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A piece from the Overland blog ‘WHEN THE BURNING MOMENT BREAKS’: GUN CONTROL AND RAGE MASSACRES<http://overland.org.au/blogs/new-words/2012/08/when-the-burning-moment-breaks-gun-control-and-rage-massacres/> Author On 23 January 1924, a man opened fire with a .44 repeating rifle on the families picnicking in Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens. He shot five people, seemingly targeted at random, before the gun failed. Three died. The murderer, later identified as Norman List, ran from the scene. On 2 February, his body was found in the bush in Pakenham, where he’d killed himself. Today, in the wake of the Colorado killings and the new atrocity in Wisconsin, all the aspects of List’s deeds seem instantly familiar, recognisable components of what forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen calls the ‘autogenic massacre’. Mullen defines the crime thus: ‘A heavily armed male, or just occasionally males, enter an area where people congregate and begins shooting victims indiscriminately, continuing with the killing until they turn their guns on themselves, or are shot and killed by police.’ In 1924, such massacres were largely unknown. List’s killings were an outlier, an anticipation of a pattern that only became more general much later: as Mullen puts it, ‘reports of autogenic massacres do not even begin to appear until the twentieth century and only emerge as a recurring theme in the last thirty years.’ It wasn’t until 1966, when a young man opened fire on students and staff at the University of Texas, that what we might call the generic conventions of the ‘autogenic massacre’ established themselves. What was previously a vanishingly rare crime morphed into something increasingly understood as inevitable. In the last three decades, there have been more than 30 massacres in US schools alone, with six mass killings already in 2012. As Mullen says: ‘The autogenic massacre emerged in western society over the last fifty years and is becoming increasingly frequent.’ Why is this happening? What does it mean? [continues] http://overland.org.au/blogs/new-words/2012/08/when-the-burning-moment-breaks-gun-control-and-rage-massacres/ This email, including any attachment, is intended solely for the use of the intended recipient. It is confidential and may contain personal information or be subject to legal professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient any use, disclosure, reproduction or storage of it is unauthorised. If you have received this email in error, please advise the sender via return email and delete it from your system immediately. Victoria University does not warrant that this email is free from viruses or defects and accepts no liability for any damage caused by such viruses or defects. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
