Guns Going Off All Over the Country

On the last day of the weekend of  the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis, I was listening to Jesse Jackson was asking his radio panel and audience whether the economic situation was a factor in all of the recent spate of shootings.  It was, but especially in one case I will outline, there is more to it than that.

March 10. Michael Kenneth McLendon, 28, of Samson, Alabama, kills ten people in a one-hour, 24-mile rampage through three small towns–Samson, Kinston, and Geneva–that culminated in his suicide at a former workplace, Reliable Metal Products. McLendon was armed with a semi-automatic SKS rifle, a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, a shotgun and a .38-caliber handgun. Around 4 p.m. that day, he first killed his mother and set fire to her house; even her four dogs were not spared. McLendon also shot his grandmother, an uncle, and two cousins, and notably, the wife and child of a sheriff’s deputy, among others. He had struggled against depression and to keep a job, and was angry over a recent family quarrel, but there was nothing criminal in his background. McLendon left behind lists of people, including employers and co-workers, against whom he held bitter grudges.

March 22. Lovelle Mixon, 26, (spoken of in another post) was pulled over in a routine traffic stop. Without warning, he fatally shot the two officers and then killed two SWAT team members in a gunfight in which Mixon was also killed. Relatives say Mixon, an ex-convict who had adamantly refused to meet with his parole officer, and was suspected of raping a 12-year-old girl and four other women, had grown increasingly frustrated about not finding a job, and spoke often of his fears of returning to jail. Though these reasons for Mixon’s going off seemed to reassure the populace, Berkeley Daily Planet columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor believes that “it is important—in fact, it is critical—to point out the possibility that it may have been Oakland’s past indiscriminant crackdowns (of young black and Latino drivers) that helped bring about this tragedy in the first place.”

March 29. A heavily-armed Carthage, North Carolina gunman named Robert Stewart, described as “calm and deliberate,” shot up the 110-bed Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home, looking to kill an estranged wife, Wanda Gay Neal Luck, who worked there.  Stewart eked out a living as a house painter and was in and out of the legal system–divorces, misdemeanors, marriages, debt, and complaints about his business practices.

TV news station WRAL said:

Carthage police have not said publicly what Robert Stewart’s motive was, but they have said they are investigating whether the shooting spree could have been domestic.

Stewart said she left her husband four weeks ago, and court documents show the couple had an on-again, off-again relationship that spread over many years. Friends said he was abusive and controlling during their marriage, and they believe there was nothing she could have done to stop Sunday’s shooting.

Sue Griffin, married to Stewart for fifteen years, was also interviewed by WRAL. She said of her former husband, “He would get mad because of things that didn’t go his way. He never really hurt me, but he would get mad and blow up.”

Stewart killed seven elderly residents, ranging from 75 to 98 years old, including those confined to wheelchairs, and a 39-year-old attendant.  The killing spree was checked by 25-year-old policeman Justin Garner, who effectively disabled Stewart with a shot to the chest that did not kill him, but the officer was wounded himself with shotgun pellets to the leg.

April 3. A Vietnamese American, Jiverly Voong (or Wong), borrowed his father’s car and drove to the Binghamton, New York  American Civic Association, an immigrant aid organization where he once attended classes.  He barricaded the back door of the building with the vehicle.  Wearing a bulletproof vest under a nylon jacket, Voong was heavily armed.  Without warning, he shot the two receptionists, and moved on to where a citizenship class was in session.  This is where most of the victims were found.

Fourteen people were killed, four were wounded.  Voong was among the fourteen, having shot himself in the head.  Police were still trying to find a motive why Voong turned to murder.  One reason that seems to have gained quick currency is that Voong blamed his poor English language skills on the Association; that he felt he was being ridiculed for his English, and that this led to his being fired from his job.  A more plausible reason could be that he was becoming more and more upset over his inability to find another job in New York. 

There was more about Voong that hinted of instability; a marriage that ended badly in California, a fraud conviction, and a sudden job quit–after seven years–that took him back to New York. He would rail against the United States, said former co-workers, and talked of assassinating the president. Whether he meant Bush or Obama is not known. He also liked guns, and practiced assiduously at a firing range through a local sporting goods store, trying out different guns. He had been licensed to carry firearms since 1996.

April 4. The gunman in the Stanton Heights, Pittsburgh, PA  shootings, Richard Poplawski, got into an argument with his mother Margaret over his dog urinating in the house.  This was the last straw.  It got so heated that his mother called the police to have him, his dog and his belongings thrown out.  Said the April 5 New York Times account:

When Officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo III arrived, Ms. Poplawski opened the door and told them to come in and remove her son, apparently unaware that he was standing behind her with a rifle, [an] affidavit said. Hearing gunshots, she spun around to see her son with the gun and ran to the basement.

