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Mass Murder, as Random and Natural as a Storm : Violence: Social forces create the climate for the angry among us to vent; when they are armed, anyone might be a victim.

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<i> John H. Gagnon is a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His commentary is from Newsday. </i>

This news story has now become routine: A man with a rapid-firing handgun or assault rifle kills and maims a group of people just going about their everyday business. The number of dead and wounded varies; sometimes only a couple, sometimes two score or more are casualties. One time it is a group of exercisers in a health club, another time folks working in an employment office, still another commuters on their way home on a train.

In the aftermath of the incident, there is an orgy of explanation and speculation. The killing and maiming of people by a stranger with a gun cries out for a reason.

What made this particular killer do it? Why did he choose these victims? Why were these people killed and the persons sitting next to them spared? What can we do to prevent the same thing happening again? It almost seems disrespectful to the dead and to the survivors not to have a plausible reason for what happened and what can be done about it.

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Random violence resembles a force of nature. It erupts into our daily lives in the same way that a firestorm burns through a California suburb, a hurricane levels a town in Florida or a flood washes levees away in Iowa. At the same time, we don’t want the acts of human beings treated the same way we treat earthquakes, fires and floods. Human actions must have a purpose, human sacrifice must provide lessons, there must be people with white hats and people with black hats.

But random violence may actually make more sense than we think. And it may be more like the nor’easter than we want to believe. Social forces are actually much like natural forces, except that we are collectively both the causes and the victims.

All that today’s random violence requires is the fusing together of an easily available technology and a ready supply of the routinely “disrespected.”

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Workers are being shed by their employers to increase profits, the sick cannot find treatment, the consumer feels bilked by the seller, the voter feels betrayed by the empty promises of the politicians and the unrich are told that they are failures by every passing advertisement. (Why can’t you afford a BMW?) A lot of surplus rage is being produced.

The great storm comes, the barrier beaches are breached, sand dunes wash away, houses disappear in the surf and we call it an act of nature. Acts of random violence are simply the result of widespread degradation and disappointment multiplied by the gun. What could be more natural?

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