It’s easy to say that Dylann Storm Roof’s eyes have that scary, hollow look. They do, but that’s only with hindsight.
Now we can say he was evil or nuts or whatever. Before, it seems the 21-year-old who stands accused of mowing down nine people in their own church was just another nondescript anybody drifting through space.
He wasn’t necessarily noticeable, those who knew him say. But that seems to always be the cliché after stuff like this happens. He was the guy on the sidelines soaking it in.
It seems Roof was a sponge, soaking up what is the worst of us.
“I have to do it,” he was heard to say during the slaughter. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
It’s being called a hate crime. Of course it is. Anybody who enters a church — or theater, or post office, or elementary school or anywhere — with the intent of slaughtering other human beings is bubbling with hate.
Think about what happened here. He didn't storm in, guns blazing. He quietly entered a church, was welcomed, sat with congregants for an hour, experienced their worship of a Loving God, saw the others as people, listened to them speak and pray, perhaps even laugh, and then stood up and walked among those same people killing them, while patiently reloading and even talking to those he slaughtered.
Where he came to that level of antipathy may someday be ascertained, but I doubt it. We may catch a glimpse of what went through his rotten, disturbed mind, and we hope that may help understand these types of incidents. But the more we study them, the more they seem to keep happening.
The FBI and Harvard reported last year that these sorts of killings have increased over the past few years.
The FBI’s study was more in the clinical vein rather than psychological or philosophical. The agency says it wants to help cops understand what they are facing. The agency catalogued “active” shootings, which it defines as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.”
(I’ve also come across an ongoing debate about the difference between “active” shootings and “mass” and “spree” killings — which I take as a reflection on the dysfunctionality of life these days.)
The FBI said there were an average of 16.4 active shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, with 366 deaths over that time. From 2000 to 2006, the average was 6.4 active shootings annually.
While such shootings may be occurring more frequently (and there is a counter-argument that more recent shootings are just easier for researchers to find on the Internet), they are an aberration. From 2008 to 2012, 45,009 Americans were killed by guns, accounting for two-thirds of all homicides. And the rate of killing is down by half from 20 years ago.
Interestingly, people think it’s way more dangerous today, a perception that helps ramp up emotions and fears.
Still, incidents like Sandy Hook or the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church massacre probably wake us out of our torpor when it comes to gun violence. A body here, a couple there, and that’s the background noise on TV when we’re getting ready for work.
But nine slaughtered in a church by a pasty-faced kid because the victims were different from and somehow threatening to him? Well, that will cause us to put down the toothbrush for a moment and take stock.
The Charleston killing has just about every point of contention that feeds the anger mill on cable TV and the Internet: Race, religion, guns, political philosophy, personal responsibility. Just about all those talking points were being waged before lunchtime.
I’ve already heard the Angry White Guy narrative bandied about, the one that says mass killers seem to always fit that category. But a data analysis of such killings over four decades by the left-leaning publication Mother Jones shows that such killers are broadly reflective of the (male) population.
So it’s an everybody problem. (Male, again, that is.)
That weak-minded individuals like Dylann Storm Roof are able to absorb enough caustic information through the media, online and their own daily encounters to warp their psyches shows that there is a vein of sickness in the Public Body. In the days ahead, we will hear angry diatribes, explanations and rebukes coming from all quarters, seeking to pinpoint the source of that malady.
It just seems to me that rather than hurling blame, it would be nice if we could reconsider our own humanity and make it a point to wage small bits of kindness. Try not to blow up during a perceived slight in traffic, to hold the door for a stranger and exchange a pleasant greeting, to bite your tongue on that racial joke or angry statement you want to let loose, to volunteer for a worthwhile activity or to just put yourself in the mindset of someone else.
All small stuff and not likely to change the world, but perhaps enough to make it a kinder place for a fleeting moment. And that’s a start.
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