[This video originally appeared on Huffington Post] Episode 1 – The Prototype 1963 The first episode dissects a shooting that managed to be both the crime of the century and a typical act of gun violence. It tracks both the wanderings and escalating violence of a man who went my the alias Alek Hidell, and the political calculations that led to this very dysfunctional man having very functional – and cheap – weapons. Hidell was a man of reinventions – changing occupations, homes, and identities at will – become more lethal at each iteration. He attempted to assassinate a right wing agitator and future Presidential named Major General Edwin Walker, but failed then practiced. He plotted the death of then former Vice President Richard Nixon, but abandoned the plot. He traveled and regrouped. The rifle that Hidell used – the Mannlicher Carcano – was also well traveled. It began as…
For most Americans gun violence is a problem for the ‘other’: the poor, ‘minorities’, the mentally ill. When gun violence veers into the mainstream it’s usually in the guise of a political assassination, a tabloid style crime of passion, a celebrity suicide, or a mass shooting. According to the FBI, mass murder involves an individual murdering four or more persons in a relatively short time frame without a ‘cooling off period’. Mass shootings as a kind of mass murder, are subdivided by many criminologists into three separate categories: 1) family violence, 2) deaths linked to others crimes like drug deals or robberies, and 3) the category that we will be exploring, ‘public massacres’. Of the 31,000 firearm related deaths in 2010, 62% were from suicides, 36% were homicides, and 2% were unintentional ((Reducing Gun Violence in America, Daniel Webster, p.3)). Public massacres are a kind of mutant strain of gun…
This past Sunday marked the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school which claimed the lives of 26 people, among them 20 children. In the weeks leading up to the anniversary those affected by it began preparing, each in their own way: news outlets ran stories on the perpetrator and the victims; pundits and lobbyists debated issues surrounding the shootings; families argued for both privacy and advocacy; and in Colorado a young man went on a killing spree. Like Adam Lanza, he was suicidal and homicidal. Like the Columbine killers – Dylan Kleibold and Eric Harris – he was armed with guns and explosives. Like Charles Whitman his targets were specific people and institutions, but as more facts emerge we will likely learn that his hatred was somewhat broad and all-encompassing. He may or may not have been mentally ill, but more than likely he will be…