A Column I Wrote for the Bulldog Weekly

I wrote this column a week ago for the Bulldog Weekly, the University of Redlands student newspaper. It is my reaction to the Coffee County and Winnenden shootings that claimed 25 lives last week.


A 28-year old male ended 10 lives with two military assault riffles and a handgun and a shot gun in Coffee County Alabama Tuesday.

The killer terminated the lives of his mother, grandmother, uncle, two cousins and five others including an 18-month-old girl, before he turned the gun on himself.

“It is hard to put into words what happened today,” German Chancellor Angel Merkel said.

And Chancellor Merkel was right.

There’s no need for colorful adjectives, gory details or quotes from the mourning families of the victims to understand that 10 lives ended too early is tragedy beyond the threshold of grief.

But the Alabama shooting was not what Chancellor Merkel was talking about.

She was reacting to the shooting that involved a 17-year old male who ended 15 lives with a Beretta 9 mm pistol before taking his own life in Winnenden, Germany Wednesday morning.

Nine of his victims were students at a high school he had attended. Eight of the nine student victims were young girls. Three teachers – all females – were killed. Then three men were killed, completely at random, as the killer fled.

Winnenden is a small city in Baden Württemberg, Germany’s southwestern most state, and two hours from where I study in Freiburg.

While Germany has a violent and militaristic history, it seemed just that – history. The people I come in contact with, especially in Baden Württemberg, have been nothing but easy going and peaceful.

So it came as a surprise to everyone in this community that such a tragedy would strike here, just as it surprised the people of a quiet rural Alabama community only hours earlier.

So what’s wrong?

“Computerspiele (Computer games)...Musik (music),” Baden Württemberg Minister President Günther Oettinger said of possible influences authorities will look into that could have altered the 17-year-old boy’s mind.

The Coffee County shooter was suspected to have had girlfriend and work-related problems, but like the Winnenden shooter, little is certain.

Yet one thing is for certain. Both the killers got a hold of guns and then ceased acting like humans, they turned into killing machines. They were both young men from wealth industrialized western society nations. And with just over a month until the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, which claimed 32 lives, we have to seriously ask ourselves: is something messed up with the psyche of the young men of our generation?