Mar 28 2006
The Capital Hill Massacre
I am struggling with this one because it encompasses so many issues.
The details of it are well known but here is a select summary:
Tragedy on Capitol Hill: 7 dead after rampage
After partying peacefully all night with young people he'd met at a nearby rave, the heavyset man left an east Capitol Hill home around 7 a.m. He returned minutes later, draped in ammunition belts and armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol.
His first victim was gunned down on the front steps, the second on the porch. Pandemonium broke out as partygoers dived out windows while others tried to hold the front door shut in the face of a fusillade of shotgun blasts.
He killed six young people Saturday morning before turning the shotgun on himself as a police officer confronted him. Two others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske described the man as "quiet and humble" but knew little else about a mass killer whose crime is among the worst in Seattle history, eclipsed only by the 1983 Wah Mee Massacre that left 13 dead.
The killer remained an enigma Saturday night. The one message he left behind: the word "NOW" spray-painted on sidewalks and the steps of a home nearby.
"We have absolutely no idea of what the motive is," Kerlikowske said.
As the details unfold two things are making the biggest waves in people minds as they try to understand it:
- It's the rave culture and the drugs that permeate it. Kids zorked out of their heads on all kinds of drugs.
- Guns. This is proof why we need gun control.
The rave culture is certainly not a stranger to drugs, but neither is a concert at Gasworks Park or Starbucks or anywhere else. Drugs and kids will always be an issue. I used to know people who raved and they weren't druggies or crazy, they just liked to party and to dance.
Not like what we did as kids, of course, in my day we just went to parties and dances and....errr, never mind.
What about my parents in the 40's? They used to go parties and dances and ....wait a sec....
Point is that every generation has their own sense of self, their own manner expression and yes, their own dance culture. And every generation of parents looks at thier kids says "you call that dancing?"
Did we learn nothing from Footloose?
Seriously though, the rave was not the problem. By all desciptions it was peaceful and controlled. This was at the safe party afterwards, which ravers on talk radio described as a place to chill out and be safe after the rave is over.
Guns are certainly an issue, they always are when they become the weapon of choice. But honestly while this idiot had an impressive arsenal, he did most of the damage with a shotgun, similar to what you can buy at a Wal-Mart for crying out loud and typically immune to most control, including waiting periods (there is no waiting period in Washington for shotguns). This was not an assault weapon with a 100 round clip and a bayonet mounted to the front like a war movie, or a movie. And frankly, I know enough safe gun owners that I cannot see that guns are an issue unless you can predetermine who is not safe with one. Unless we get some way to do that, control won't help and the 2nd Amendment is going to creep up when you over-restrict them, not to mention the simple truth in the phrase If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
Frankly a few more guns, as in people with concealed weapons permits (which I plan to apply for next month) would have ended this a lot sooner.
No, in this issue, this event of senselessness and brutality, like so many other senseless crimes, the real root cause, the reason it happened boils down to this:
No one knows.
Yea, it's a shitty answer, but the police admit freely that they may never know what caused this guy to slip a gear and turn into The Terminator. And his suicide ensures that there will be no justice for anyone concerned. So for some, all that remains is to find someone to blame, so they will take their hollow revenge on the ravers and on guns.
But they need to account for one other class of people who contributed to the death of two of the kids:
Parents
The two youngest victims were 2 girls, aged 14 and 15.
Bearing in mind some sensitivity to the grief of these parents, I am still forced to ask:
Where were the parents? What they hell were two young girls doing at an all night rave and after rave party?
I have a 15 year old daughter who would never ask to go to an all night party, and even if she did the answer would be a resounding hell no.
At the heart of this, if you want to blame anyone, two kids were killed by their parents inability to say no. Sorry if that's harsh, but it's the truth.
That's why blame is useless. It solves nothing. We will never understand why this happened, and the comfort will be scarce and insufficient.
Most of all some parents may have to face the reality of their own actions here.
So before you blame the guns, as Ken Schram does (Ken Schram Commentary: Guns DO Kill People), or the ravers and their drugs (yes there were drugs and alcohol found at the party) we, society as a whole, and parents specifically, may want to drop the blame and take the advice of the Seattle Times Editorial board who suggests that we do some soul searching about how we are raising our kids, and start asking some questions:
These kinds of things don't happen in Seattle, except they just did. A shooting rampage leaves a city soul-searching, parents in serious talks with teens and young adults, and a community wondering how a seemingly peaceful party could end in so much violence and bloodshed.
...
Beyond the raw, ugly mass murder, this event forces every parent of a teen or young adult to sit down and ask: Where exactly do you go at night? Do you really know the people with whom you are attending a party?
...
One of the six victims was apparently a 15-year-old Bellevue girl. What precautions or rules could have helped her? Could anyone protect her at a private party at a private home?
Not at this one.
But if she had been at home, where most sensible parents believe she should have been at 7am....
Makes me wonder.
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