On December 15th, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson posted a note about the survivors of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, CO. It was a treatise of 1,413 words, and except for one obvious and glaring error (and hopefully a typo), I’m sure she was factually correct about everything she said.
Too bad nothing was germane to the point. She provided a lot of knowledge about the gun culture, to which I must ostensibly agree with her. That being said, if there were no firearms, we might be calling this the "Club Q Bombing" or the "Club Q Fire." Because it's never about the tool. It's always about the heart. As Idris Elba’s character Roland in The Dark Tower says, “I kill with my heart.” Firearms are a tool, like knives or bombs. Tools have no ethics or morality. All it can do is perform the function they are designed to perform. The outcome of their use, for good or bad, is determined by the user. It always boils down to the heart of the tool user.
Let us not forget, the Oklahoma City Bomber killed 168 people with fertilizer and diesel, both perfectly legal and unregulated before and after that event. Taking away one tool does not the tragedy prevent. It only changes what tool is used. The assassin of PM Shinzo Abe built a firearm out of common things available at any home improvement or hardware store. Would you ban or regulate those items?
We also know laws have no effect on events like these. Laws are State-defined punitive retaliatory actions, the consequences of which are supposed to cause rational people to weigh the punishment as dictated by the law against any benefit derived from the original action. That being said, laws are no hindrance to those who are willing to trade their lives to complete the intended act. If you do not intent to survive your heinous act, then laws or punishment by the State has no meaning or consequence to you.
The shooter at Club Q was, at least in his mind, part of the LGBT+ community. How do I know this? By his own admission as being “non-binary” and using "they/them" pronouns in his booking documents.
I have looked, and the information of this particular shooter is practically non-existent. By base fact or agenda execution I do not know. We know in the past he threatened to blow up himself, his mother and a bunch of police, only because it is public record. No one is talking about who he is.
To use a bit of analogy and tie it to the title of this article, the shooter was a bomb, that exploded to kill and injure a bunch of people. My questions are, “who build the bomb,” and “who lit the fuse?”
Who built the bomb is easy. That would be all of us. By actively, tacitly or unknowingly allowing males to be denigrated, humiliated, belittled and so on. This has left young males emotionally and socially "lost."
The pressure in that bomb was made by feminism empowering women. The Leftist Feminist Agenda has taught young women to go for the “bad guy” instead of the “steady provider.” This leaves women chasing after the 8+ Chads, leaving the average guys as incels. The more the women that lust after the Chads, who are happy to “pump and dump” every woman who spreads her legs for him, the smaller the dating pool and mate selection for the average and below guys becomes. The young feminists of today have physical requirements that challenge the top 1% of males to achieve them. Which again, leaves most males alone and not properly socialized to constructively interact with others.
Now the final question remains, “Who lit the fuse?” What combination of events lead this shooter to do what he did? Again, there is a dearth of information on this. Intentional or accidental, I do not know. Because the shooter is apparently part of the LGBT community, the Pravdas refuse to cover it. Had this been an ultra-Christian MAGA hat wearing White male, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall.
Yet, we do have two data points. The shooter considered himself to be part of the LGBT+ community, by the declared fact of being “non-binary.” The second data point is he shot up the local club for the LGBT+ community.
As someone who has had extensive experience with psychosis, there literally is, “a method to the madness.” A psychotic person has very clear and articulable reasons for their actions. The fact that the psychotic reasons do not make sense to rational people is irrelevant. And it does take some level of psychosis to let a person to kill another without a reasonable provocation.
There are many possible reasons why the shooter chose to commit the acts of which he is accused. I have but two.
1. The community spurned him. Imagine a male, who is emotionally lost, and, like all of us, desires affection and love. He doesn’t get it from the females he has contact with, so he “widens the net” and goes non-binary, hoping for love and affection from anyone. Which he doesn‘t get. It may be due to his appearance, his lack of social skills, self-introspection, or a dozen more reasons.
In the end, the LGBT+ community, in his mind, rejected him. If the community actually did or didn’t do it is irrelevant, as the only important perception is his. Because that’s how psychosis goes a lot of times. The shooter saw this community, which expresses love, openness, equity and inclusion, reject him. No matter if the exclusion was real or imagined, the end is the same. And to the psychotic mind, this offense cannot go unpunished.
2. Self-loathing. Once again, the current society teaches all masculinity as “toxic” and “aggressive.” It’s been part of our national consciousness since the 90’s that “all men are potential rapists, if not actual rapists.” This provides the impetus for self-loathing, because he is a male and thus deserving of the attacks upon “All with Penises.” By extension, because he has a penis, HE must be “bad.” And the downward spiral starts.
And like a person who engages in self-injury, the act is not meant to actually harm or destroy themselves, but to provide a cathartic release. The primary reason people who self-injure do so, is to express a control over themselves, while they are in a situation they cannot control. The person cannot control or change the situation they are in, however they can control the amount of pain they receive. And in certain personality types, it is pain like this that provides the silencing of the internal voices of self-doubt and self-hatred.
Eventually, the inward direction of this self-hatred must eventually hit the core and start going outwards rather than inwards, resulting in the violence we see on the evening news.
In the end, these are theories, mere observations using my personal experience while looking at the facts of the matter. I am certainly at least partially wrong. I am open to any other theories as to why.
For all of these mass killers, we cannot stop at the first thing and say "This is why they did this." Because there are a multitude of triggers, injuries, insults and more that ultimately gather into one ball of hatred that explodes and leaves dead and injured in the aftermath.