COMMENTARY | A West Virginia man killed himself Wednesday after shooting six people in three states and running over a seventh person; five of his victims have died, according to Reuters. A gunman opened fire at an IHOP in Nevada Tuesday, shooting seven before shooting himself, reports CBS/AP. Three National Guardsmen and a civilian have since died from their wounds.
They are stories too chillingly common: a person bent on suicide who decides it would be better to take some others with him. These people are doing things in the wrong order.
The disgusting callousness it takes to mow down innocent people, to take away fathers and husbands and wives and children because a person feels bad about his own life is beyond staggering. That they then use that anger and a convenient weapon to destroy the worlds of others for no other purpose but to do it before they take their own lives is action utterly without humanity.
I am not without sympathy for people with weight so heavy in this life that they feel death is the only thing that can bring them relief. I do not take suicide lightly or as a joke.
But if a person is determined to end his own life, he has no right, no power, and no privilege to take the lives of the people around him. They are not his to take.
There is no way to pretend to understand the minds of the people who do these things, who buy guns and bullets and point them without feeling, without compassion. Clearly there is a selfishness of a level so great a human body cannot contain it; they are likely eaten alive by the virus of their own self-involvement.
They must feel anger and hatred, though those emotions are purely speculation; they kill themselves before anyone gets a chance to ask. And the ironic aspect is that every self-loathing thought they likely have, every ounce of the self-hatred it must take to end their own lives, is proved true through their own actions.
People who kill others in cold blood are loathsome people.