Munich replicates Columbine and earlier massacres

With Donald Trump raging that he would nuke ISIS off the planet, it turns out that the latest massacre wasn’t ISIS.

It was a Columbine Massacre copycat.

From the day it happened, I remember parents, psychologists, SWAT team members and others at the high school warning that too much coverage would result in copycat killings.

Of course I cannot say why an 18-year-old decided to go homicidal other than that he was mentally ill. One thing I am sure of though, is that Trump won’t stop it.

Here are three things, just for the sake of argument, that we might do in addition to expanding our mental health care system.

Have more effective gun control, stop the sale of violent video games and urge Hollywood to stop making violent movies its major cash cow.

Gun control is out of the question.

Some will say there is no proof video games make kids violent. Perhaps not _ yet.

The documentary “Merchants of Doubt” shows how scientists were paid to lie about the deadly effects of cigarettes. They killed both my parents. The Army hooked my father. “Smoke ‘em if you got them.” Humphrey Bogart, a great actor, and others, made them fashionable.

I am sure I will be long dead before we find out how much harm violent video games cause. Imagine a scientific community that outlaws marijuana while opiods and alcohol are killing millions.

Movies, at least, can do good. And as long as violent movies make fortunes they will be among the Star Wars.

In the lastest killings, in Munich, we were led on a rollercoaster path that started with the assumption that it was ISIS. Then it was linked to rightwing fascists.

Now we find out the killer had books on Columbine, including one on why they did it. Back in the 1960s Herbert Marcuse complained that even books that should help end up spreading the plague of violence and capitalism.

Imagine the killer examining himself to see if he fit the bill of the Columbine killers?

I guess he passed.

And he was up-to-date, using Facebook to lure victims.

Guardian
Merchants of Doubt

​https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/23/munich-gunman-book-columbine-virginia-tech-killers