This graph is changing shape as I enter recent mass murders. Crimes like this in 1985 should have started the alarm bells.
Springfield, Penn. (1985)
10/30/1985: Woman enters a shopping mall, shooting a .22
rifle. She murdered three and wounded
ten. Her mother had written newspaper articles about the need for the murderer’s hospitalization because of her
paranoid schizophrenia. She was only
stopped when a graduate student, thought it was a stupid Halloween prank and
took away the rifle. She had a long
history of bizarre and frightening behavior, including stabbing a guidance
counselor, and attempted murder. Because
of the recent revisions to mental health law, she was not hospitalized.
Category: public
Suicide: no
Cause: mental illness
Weapon: rifle[1]
[1]
Mara Bovsun, “[redacted] went psycho and killed three innocent people at
the Springfield, Pa., mall,” New York
Daily News, Dec. 2, 2012, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/ms-rambo-kill-spree-article-1.1211691,
last accessed November 24, 2018.
Acquaintances said she was always angry and nicknamed her "Ms. Rambo."
Even her mother was terrified. In July 1985, Ruth [redacted] wrote an article for a Pennsylvania paper, the Springfield Press, about life with her paranoid schizophrenic 25-year-old daughter. She had pleaded for years to keep her child locked up, but to no avail. "What do you need? Blood on the floor?" she wrote.
And as I add recent mass murders in, the "mental illness" cause has gone up to 25% of all U.S. mass murders.
Blood is better for the media to dance in, of course.
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten about that shooting. I think one or more of my sisters worked at that mall around that time frame.
ReplyDeleteThe nice things about graphs (and I suppose spreadsheets) is that they allow you to visually what you already might already experientially suspect. We know that violence was an issue in the South and on the frontier after the war. We know that Southerners and vets often went west (particularly to the southwest, Texas, Kansas, etc). And as a result of violence and the Southern honor culture (I believe the blog host might know a thing or two about this) the nation began it's failed experiment with gun control.
ReplyDeleteThere is a nibbling thought in the back of my mind having to do with latent mental illnesses and the general instability of the war as it relates to the context of the time. Not sure where it's going, but interesting subject to stir further.
Good work Mr. Cramer, I am looking forward to this book and the conclusions that come with it.
Nevadacarry: Curiously, many of these incidents are not in the West or the South.
ReplyDeleteRe: the Springfield Mall shooting. They didn't work there, but one exited the mall just prior to the shooting. Said she was nervous for days. At some point after, she obtained her CCW.
ReplyDelete