pattern of crimes and of making threats is common in a large percentage of mass shooters.
How much the Nashville killer will fit the pattern is not yet known. The killer left behind a manifesto that is soon to be released to the public. Reports so far indicate an intention to kill more people, including family members and shoppers at a local mall, and though the killer had attended The Covenant School, it was also chosen for its lesser security in comparison with two public schools in the area.
Which is to say, reports that the killer had recently identified as a trans man may or may not have anything to do with this crime, and the public does not yet know if having attended a Christian school was a factor.
And yet, my memories of friends whose sexuality did not conform to whatever the church understood to be biblically correct and my own experience as a non-believer makes me wonder.
Thus I will engage in some speculation here after making what should be an obvious statement. If we were to guarantee healthcare for everyone and to prosecute romantic partner violence and general threats of violence as the serious crimes they are, we could forestall a lot of mass shootings.
But what if we also were to adopt as a cultural value the idea that difference is nothing to sneer at? I realize that diversity training is these days something of an institutional cliché, and it has its own significance, but I have in mind here a recognition that individuals should be respected in their individuality, not just as members of groups. The kid who does not conform to gender stereotypes, who can play the flute but cannot catch a football, or who can explain why the Titanic sank (that last one was I in the third grade) is as important as the children with whom the teacher with the first name of Coach identifies. If we were to recognize the worth of each person, we would see many fewer cases of mental illness. And if being unusual did not come with a social stigma, those in need of treatment would be more inclined to seek it.
This is not to excuse murderers. It is instead a call to make society better so as to create fewer members in crisis. And the benefits would go far beyond reducing the incidents of headline-grabbing killings.