“What the hell have you done?” she shouted.

Autopsies show that Officer Sciullo, 37, died of wounds to the head and torso. Officer Mayhle, 29, was shot in the head.

A third officer, Eric Kelly, 41, was killed as he arrived to help the first two officers. He was shot in the street.

Poplawski, eventually taken alive and wearing body armor, faces three counts of murder,  nine counts of attempted murder (one for each of the members of a SWAT team he shot at), and for an officer he wounded in the hand.  He was already known to be a volatile individual in the community, but was still considered “a good guy” by friends who were initially interviewed by the media, and whose sympathies and motivations have turned out to be suspect.  One of them, Edward Perkovic, said he had received a phone call from Poplawski before the police arrived.

“…he said, ‘Eddie, I am going to die today. […] Tell your family I love them and I love you.’ Perkovic said: ‘I heard gunshots and he hung up. […] He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot.’”

Expelled from Catholic high school, Poplawski had joined the Marines in the wake of 9/11, but was kicked out when he threw a tray of food at a DI.  Back in Pittsburgh, Poplawski’s girlfriend filed a protection-from-abuse order against him after he attacked and beat the woman. More ominously, friend Perkovic thought Poplawski’s rampage was triggered by a gun industry-stoked rumor that President Obama was going to take away assault and semi-automatic weapons from gun owners. Reporters found that Poplawski had a My Space page that was full of right-wing and racist invective. Furthermore, according to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Poplawski had opened two accounts at the most notorious white supremacist website, Stormfront, posting, responding and showing off photos of his tattoos for at least two years.

Poplawski’s last collection of posts on Stormfront, from November 2008 through March 2009, are more disturbing, as they indicate an increasing desire to be confrontational. Rather than “retreat peaceably into the hills,” Poplawski urged his fellow white supremacists in November 2008 to achieve “ultimate victory for our people” by “taking back our nation.”

Poplawski subscribed to right-wing conspiracy theories promulgated by wingers Glenn Beck and Alex Jones, including one involving government agency FEMA, which was supposedly building concentration camps to incarcerate gun-loving Americans. Poplawski continued to post to Stormfront until hours before the shootings began. His friend Edward Perkovic, who regarded Poplawski as “a genius in his own right,” was just as much a white supremacist and anti-Semite. The ADL said that “Perkovic himself […] railed on-line about the “Zionist occupied government,” “mixed bloodlines that will erase national identity” and Jewish control of the media.” He and Poplawski had tried to do an Internet radio program called “The Eddie and PO Show.”

Another friend, Joe DiMarco, said that Poplawski had recently been laid off from his job at a glass factory.

April 4-5. James Harrison, 34, shot his five children, ages 7-16, and then himself after his wife Angela, 35, informed him that she was leaving him to live with another man. Harrison was controlling and violent; he was observed by neighbors “hollering” at and threatening his children, who were naturally afraid of him, especially after he had been charged with assault of one of them. Angela was seen to be equally frightened of Harrison; she did not intervene with or countermand him in public, but she and her husband were overheard by neighbors to have loud, fierce arguments. Harrison had gotten his wife pregnant at 13, said the Associated Press. They all lived in a trailer home in Graham, WA, where Harrison, once a diesel mechanic, worked as a security guard at a casino, and his wife worked as a clerk at the local WalMart.

Angela Harrison had not returned home for several days, said the Seattle Times,, and finally Harrison, accompanied by his eldest daughter, Maxine, tracked her down with a GPS feature in her cell phone to a convenience store in Auburn, WA Friday evening. After years of emotional and possibly physical abuse, Angela informed Harrison that she was not returning home, and that she had fallen in love with another man.

Harrison and his daughter returned home distraught, where relatives were unable to console him. The Seattle Times said that Maxine turned in with her sisters around 11 p.m.; before she went to sleep, she texted a classmate, Ryan Peden, “I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed.” The police believe that between 1 and 7 a.m. Harrison carried out his grisly plan. Four children were repeatedly rifle shot in their beds; the fifth, a girl (not yet identified, but I believe was Maxine) put up a bloody, and ultimately futile fight for survival in a bathroom. Harrison later drove 18 miles back to Auburn, awaiting the arrival of his wife and her lover at the same convenience store, and when they did not appear, shot himself to death with a rifle around 8 a.m. in his idling black SUV.

