No Chivalry Among Psychopaths

Moses Lake, Pearl, West Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield, Littleton and now, Conyers, Ga., where another middle class 15-year-old boy last week shot six students in what was thankfully a half-hearted attempt at mass murder.

As the list grows longer, patterns are beginning to emerge. In some cases (at least three of the seven), the assailants had been teased by jocks or had their heterosexuality impugned by higher-status boys. In some cases, the killers had recently broken up with girlfriends. In at least half the cases, the killers were from broken families. In most cases, the killers were no more than 16 years old.

In most cases, peers rather than parents or other authority figures were the main target. In most cases (judging from the death rolls) the killer either targeted girls or shot girls and boys indiscriminately.

This latter point has received virtually no attention but in terms of adolescent murder patterns, it is extraordinary. In the typical poor, urban neighborhood, girls are sometimes killed, either by jealous ex-lovers or by stray bullets. But even in the so-called urban jungle, the killers overwhelmingly target other males: young Bloods and Crips shoot it up over turf, to display gang loyalty or to avenge insults from other males.

Finally, in 100 percent of these cases, the attackers were boys. White boys. White, middle class boys.

The evidence is mounting that we are dealing here with a brand new disorder of masculinity in the mainstream culture. Junior males, low in the high school pecking order, respond to taunts by slaughtering female peers, or male and female peers in a new gender-neutral fashion.

Even in the so-called ghetto, young men know you cannot prove you are one tough dude by outfighting the girl next door. Where did white boys get this idea?

It’s probably no coincidence this new type of killer is emerging when violent movies, lyrics, television shows and videogames either target women victims or (in a perverse nod to feminism) show men and women as equal combatants. And in this sea of violent images, videogames stand out.

The Moses Lake killer set out to murder one boy he hated; he went on to shoot three other people of both sexes. When the police asked him why, he said, “I don’t know; I guess reflex took over.”

What reflex, one might wonder, leads someone to shoot people toward whom he had no animus and who posed no threat to him? Could it be reflexes developed in front of video games, in which shooters aim at random male and female victims?

Lt. Col. David Grossman, an expert witness in a West Paducah-inspired lawsuit, points out in The New York Times that videogames counter the natural instinct for neophyte hunters and soldiers to shoot repeatedly until a target drops. In West Paducah, a neophyte killer tutored by videogames shot quickly from one target to another.

He doesn’t point out that today’s videogames also counter the natural male tendency in a brawl to focus violence on other males. A new generation of bloody videogames require men to blow away women in order to advance to the next level. And it’s getting worse.

“In Greenville, Texas,” reports this week’s New York Times magazine, “six young white faces” play a new videogame, “Kingpin.” On the screen, a trashy babe in tight pants taunts the male character. “Up goes the crowbar. Then down it comes, ripping into the woman’s throat. She crumples to the ground, her body covered with bloody holes. ‘Ooooh!’ cry the boys, laughing.”

I don’t know the full answer to this new pattern of school violence. But I do know that men who make or profit from these games, or who squeal with joy when playing them, should not be welcome in polite society, or in any woman’s home.