Just another normal psycho?

Anyone remember Patrick Purdy? Time Magazine still does:

Slaughter in A School Yard

Jan. 30, 1989

The gunman drove his Chevrolet station wagon to the rear of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif. He stepped out, carrying a Chinese-made semiautomatic AK-47 rifle loaded with 75 bullets. Carved into the AK-47's stock were disconnected words: " freedom," " victory," " Hezbollah." He wore a flak jacket under a camouflage shirt jacket that bore other words, one misspelled: " PLO," " Libya," " death to the Great Satin." He had placed plugs in his ears to dull the sounds of what he was about to do. Patrick Purdy, 26, a drifter with guerrilla-warfare fantasies, had returned to the school....

Despite the trappings, Purdy wasn't an extremist Muslim.

Just a "normal" pyscho.

For her part, Dianne Feinstein blamed the gun with the psychotic "Hezbollah" carvings:

Let me speak for a moment about perhaps the most notorious assault weapon, the AK-47. This gun, developed in the former Soviet Union, is one of the most widely used military weapons in the world. It is not used to hunt, at least not to hunt animals. It is not well designed for home defense. Its ammunition can easily pierce walls and kill innocent bystanders. I will tell you what it is good for: the rapid killing of other people. How well I remember when an unstable drifter by the name of Patrick Purdy, with an assault weapon modeled after the AK-47, walked into a Stockton schoolyard in northern California. He lay on his belly, and he fired indiscriminately into the schoolyard. He fired 106 rounds of ammunition. By the time he was done, 5 children were dead and 29 were injured--five children dead because a of drifter who could gain one of the most powerful military weapons and use it against children.
As Dave Kopel pointed out, the type of gun Purdy used had nothing to do with the crime, nor did the 15 day waiting period stop him from buying anything; he was a deranged criminal who shouldn't have been allowed to run around loose.

Fortunately for us all, gun control has nothing to do with Joel Hinrichs.

Or has it? Might he have had a mental history which prohibited him from buying firearms? Has anyone checked with his psychiatrist? Do we even know whether he had a psychiatrist?

Officials like OU President David Boren were very quick to blame Hinrichs' mental, um, problems, but I noticed that the references were worded in such a way as to defy precise analysis.

From an NBC News report:

"We know that he has had what I would call emotional difficulties in the past," Boren said. "There is certainly no evidence at this point which points to any other kind of motivation other than his personal problems."
Might Hinrichs' psychiatric or medical records shed some light on this? Are there any? The father describes his son as seeming ordinary but also says he had to leave school to "cope" with "depression":
Hinrichs' father, Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr., said he is clinging to the idea that his son's death was unintentional. He said he communicated with his son and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He said his son was a very intelligent and private individual who somehow lost the confidence that his life would be a good one.

He told The Denver Post that his son had trouble making friends with peers. He said his son took a year off college to try to cope with depression.

What does that mean? Was he on meds? Who was this kid's psychiatrist and what might he have told him?

Or is this "confidential" and known only to university officials? If so, why? Bear in mind his father's remarks about his son's apparently lifelong interest in explosives:

His son also had an interest in explosives, Hinrichs said.

"Every little boy does that," he said. "He went a little further than most."

Yeah, a little.

But he was, like, you know.

Coping.

With depression.

I've seen a lot of things, known a lot of depressed people, and a lot of coping mechanisms. But I've never known any depressed person who thought of "coping" by means of explosives.

But let's just assume that the spin being promulgated is true, and that Joel Hinrichs was a depressed lone nut who saw an explosive way out of life. Allowing for the possibility that the act of self detonation with "Mother of Satan" TATP explosives -- 100 yards from 84,000 people -- was in no way connected with terrorism (or "extremist groups" as they put it), I have a couple of questions.

Isn't it dangerous for mentally ill people to blow themselves up in front of football stadiums?

Isn't it at least as dangerous as mentally ill people opening fire with guns?

My stubborn (but sometimes elusive) common sense tells me that if Hinrichs had owned an AK-47 like Patrick Purdy's, had he sat down on that same bench with it and put a round through his head in front of a stadium filled with people, someone, somewhere, might have asked questions along the following lines:

  • How was this mentally ill man with a history of depression allowed to buy the gun?
  • Should laws be toughened?
  • Shouldn't psychotherapists have a duty to report depressed people with a history of buying guns?
  • Is there a double standard? Why should nuts with guns be considered more dangerous than nuts with explosives?

    Certainly, the possibility of psychotic individuals (or lone nuts) committing highly dangerous acts like suicide bombings is not a new one. Indeed, I've discussed it before when I discussed terrorism by homeless suicide bombers. (An idea raised not by me, but by a regional director for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition...)