Angela Harrison was too overcome with grief to discuss the tragedy.

So what does this all mean? And why did I talk about each and everyone of these incidents?

With the exception of Lovelle Mixon and Jiverly Wong, most of these atrocities were perpetrated by white men. Not rich, or well-to-do white men, but lower middle-class or poor white men who are living on an economic edge. They had difficulties fitting into a work environment or getting along with other employees. They could not learn a skill or keep jobs in their own field. They worked only sporadically or not at all. They could not make enough money to keep themselves or their families, so they had to depend on wives, friends or relatives to help them make ends meet. They all owned guns.

Lovelle Mixon, in particular, has been lionized by some of Oakland’s black and Latino youth who are sick and tired of being harassed and sometimes wounded and killed by cops, especially in the wake of the death of Oscar Grant by BART cops. It was more difficult for Mixon to obtain employment because he had a record. His gun culture was taken from the streets where he lived. In contrast, Jiverly Wong certainly came to subscribe to the darker aspects of gun culture, and came to blame the United States and the president for his misfortunes. At this writing, a letter purportedly written by Wong has been received by a Syracuse, N.Y. television station. While his sister claims that it could not be in her brother’s hand, most are inclined to believe that it was written two weeks ago by Wong.

There are more of these white men than the rich white men who are sitting on the boards of phantom banks and advising President Obama. And it is easy for depression to metamorphose into mental illness for men who are incapable of looking within themselves for answers. They seek control of themselves within other people, like wives, girlfriends or children. If these people prove unpredictable or uncontrollable, as with the wives of Robert Stewart and James Harrison, the sense of betrayal can be unimaginable. They will batter a woman into submission, or unto death.

If a man like Michael McLendon or Richard Poplowski cannot keep a job or respect the opinions of a supervisor or those of other employees in that environment, he is more likely to blame them than his own performance, chalking it up to personal grievances or dislikes. He cannot submit to or respect authority or the law or the most basic, human rights. It’s their fault, not his. Others are responsible. Blacks. Jews. Latinos. Immigrants. Gangbangers. Gays. Uppity women.

Therefore, right-wing causes or conspiracy theories seem more and more plausible to men who are suddenly loading up on guns and ammo as never before. I’ve noticed this myself. I’ve noticed that since December, a particular gun company, Henry Repeating Arms, Co. has been advertising on one of the new digital channels in Madison, mornings and evenings.

I live here in Madison, supposedly the only bastion of progressivism in Wisconsin. Yet, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are at least 10 neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the state–and near Madison. There may have been a progressive era ushered in by the likes of “Fighting” Robert LaFollette, who most Wisconsin progressives revere, but closer in memory there was also the era of “Tailgunner” Joe McCarthy, still considered a hero in some Wisconsin areas more than half a century after his death. Some remember vividly the Vietnam era when UW-Madison seemed to go mad, with even some students blowing up a building. A little too vividly, I suppose. It was almost as if the lefties were taking over.

Certain Wisconsinites also believe in having weapons for self-defense, if not against Commies or students, then against someone who might want to raid their homes, take their property and lives, and rape their women and girls. Therefore, a lot of people have guns. Not only because of fear, but because this is also a hunting and fishing state–fish, fowl and deer. So believe it: between fear and hunting, Wisconsin has its own share of gun nuts.

Henry Repeating Arms is a made-in-America gun company as well. I don’t know much about guns, but they aren’t selling automatic weapons on TV. They are touting rifles, and rifles with sights. I thought to myself that I had never seen commercials like this at all, not even in California or Montana. They are advertising the name and the history of the rifle, as well as the fact that most of them are handmade. It all has the air of normalcy. However, I had never seen guns advertised directly on television. It’s another world, more an underground world, as gun shows, gun stores and gun magazines are as separate from me as night is from day. Nonetheless, it disturbed me, and lately, I have wondered aloud about the connection between the gun nuts thinking that President Obama is out to take their guns away, and the astronomical sales of automatic and assault weapons, and the Henry Company taking to the Madison airwaves, because their website also sells semi-automatic weapons through dealers.

Poplawski, it appears, was the only one to espouse racist thought and ideology, although this angle has not been fully addressed by the mainstream media. Unfortunately, this is par for the course for them. He won’t be the last. Such thoughts only gain credence when men have literally lost their minds and lastly, lost all hope when hard times hit. I can only pray that the worst is over, but I know it is not. Not yet.

~ by blksista on April 7, 2009.