The massacre in San Bernardino is really weighing on me.
Right after it happened, I wrote a post in which I suggested that mental illness could have been a factor, just as it is in many other cases. Why do we assume that white guys are deranged, but Muslims are evil? In this case, there was an additional question mark for me about possible post-partum depression, since the wife had given birth six months earlier.
But then we learned that both of the shooters in San Bernardino had been radicalized and had been planning some kind of attack for years. I’ve spent more time than is probably healthy staring at photos of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik.
They don’t look like these guys:
They don’t look crazy. They look dead. Cold.
What kind of woman leaves her six-month-old infant behind, knowing she’ll never see her again—knowing her baby will be removed from the family, that her life will be tainted by a legacy of death?
What kind of son leaves his mother behind, knowing she’ll be interrogated by law enforcement? Maybe the mother was involved, too. In which case, what kind of son would leave his mother to face life in prison? But these are silly questions. This couple murdered 14 people and injured many more. Why would they care about an old woman and a baby?
If they weren’t mentally ill, were they evil? And what does that mean? We can sometimes catch mental illness early and intervene. But how would we spot evil? Who would we call to report it?
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There have been so many mass shootings in the U.S. Until now I have reacted the same as anyone else—shaking my head, feeling bad for the victims, wondering when we will finally enact some reasonable gun reforms. Then I’m over it. Until now.
Where I work, at the Center for Victims of Torture, many of our clients come to us after suffering unimaginable torture during ethnic or religious conflicts in their home countries. There is always the possibility that someone from the enemy side could enter the U.S. and come looking for them, just when they thought they were safe. If someone would shoot up a center for developmentally disabled people, like the one in San Bernardino, why wouldn’t they shoot up a torture rehabilitation center? There have been so many mass shootings, but this was the first one I could really imagine myself being involved in. I imagine myself hiding in a bathroom stall or coat closet. Of course I always—miraculously—am one of the survivors.
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A father whose six-year old daughter was killed in the Newtown shooting was interviewed on public radio last week. He and his wife are both scientists and they have started a research foundation to look into the connections between mental illness and violence.
The father said, “We have to recognize that, of course, all of our behavior comes from our brain. So just like any organ can be healthy or unhealthy, when there’s risk factors that lead to malfunction of certain circuits or regions of the brain, that’ll lead to bad behavior. And yes, it is preventable. It’s a matter of chemistry and not character.”
I hope he’s right. I hope someday we’ll discover that evil is a biochemical imbalance that can be fixed with a pill. Maybe some day we’ll routinely test kids’ DNA and put them on medication if they’ve got the gene that could turn them into the next mass shooter.
Breaking Free 