Schedule the meeting with God

World headlines are full of the tragic shooting spree in Aurora, Colorado, last week. PhD student James Holmes stepped into the premiere of the Batman movie, sprayed 12 people to death and wounded 58 others.

Reports are that Holmes was a normal high-schooler who morphed into what my son calls a "basement dweller". No girlfriend, only a profile on AdultFriendFinder.com and a fascination with video games. When reporters called his mother's house, she immediately said, "You have the right person." She was, it seems, aware her son was a psycho.

We'll probably never know why some men go berserk and plot horrors for others. Abundant violence in the movies is surely a contributing factor. This nut revealed to the cops that he was "the Joker", a reference to Batman's arch-enemy.

Also in Colorado, back in 1999, Columbine High School killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold seem to have been very much inspired by Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (NBK).

Harris had a journal in which he wrote: "When I go NBK and people say things like, 'Oh, it was so tragic,' or "Oh, he is crazy!" or "It was so bloody", just because your mommy and daddy told you blood and violence is bad, you think it's a %$@&^ law of nature? Wrong, only science and math are true. Everything, and I mean every %^&$@ thing else, is man-made. Before I leave this worthless place, I will kill whoever I deem unfit for anything at all, especially life."

STALKED BY DEATH

Last week, a six-year-old girl was among those killed. In one eerie story, blogger Jessica Ghawi had just escaped last month's shooting in Toronto, only to fall victim to last week's rampage in Colorado. She had even blogged that in Toronto, she had been in the exact spot of the crime only three minutes previous. How strange. It's as if the Reaper's scythe had missed in Canada, but followed her south. Superstitious people will say that's the kind of coincidence that makes you believe in God. Cynics will say it's the kind of coincidence that makes you believe in coincidences. Take your pick.

It raises the issue of how society should handle those who do these sorts of things. As noted by the UK Guardian, "The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people ... . But the US does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica."

Unfortunately, here we are taking a dubious bronze, so the question is relevant to us as well. Jamaica may not have the highest ownership rates, but I'm quite sure it would be pretty high up on the 'gun-rental' rates, if there were a way to track such things.

Anyway, in this case, there's no doubt about which culprit destroyed so many lives. The cops, we're told, are searching for a motive. Who cares what his motive was? Hopefully, the authorities dispatch him for proper judgement from our Maker as quickly as possible. Send the best psychologists to discover from him by which method he'd prefer to go - then use the one he dislikes most.

INSANE

His lawyers will no doubt argue that he's insane. Who knows? He probably is. And capital punishment is just the remedy for an insane person who kills other people.

Along these lines, the man who put four hollow-point bullets into John Lennon was moved from Attica prison to another upstate NY facility in May. Mark David Chapman has been denied parole six times so far, but he's eligible again next month.

Chapman was a complete loser who knew he couldn't achieve fame or notoriety by any means other than parasitically. At his last parole hearing, he revealed his motive:

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I made a horrible decision to end another human being's life, for reasons of selfishness. I felt that by killing John Lennon I would become somebody, and instead of that I became a murderer, and murderers are not somebodies."

It seems to have taken him 30 years to figure out that "murderers are not somebodies", but he's explained clearly why he robbed the world of someone who was 'someone'. He wanted to "be somebody"! In that sense, Lennon is twice a victim, first of murder, and then because his fame is how Chapman is achieving his disgusting goal.

Chapman claims to now take responsibility and that he's found the Lord. Why not, even at this late stage, send him to meet who he found?

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in Westchester and Bronx counties in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.