Once again we wonder what can possess the mind of a person who deliberately sets out to murder a large number of strangers by an event that will make world news headlines. Some will suspect that it is this very notoriety that is the motive.
James Holmes ( 24 ) a university dropout in Aurora, Colorado, attended the first night of the new Batman movie dressed in military body armour and equipped with a frightening array of weapons. He carried smoke and tear gas canisters, two Glock pistols, a pump action shotgun - and most alarmingly - an assault rifle equipped with a hundred round rotary magazine.
When the firing stopped twelve movie patrons were dead and another fifty-eight were seriously wounded. Holmes surrendered to police with the remark that he was " the Joker ", the villain portrayed in the movie " The Dark Knight Rises ".
It is too early to predict the motive for this mass killing, but like similar events in other parts of the world, it is interesting to note that the killer made no attempt to end his own life. Perhaps that surrender was part of the scenario running through his tortured mind. Perhaps the real reward is yet to come. Perhaps that is the enigma of taunting the relatives of those victims with the reason for such a meaningless crime.
It would be easy to lay the blame on the American gun culture. Guns are freely available in the US and the right to bear arms is even written into the Constitution, but that ignores other similar mass murder events that have happened in other parts of the world - where guns are not so readily available.
On July 22, 2011 Behring Breivik dressed himself in a police uniform and detonated a massive bomb in the government district of Oslo. He then went on to a small island where young members of a political party were holding a gathering. Armed with an assault rifle, he calmly and systematically stalked his victims for several hours, leaving sixty nine dead and over a hundred wounded, fifty-five of them seriously.
Breivik claims that his action was justified because he sought to rid the country of Muslim residents.
Australia had a similar mass murder on April 28, 1996, when Martin Bryant walked through the Tasmanian tourist village of Port Arthur and gunned down thirty-five people and wounded a further twenty-three. Once again, an assault rifle was used and no satisfactory explanation for the murder spree has been discovered.
These three events made world headlines, but there have been numerous others scattered around the world and in most cases the perpetrator has either committed suicide or been shot by police rather than submitting to arrest. What stands out in most of these cases is the fact that the murderer is male, usually young and seems to revel in the attention of the media and even gloat over the carnage he has caused. It is rare for such a person to express regret for his actions.
Each event delivers repercussions. In Australia they provoked a tightening of gun laws and similar revisions are under way in Norway. Little change is expected in America. It is an election year and the influence of the National Rifle Association will prevent any significant reform.
It is doubtful if the medical profession can do anything to head off rampages of this kind. The perpetrators are usually very normal young men who tend to be withdrawn and secretive, but displaying no evidence of the dark thoughts running through their minds. It seems that getting involved in such a murderous incident is simply a matter of " being in the wrong place at the wrong time ".
After all, who would have thought that there would be danger in visiting a prime Tasmanian tourist spot, participating in a youth weekend on an idyllic island - or enjoying a first night of a newly released movie ?
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