As the Gorilla peruses the headlines for news stories, he is continually struck by all the headlines reporting violent crime, which are becoming more and more prevalent. Not only are there more violent crimes, but the nature of the crimes is getting more and more heinous. Just two days ago, a man walked into a Wendy’s fast food restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida and open fire, killing 6 people, before killing himself.
Upon hearing this news, initially the Gorilla assumed it was a young person- perhaps a man or a student- but he was wrong. The man was in his 60’s, proving that random shootings can be committed by anyone of any age. Random shootings in public places are becoming more and more common. It seems as if there is a new one every week.
Psychologists say that depression, anxiety, and pressures from society are to blame. People are angry, and seemingly getting angrier. The young man in Omaha Nebraska, who went into the local mall and started randomly shooting people, was in fact, angry and depressed. The student at Virginia Tech, who committed those murders was also depressed and angry. And the man who committed the murders at the Wendy’s was-n you guessed it- depressed and angry.
Well okay, so we’re stating the obvious here. Emotionally sound and happy people do not go out and commit murders. We are not talking about street thugs, or drug addicts with a history of violence. These random acts of violence on crowds of people, whether it be in malls, restaurants, or schools, are not being committed (for the most part) by people who have ANY history of violence. They are students. They are business people. They are one of us. They are quite average by anyone’s standards. But these people are classically described as being passive aggressive. They have grudges that they have been holding for years. They may have been victims of some kind of abuse or wrongdoing. They are angry, and they are on a mission for revenge.
So the question is, what measures will we take to prevent them from harming others? Is there anything that can be done? Is it just the world we live in? Perhaps we should offer free counseling in our communities to make it affordable for all. Maybe businesses and schools should require mandatory screening and counseling of its employees and students each month to “check up on” the well being of individuals. Or, maybe we could all just be kinder to one another. The world is severely lacking compassion these days. It starts with us! In the meantime, here’s a little tid-bit from the Gorilla for you to chew on:
The top 5 “angriest” cities in the U.S are as follows: #5 Orlando, Florida; #4 Johnson, Arizona; #3 Los Angeles, California; #2 St. Louis, Missouri; and the number one “angriest” city, according to the AJ Novak Group, is (not surprisingly, because of it’s horrible economy right now) Detroit, Michigan!