US Snipers

Tuesday October 29, 2002 11:34

by Irony is dead

Interesting article

Military training links string of serial killers By DOUG SAUNDERS Friday, October 25, 2002 - Toronto Mail & Globe, Canada, Print Edition, Page A5

Some time after he was discharged from the army, his life turned sour, he got angry and delusional and he snapped. Wielding his gun in a suburban
neighbourhood, he killed again and again: women, children, complete strangers, with military precision but without an evident motive.

This describes what police say about John Allen Muhammad, who was arrested yesterday in the Washington sniper-killing rampage. But it is also a precise description of Howard Unruh, a 28-year-old Second World War veteran who shot 13 of his New Jersey neighbours one day in 1949. His military firearms training made his "walk of death" the first modern serial-killer case.

In the 53 years that separate Mr. Unruh from Mr. Muhammad, hundreds of Americans have lost their minds and used guns to cause multiple deaths.
One thing unites almost all of them: military training.

Mr. Muhammad served in the Persian Gulf war, as did Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Both received weapons training and basic military
training designed to psychologically condition soldiers to kill. They are far from alone.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer received military training in Texas and Alabama. David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer, was an army veteran.
Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people and injured 31 in a 1961 sniper-shooting rampage from the top of a tower in Austin, Tex., had just been discharged from the U.S. Marines. Arthur Shawcross, who killed 12 people, was a Vietnam veteran.

In an overwhelming number of cases, serial killers and other mass murderers learned to kill in the military. Experts disagree whether this means that the army turns ordinary people into unfeeling killers, or the military simply attracts a large number of psychologically fragile people who are prone to become murderers.

David Grossman, a former U.S. military psychologist who helped develop programs to train new recruits to become more effective killers, said that the key to military training lies in breaking down the natural human
aversion to killing in a process he calls "disengagement." Once this aversion has been removed, it never comes back, and can make it easier for former soldiers to become murderers.

"The ability to watch a human being's head explode and to do it again and again -- that takes a kind of desensitization to human suffering that has to be learned," Mr. Grossman said yesterday.

In earlier wars, many soldiers were psychologically unable to shoot anyone.
In order to increase the "trigger-pull ratio," the United States changed the basic training offered to all recruits and draftees so they would be aggressively desensitized to killing.

Some observers believe this may be why mass murders have become far more common in the past 50 years.

In the 1970s, some observers believed that the humiliation and social opprobrium caused by the Vietnam War, led many former soldiers to become
mentally unstable, and potentially to become killers.

The Persian Gulf war of 1991 showed that this might not have been the case. Their war was popular domestically, and Persian Gulf veterans were welcomed as heroes upon return.

Yet their conflict has produced more than its share of killers. Mr. McVeigh was a decorated tank commander. His case is strikingly similar to that of Mr. Muhammad. Both seem to have gradually developed anti-American or
antigovernment beliefs while serving in the Persian Gulf war; both seem to have left disillusioned. And both seem to have used their military training to commit grave crimes.

save preference

Comments (3 of 3)

Trivial

by Jello Fellow

Tue Oct 29, 2002 14:42

These deaths are trivial and inconsequential when compared to the deaths inflicted on persons with the misfortune to live in Vietnam, Afghanistan; Palestinian camps, Lebanon, Chechnia ... and coming soon Iraq.

Save your sympathy, you'll need lots of it.

What about serial killers in Israel, UK and Russia

by Terry

Tue Oct 29, 2002 13:49

Does anybody know if a similar trend is apparent in any
of the above countries, who also have and or had soldiers
in conflict zones?

I heard a while back that even though there were about 50k to 80k
US soldiers killed in Vietnam, that over the 10 to 15 years after
the war, about a further 50,000 died of suicide. I suggest there
may be a link between the veteran suicide rate and these serial
killing episodes. Perhaps for everyone 200 or 300 committing
suicide, one decides instead to take others with him as well.

Therefore examination of the suicide rate amongst ex-combat soldiers
might provide some insight. In a simillar vein apparently the motor
accident (and death rates) is higher in regions where crime and
violence are higher, which clearly points to the fact that the
overall increase in stress in people's lives has measureable
negative effects.

Also...

by MG

Tue Oct 29, 2002 12:39

A nursing student who served in the 1991 Gulf War shot three of his professors somewhere in the US yesterday.

Hurrah for the US army, saviours of the world, bringers of peace, killers of women and children!

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

The Saker

Public Inquiry

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

US Snipers

Comments (3 of 3)