Video Game
He moved with video game precision, taking each step as if ready to hit “Back-A-Press” on a controller. There was no rush, no frenzy. Just cold, calculated steps: identify the target, aim and fire. Against undefended victims, he still wore tactical gear; black, khaki and boots, with a mask and bullet resistant vest to complete his “ensemble” of death. He wanted it documented, so he made a Tik-Tok video of his preparation. And he planned his statements, a last minute message to his father to look on the computer, hidden in his locked room. The father found his crazed twenty page “manifesto” and called the police. But while he lived at home, he was no child. At twenty-one he had a fully formed radical ideology. The swastikas were drawn on the gun stock of his AR-15.
We know his name, but that’s unimportant. The three names to be remembered are: Angela Michelle Carr, “AJ” Laguerre, and Jerrald Gallion, the “targets” whose only mistake was going to the Jacksonville Dollar General store in New Town on Saturday. And, of course, of being Black, when another young, white male decided to carry out a murderous dream. The gunman went to a “target rich” environment, New Town, a Black neighborhood in Jacksonville. He started at Edward Waters University, an historically black college (HBCU). As the shooter put his tactical gear on in his car, a student reported him to security, and they got him off campus. The police were right behind, but it took only seconds to end three innocent lives at the Store. The shooter then killed himself.
Digital Pack
There’s a whole discussion about the access America has to semi-automatic rifles. But that’s not the issue today. The shooter got his weapons legally, at well-known gun shops in Jacksonville. The question today is our new reality: the great threat of our time. It isn’t the “mob”, it’s the lone, lonely, isolated, gunman: the lone wolf.
No one’s really “alone” anymore. Those “wolves” have a “pack”. There’s always a screen nearby. Anyone has access to the most extreme theories, often specifically designed to appeal to the isolated, the lonely, and the weak of mind. Young white men don’t have to be failures, even without relationships or successes or goals and dreams. They can become “instant” heroes of their fellow extremists. And they can learn how to do it on the computer. Ask the young Navy tech specialist in Massachusetts who stole classified information to “show off” to his online friends.
Suicide Bombers
It’s similar to the process that produces terrorists in bomb vests in the Middle East. Those “volunteers” believe they are furthering the legitimate claims of their people, even if they actions are heinous attacks against non-combatants. And they often have direct connections to suffering; the loss of a brother or father or friend at the hands of their enemies. They become convinced that their suicidal sacrifice is part of the process of correcting history. They seek martyrdom as their way of advancing the cause.
From Charleston to El Paso to Buffalo to now Jacksonville; young radicalized white men have taken their toll. It’s the full recipe of current American life: the polarization of much of our political thought, the access to every kind of extremism at the click of a button, the sense of white “victimhood” that drives much of our current politics. It is an atmosphere that encourages those who are already on the margins to take the next step, and get their “fifteen minutes of fame”.
America’s Extremism
Sure, gun control would help. But today’s society already accepts extremes of action that were unthinkable twenty years ago. If someone thinks differently than you do, then they are an “enemy”, and any action is “OK”. You can’t even put a political sign in your yard without thinking: “Will that make me a target?” “Will someone physically attack my home, my loved ones, me?”
Take that to the extreme and you get these young white men, shooting up schools or parades, or the New Town Dollar Store. They don’t fit the classic definition of “mental illness”, but they are a threat to the “domestic tranquility” guaranteed by the US Constitution. And like the suicide bombers in the Middle East, we don’t have a plan or process to stop them.
They are “lone wolves”, and no one knows until it’s too late.