    I'm tempted to ask why irrational suicide should be considered less dangerous than "rational" suicide, but it might be a distinction without a difference.

    (At any rate, it doesn't seem to make any difference.)

    UPDATE: Interesting editorial from the Enid (Oklahoma) News and Eagle:

    It's clear the FBI, which is in charge of the investigation, is trying to be tight-lipped because they don't have all the answers. They can state they have no direct evidence "at this time" to support any reports Hinrichs was involved with terrorist organizations or he intended to do harm to the fans in the stadium.

    They probably are doing the right thing by limiting their comments until they have confirmed answers to all their questions. But, the information that is being ferreted out by the media is starting to paint a disturbing picture. Why would Hinrichs try to buy large quantities of a known explosive material? What was his motive for committing the suicide in such a public and dramatic way? What kinds of associations has he been involved with recently and what were his political views?

    We applaud Boren for the attention he has given the matter and his daily briefings regarding the status of the investigation. Yet, we also believe there are more layers to this story than are being publicly disclosed at this time.

    We can be patient for a little awhile as the FBI does its job of investigating the situation. However, it's imperative the truth be presented in full as quickly as possible. And, the questions need to be answered sooner rather than later in order to best serve the OU students, faculty and the fans of its spectator sports.

    posted by Eric on 10.09.05 at 12:52 PM





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    What if Hinrichs had used an AK-47 instead of an explosive made with "Mother of Satan," the preferred chemical of Middle East terrorist bombers? Eric Scheie has answers. [Read More]
    Tracked on October 9, 2005 08:35 PM



    Comments

    Anyone using a gun to prove how bad he is has to us an AK; it is part of the image, Imaging getting to Hell and telling them you shot up a schoolyard. "Cool! Whatja use?" "Western Field lever gun in 32 Special." Everyone on the Group W bench would move away from him, even tho the ballistics of the rounds are actually similar.

    My understanding is that Purdy, because he used the AK as an evil bullet hose, actually put more rounds into the school wall nine feet up than he managed to put into the school children.

    triticale   ·  October 9, 2005 10:39 PM

    Anyone with a little bit of knowledge of guns knows that an AK-47 isn't made for killing, it's made for wounding. That's why there were only 5 dead and 29 injured. Very similar incident happened, but the man used a shotgun and 12 of 13 were dead. The media is ignorant and uses words like "assualt rifle" to scare people.

    TK   ·  October 9, 2005 11:14 PM

    I had not known that Patrick Purdy had a political ideology any more than had Ted Bundy or Richard Speck. Turns out he was a PLO sympathyzer, huh? And, so, the "liberals" blame his gun instead of his ideology.

    Reminds me again of:
    A Communist assassinates the President of the United States with a rifle. Liberal solution: outlaw all rifles. Conservative solution: outlaw all Communists.

    A "normal" suicide kills the individual. Some who are unable to pull the trigger may hurt or kill others in the process of setting the stage for their own death. These poor souls drive cars into opposing traffic hoping to die by someone else's hand, or threaten cops hoping to be shot. Sometimes others are hurt but the purpose is still just suicide. Hinrich is unique to this country. He blew himself up near hundreds --- and loaded the bomb with ball bearing or nails. This was not a suicide. This was attempted homicide by an Islamic fundamentalist. This one failed to kill others, but he meant to. Will the FBI and Homeland Security admit that we have had our first human bomb on American soil and act accordingly? No. They will put their heads in the sand like they did after the first Oklahoma bombing. They did not use the lessons of Oklahoma and 1st WTC to avoid 9/11, and they will not learn from this and will lose their chance to prevent the next one, the first successful human bomber. Sad.

    david lozier   ·  October 10, 2005 11:41 AM

    TK: More accurately, it's made to fire as much as possible in a vaguely controlled manner.

    It's not "full power" because of an intent to wound rather than kill, but because massed automatic fire was found to be very effective with the PPSh and similar SMGs, but 9mm wasn't powerful enough (and 7.62x54R was too unwieldy in full-auto).

    The idea of causing casualties more than fatalities was supposedly one of the reasons for using .223 in the AR-15/M-16, but I'm not sure that's not just urban legend (and I'm told the Soviets moved to 5.54 in the AK74 simply because they figured we must be on to something, though that might ALSO be urban legend), and a useful side-effect rather than a design parameter.

    At any rate, there seems to be some counter-pressure to go back to a full-power round, or at least a more deadly medium-power round; the Marines can't get enough of the old M-14, I hear.

    Sigivald   ·  October 10, 2005 06:49 PM


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