Like everyone else, I am dismayed at yet another senseless tragedy involving the innocent, and am groping for answers as to why shit like this happens. I've read many, but by no means all, of the Diaries here about the Newtown massacre, I've read myriad (usually breathless and frequently inaccurate) news accounts, I've visited hunting/shooting websites I've frequented for years (yeah, they are as saddened and sickened as you are). I've seen everything proposed to prevent the next one (and inevitably there will be one) from banning private ownership of firearms to mandating that everybody with people "in their charge", from bus drivers to teachers, be required to go armed at all times.
What strikes me in this and similar situations is the timing of them, not what time of day they happen but that they are, for the most part, a recent phenomenon. Follow me across the jump and I'll explain.
The first semi-automatic (or "self-loading", as they were called then) rifle was invented by the German gunsmith Ferdinand Mannlicher in 1885. These early models were finicky and relatively expensive, and nobody carried them to schools and theaters and shot up the place.
Winchester really got the ball rolling in 1905 with the Model 1905:
This rifle had all the essential features semi-automatic rifles have demonstrated since: when fired, it "automatically" chambered another round from the detachable magazine and stopped, awaiting another trigger pull to repeat the cycle. Made until 1932 when it was replaced by the first of a succession of models which we'll not delve into. Well over a million Winchester semi-automatic rifles were produced that had one thing in common besides the name: nobody carried them into schools and theaters and shot up the place.
Remington got into the market in 1908 with their Model 8
The successors to this rifle have seen several different models, averaged production on the order of 70,000 per year for the last 103 years and nobody carried them into schools and theaters and shot up the place.
The ugly gun got its start in this country when the Army adopted the M16 and Colt brought out the semi-automatic civilian version, the AR-15, in 1963.
While it looks much different, bear in mind that functionally the AR-15 is practically identical to the Winchester 1905 we started with: it fires one round per trigger pull and feeds from a detachable magazine. Unlike the Winchester, however, the AR-15 has spawned about 3.4 gazillion variations (that's an estimate) and can be accessorized to a ridiculous extent:
Underneath all that lies a basic semi-automatic rifle. The AR-15 has been available, in all the myriad variations and calibers and configurations, for almost 50 years, and for the first half of that time nobody carried them into schools and theaters and shot the place up.
But something has changed. It wasn't the guns, because they've been essentially unchanged for a century, and there are literally tens of millions of them in this country that have never been misused in any way, but somehow, about 25 years ago, a few people started carrying them into schools and theaters and malls and such and shooting the place up.
What changed a quarter-century ago?? Some point to violent (and ultra-violent) video games, and I don't doubt they can have a desensitizing effect. Some point to the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, and the instant infamy gained by every perpetrator of one of these outrages, and I suppose that in some warped minds any attention beats none. But I strongly suspect there is a larger factor at work.
25 years ago is roughly when we started dumping psychotropic drugs into adolescent boys in industrial quantities, often for minor behavioral issues that for hundreds of generations were corrected successfully by a little "concentrated attention". Dr. Gary G. Kohls looked into this intently after the so-called "Batman" shootings in Colorado, and his findings were startling:
Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.
Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.
Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.
Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.
Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.
Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.
Jarred Viktor, age 15, stabbed his grandmother 61 times after 5 days on Paxil.
Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.
Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.
A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.
Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..
A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.
Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.
TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.
Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.
James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.
Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania
Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) - school shooting in El Cajon, California
Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.
Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.
Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.
Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.
Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.
Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.
Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.
Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.
Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)
Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
(Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)
Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.
Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.
Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.
Woody __, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.
A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.
Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”
Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.
Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.
Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.
Etc, etc.
I highly recommend reading his entire
article, and
this one. They are enlightening.
What actions we take in response to this latest massacre remain to be seen, I wouldn't be surprised to see a revival of the futile AWB that just banned new ugly guns, but whatever is done will likely be pissing in the wind if a long, hard look isn't taken at the massive over-prescribing of psychotropic drugs into unformed brains.
And remember, before 9/11 the worst mass murder in NYC history didn't involve a gun.