The shootings at Fort Hood in Texas by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist and practising Muslim, are shocking and condemnable; and the perpetrator should be punished according to the law of the land. It has to be investigated at length if the killings have anything to do with his being a Muslim or simply reflects the case of a psychiatric patient who was feeling sad about the prospects of being sent to a war which he, like billions of others, regarded as a crime against humanity.
Even otherwise, the mass shootings in America are on the rise; and the case at Ford Hood is receiving attention only because the killer happens to be an American Muslim.
Killing sprees and incest cases are in international news at regular intervals. High crime rates, rising levels of promiscuity, women and child abuse reflect the maddening effect of modernity, which gives little importance to morality. High-tension life with exposure to high doses of abnormal images in the media is turning people into psychopaths. If society is to be saved from the ill effects of new trends, steps will have to be taken not only at the legal front but also at the social fronts.
On April 4, 2009, the shooting in Binghamton, New York ended with 14 people shot to death, including the apparent suicide of the gunman. The killing spree in the US is on the rise and has killed more than 50 people in March alone.
A gunman barricaded the backdoor of a community centre with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before apparently committing suicide, officials said.
Investigators said they had yet to establish a motive for the massacre, which was at least the fifth deadly mass shooting in the U.S. in the past month alone.
In a news conference about the Binghamton shootings, New York Governor David Patterson voiced despair when he said, “When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents?”
According to Wikipedia, a spree killer, also known as a rampage killer, is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on his or her victims (2 or more) in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as “killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders”. According to the FBI the general definition of spree murder is two or more murders committed by an offender or offenders, without a cooling-off period; the lack of a cooling-off period marking the difference between a spree murder and a serial murder.
MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE U.S. THIS YEAR
A gunman killed three police officers in Pittsburgh on Saturday. Another gunman walked into an immigration services centre in downtown Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday, killing 13 people and wounding at least four before apparently committing suicide.
Here is a look at some of the other U.S. mass shootings this year:
• March 29: Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, N.C., before a police officer shot him and ended the rampage.
• March 29: Devan Kalathat, 42, shot and killed his two children and three other relatives, then killed himself in an upscale neighbourhood of Santa Clara, Calif. Kalathat’s wife was critically injured.
• March 21: Lovelle Mixon, 26, shot and killed four Oakland, Calif., police officers after a traffic stop. Mixon was killed in a shootout with SWAT officers.
• March 10: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people – including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy – across two rural Alabama counties. He then killed himself.
Notably large spree killings in history include:
• Tsuyama massacre (Japan, 1938): Mutsuo Toi, using an old Japanese rifle and swords, killed 30 and then himself in an hour and a half.
• University of Texas massacre (United States, 1966): Charles Whitman, a student at the University of Texas at Austin killed 14 people and wounded 31 others as part of a shooting rampage from the observation deck of the University’s 32-story administrative building. He did this shortly after murdering his wife and mother. He was eventually shot and killed by an Austin police officer.
• Uireyeong massacre (South Korea, 1982): Woo Bum-kon killed 57 and then himself in eight hours, using grenades and an M1 Carbine. 35 people were also wounded.
• Hungerford massacre (United Kingdom, 1987): Michael Robert Ryan, using two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, killed 16 people and wounded 15 others in a space of 7 hours before shooting himself.
• Gang Lu shootings (Iowa City, 1991): Gang Lu, a graduate student in physics at the University of Iowa used a handgun to kill five people and seriously wound a sixth, then killed himself.
• Aramoana Massacre (New Zealand, 1990): David Gray, using a Norinco Type 56-1S .223 semi-automatic rifle killed 13 people on 13 November. He was shot and killed by police the following day after a 22 hour stand off.
• Tian Mingjian incident(China, 1994): Tian Mingjian, using a type 81 rifle killed 23 people near Tiananmen Square on September 20, including an Iranian diplomat and his son. He was finally shot dead by a police sniper.
• Dunblane massacre (United Kingdom, 1996): Thomas Hamilton, using two 9 mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolvers, fired 109 times killed 17 people and injured 15 people on 13 March, before shooting himself.
• Port Arthur massacre (Australia, 1996): Martin Bryant, using an AR-15 and an L1A1 SLR, killed 35 and injured 19 in five hours before being arrested by the Special Operations Group of the Tasmanian Police.
• Red Lake High School massacre (United States, 2005): Jeff Weise. Shot and killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend, both police officers. He then proceeded to a local high school and shot and killed a security guard. Once inside the school Weise shot and killed five students and a teacher before committing suicide. Weise killed 9 and injured 15.
• Virginia Tech massacre (United States, 2007): Seung-Hui Cho, using two pistols, killed 32 in two separate events and then himself in the course of about three hours.
• Dnepropetrovsk maniacs (Ukraine, 2007): an unusual group murder spree. Viktor Sayenko, Alexander Hanzha and Igor Suprunyuck, all 19, went on several murder sprees, claiming 21 victims in one month and videotaping most murders. Two victims were murdered within minutes of each other on June 25; two more on July 1st, three on July 7th, and two each on the 14th, 15th and 16th July, 2007.
• Akihabara massacre (Japan, 2008): Tomohiro Kato hit five pedestrians with a truck, then stabbed twelve people. Kato killed 7 and injured 10.
• 2009 Alabama spree killing (United States, 2009): Michael McLendon using SKS rifle, Bushmaster AR-15, and .38-caliber handgun killed 10 on 10 March and before shooting himself.
• Winnenden school shooting (Germany, 2009): 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer using a handgun killed 15 on March 11 before shooting himself.
The latest case should be fully investigated before jumping to any conclusions. It it is a another case of mass shootings, serious debate should begin on how to create conditions in society that increase the peace level of the members of society. If it has any religious/ethnic connections, serious efforts should be made to tackle Islamophobia that seems to be still on the rise despite the fact that evidences are accumulating that point out to unnecessary, unwarranted and more-than-required response by America that resulted in at least 100 times the killing of innocent Muslims than the number of the Americans killed on 9/11.
[The author is Executive Chairman, International Centre for Applied Islamics, and Chief Editor, “Islam, Muslims & the World”]