A 27-year-old Las Vegas man drove cross-country in a BMW with an M4 automatic rifle. He arrived in Midtown Manhattan on Monday and strode cooly into an office building on Park Avenue, where he sprayed bullets into the lobby, killing a police officer and two others. He then took an elevator to the 33rd floor. Office workers barricaded the doors with desks and covered the windows as he stalked the hallways and eventually killed one more person before turning the gun on himself.
Why does this keep happening?
Democrats reflexively blame the mass murder epidemic on “gun violence” and demand more gun control. That’s what Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) did in the wake of the Manhattan shooting, saying that “we must do more to stop gun violence in America,” as if the man who pulled the trigger played a minor part in the matter.
Months earlier, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) even blamed the Boulder terrorist attack on the “gun violence epidemic” despite the fact that it didn’t involve a gun, but a makeshift flamethrower. They lack the willingness and perhaps the capacity to delve deeper.
The mass shooter epidemic is not something that can simply be legislated away. A relentless wave of copycats has terrorized America since a pair of teenagers shot up a high school in Colorado at the turn of the century. And yes, guns are the means by which these atrocities often occur, but they are only that. More fundamental is the toxic culture that consistently churns out psychopaths who commit large-scale and often indiscriminate murder.
What is it about our society that keeps producing the people behind the weapons?
We’ve learned a few things about mass killers over the years. They often experience a “crisis event” within weeks of the act, often involving humiliation. Many suffer from mental illness and isolation. They are typically young adults and male, and their race is roughly proportional to the population at large.
One trait many seem to share is a known fascination with violence, including obsessions with prior mass shootings and violent media.
We are only beginning to learn about the motivations of the Manhattan shooter. But the widely circulated security camera picture of him walking into an office building echoes the aesthetics of violent films, striding breezily in dark shades and tactical gear like a vengeful action movie antihero, his head cocked slightly as if listening to a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack in his earbuds. This perfect alignment with aesthetics from violent movies does not happen by accident — he learned this behavior, life mirroring art.
That’s not to say violent movies are to blame for this mass shooting or any other, only that repeated efforts to glamorize deadly mayhem left its indelible mark on this latest nightmare. How many “cool” killing sprees have each of us seen over the course of a lifetime? The average person is steeped in a media culture that churns out stylish violence, normalizing mayhem as a viable pathway to infamy. Studies show that U.S. children witness, on average, 200,000 violent acts on TV before they turn 18. Boys are likely to participate in hundreds of hours of simulations on hyperrealistic video games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, where stylish violence thrills and embeds a warped cultural script for the unstable.
There are, of course, many cultural accelerants for the mass shooting epidemic. People are increasingly isolated, sad, and resentful, fueled by social media echo chambers that amplify rage. But our culture should take a long look at the image of the swaggering Manhattan shooter and ask itself where he learned to carry himself that way with an automatic weapon in hand.
And while tighter gun laws such as enhanced background checks or red flag enforcement could theoretically have slowed the Manhattan shooter down — he appears to have purchased his M4 assault rifle legally, having obtained a concealed firearms permit from Las Vegas in 2022 — it’s difficult to believe that someone determined to go on a killing spree would be dissuaded or even discouraged by more gun laws. America has approximately 393 million guns, and about 200,000 are stolen per year. The cat is out of the bag, as it were. There’s no way to get those guns back without helping the criminals at the expense of citizens attempting to protect their families.
Making guns marginally more difficult to obtain won’t cure the mass shooting epidemic. A nation awash in guns and unable to stop dangerous people from obtaining them needs to rethink its cultural priorities. It is, at the very least, time for an honest conversation about the entertainment diet we feed our children.
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How many violent deaths set to hip soundtracks is too many for a growing mind to absorb? How can we lessen the appeal of mass murder?
This conversation alone won’t solve the problem, but it is a necessary step to halting the social contagion. After all, it’s only a matter of time before the next shooter struts in, shades on, ready for his close-up.