Thursday, July 26, 2012

James Holmes vs Anders Behring Breivik

Interesting how different groups react when some arsehole kills a whole bunch of people. Firstly, there's the issue of gun control. Those for and against confidently reel off their well rehearsed arguments.

Then there's the question of what caused the attack. Some on the Right are blaming movie violence for the Aurora shooting. Predictably, many lefties are saying: don't be stupid! You can't hold artists responsible for the actions of a madman!

The irony is that many of those same people were the ones pointing the finger at John Howard, Keith Windschuttle and other conservative figure because they were cited in Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto.

Well, whatever caused the terrible actions of these two men, I think there's a big difference between them. James Holmes seems to be barking mad; completely out of touch with reality. But Breivik was cold and calculating and committed his atrocities for political reasons. In other words he was sane but evil.

1 comment:

  1. We're probably making a mistake to think that political leanings have much to do with mass shootings. Breivik certainly declared his position. But he would be rare in that.
    Quite a list there, and it puts shooters in perspective against the Snowtown killings and Ivan Milat the backpacker killer.
    To quote a famous butler: some men just want to watch the world burn.