On Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015, the tranquility of the morning was disrupted by another tragedy in the news. This time it was a shooting by a mentally unstable man in an attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado.
The incident had all the elements of a perfect storm. The ongoing issues of gun control, pro-choice vs. pro-life, and the mental instability of an individual have combined together to brew a lethal mix. Inflammatory rhetoric by opposing factions have served as a catalyst to trigger the violence.
There have been at least two other similar shootings in Colorado over the past few years. All have been perpetrated by mentally unstable individuals. In the latest incident the shooter, a pro-lifer, ironically chose to commit mass murder. Resorting to such violence reveals his bankruptcy of options in resolving differences of opinion and it attests to his essential insanity.
The man’s gray hair indicates he is of advanced age. He apparently managed to maintain his mental stability for a long time. But now, unexpectedly in a tragic turn of events, he lost his mental equilibrium. Something destabilized him.
Sometime back, a video released by the pro-life faction caused a nationwide uproar. The video was gruesomely graphic in depicting a surgical procedure which implied that “baby parts were harvested” for intended sale by Planned Parenthood.
Congress threatened to stop funding for Planned Parenthood but paused momentarily to review the video and found that it had been highly edited. The inferences of the video were proven untrue. The video was discredited and Planned Parenthood retained its funding.
Apparently the mentally challenged gunman was aware of the content of the video. Its charged inferences became toxic in his mind and motivated him to become the “avenging champion” for the dying infants. Ubiquitous contentions of pro-life vs. pro-choice and issues of access control to firearms created an emotion-charged environment.
Inflammatory propaganda distorted the shooter’s reasoning and toppled his precarious mental equilibrium. All “elements of a perfect storm” mixed and combined to precipitate the tragedy.
Fred Natkevi
Oak Park