Rampage (29 page)

Recommendations for Solving the Problem

Unlike many, I do not believe that gun control is the answer. When we make new laws, restrictions, regulations and gun bans, one must remember that only the honest citizen is the only one that follows these rules. I mean if I were a criminal I wouldn’t really care, because I would already be breaking the law by using the weapons inappropriately in a crime.i I believe that no convicted felon should own a gun.

Making snap legislation over rare youth shooting incidents is not the answer, either. Take, for example, the murder of six year old Kayla Rolland, the Michigan first grader shot by a classmate not long ago. Now keeping in mind how rare these incidents actually are, look at the case of Brianna Blackmond, a 23 month old Washington, D.C. girl who died from a blow to the head shortly after being returned to her mother from a foster home. But only Kayla’s murder prompted President Clinton to call for trigger locks on all handguns. Brianna’s death did not prompt him to call for tougher child protecting laws against abuse. Brianna’s incident is more statistically typical of young children killed in this country, but the President virtually ignored it.

Your chances of being killed in a public school is just under 1 in 1 million. In the case of Columbine, the juveniles who committed this act acquired their guns 100% illegally. They were bought from a dealer whose actions were near as reprehensible as the two high shooting [
sic
] itself, and I believe he gives gun dealers a bad name and should be sentenced harshly.

And thus I come to my own opinions.j I believe that nothing can replace growing up around firearms since a child, and learning safety and responsibility through the parents.k I think that as long as we have poverty level neighborhoods, there will always be crime, even if we somehow take all the guns away. I however do not believe that guns make juveniles commit crimes. They may make an inexperienced kid feel powerful or something, but if the guns weren’t there, a knife would replace it. As you know, Canada has a very stringent gun policy. Mandatory locked storage with ammo separate, almost no handguns, ect [
sic
]. I was talking to one of my Canadian friends not too long ago, and he says that he knows of people who pack around brass knuckles to school, and he even had a knife held to the back of his neck by a classmate to intimidate him.

Society is to blame, not an inanimate object like guns.l I think that constant media attention and perhaps television desensitize youth to this crime and irresponsibility with guns. These kind [
sic
] of actions are even admired in “rap” culture. The solution to this problem is not easy, nor can it be just one solution. I don’t think that I can come up with a solution to juvenile gun crime. My main opinion still stands, though. I think that there is no substitute for good parenting.

In Closing

I am sorry to admit that I will not likely ever choose to attempt to intervene in a violent situation to save any person because of my fear of the bad legal consequences.m

Sources

www.nra.com; www.millionmommarch.com; www.stats.org

Direct Personal Experience
**

Source #3: Email reply to Steve’s friend Derek McFarland in Idaho
[51]

From: Steve Marshall

Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 9:51 AM

To: Derek McFarland [email address blacked out to protect privacy]

Subject: Re: Hey Steve! What’s up?

Weird, I just fired up the comp and I was thinkin how nuts it would be to hear from you guys. But I’m kinda psychic like that or something it seems. Anyways, I came up to Canada from Phoenix to join the militia, but the asthma fucked me even though the guys said it wouldn’t before I moved, they said because I was on perscriptions [
sic
] I couldn’t join. Bastards. So I took a computer trade, got a few jobs, now I’m unemployed and looking. Need an apartment, stayin at a friends [
sic
] for a couple days cause I got the boots put to me here (again). Prolly [
sic
] go back to school, community college for a couple years then university, might do it in Maine where my dad is now, or Georgia where my half-brother lives. But in the mean time [
sic
] I smoke a bit here and there and this that and the other, you know how it is. Well I gotta get out of my ex-house before the stepdad comes home (bastard) and I have to beat him with bats and stuff, you know how it goes. Say hi to Harrison, and your mom.

Keep your pants on,

Steve

Psychological Autopsy

Having examined these three primary source materials (the fourteen-year-old Marshall’s website content, his mandatory essay about juvenile gun crimes, and an email from the spring of 2005) along with his childhood history, we can now develop a clearer understanding of Stephen Marshall’s character. Three major themes are evident:

1) A Rootless, Unstable Existence

Despite his polite demeanour, Stephen Marshall’s life totally lacked structure. Born on August 9, 1985, within twenty years he moved a total of eight times (on average every two and a half years) between two countries, one province, and three states. Certainly many children have lived transient lifestyles and not turned into rampage killers. However, we should note that after his eighth birthday, every time Stephen moved, he ended up living with a different guardian.

Table 7: Timeline of Stephen Marshall’s Twenty-Year Life

Marshall lacked motivation or direction. His March 2005 email response notes his failure to accomplish his goal of joining the militia. Since then, he had tried his hand at computers to no avail, drifted from job to job, and found no permanent residence. Undoubtedly, his problems with his stepfather would only have complicated his relationship with his mother. Though Marshall wrote of returning to school, his plans come off as vague and noncommittal. All his life, Stephen Marshall was a lost soul — one who, unfortunately, loved guns.

2) A Fascination with Guns and Violence

In his single, rather brief email, Marshall expresses an admiration for violence on three occasions, even enshrining it in his email address: “I like to burn things 88.” He speaks of trying to join the militia, and later jokes about beating his stepfather with a baseball bat. This behaviour was consistent through his adolescence. Five years earlier, he had inexplicably provided a link on his website to the “sweetist [
sic
] pics of weapons that you can find anywhere.” His farcical “Guns and Their Relation to Juvenile Crime” mostly defended firearm ownership, and in it he insincerely professed remorse for having “frightened” Nathan Tyler by targeting him with an assault rifle.

3) Racism, Misogyny, and Anti-establishment Views

Though they did not factor directly into his murders, Marshall’s racist, misogynist, and anti-establishment views appear to varying degrees in each of the three sources we examined. His racism is most apparent on his website, where he lists “minorities getting special treatment” as one of his personal dislikes. More subtly, in his essay, Marshall notes that gun violence is “admired in ‘rap’ culture.” He is, of course, generally right; however, one could also argue that shooting people is equally revered in country and heavy metal music. Anyone remember what Johnny Cash did to that man in Reno? What was the name of Axl Rose’s band? Yet Marshall completely overlooks these genres, focusing exclusively on music developed by urban blacks. Curiously, the number “88” at the end of Marshall’s email address is a known white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler” (
H
being the eighth letter of the alphabet). We could dismiss its presence as coincidental, if it was not paired with a statement proclaiming a predilection for arson and used by a future murderer who attempted to join a militia.

Beyond the race issue, Marshall also claimed on his website to dislike “men who don’t keep their women in line” and “women in general.” Nowhere is there any mention of him ever having had a sexual or romantic relationship in his life. Whether this was the cause or result of his misogyny is another matter altogether.

Finally, Marshall writes of his disdain for “the beautiful people,” “society,” “the disgusting commercialization of our daily lives,” “the economic system,” “capitalism,” “rich people,” “the United Nations,” “a world government,” “the feds,” “the man and his rules,” “civil oppression,” and “the ‘Patriot Act’ of 2001.” For the sake of brevity, he could have just said “society” and left it at that. He criticizes President Bill Clinton for what he perceives as an anti-gun bias in his essay.

So taking Marshall’s murders, directionless existence, fixation on violence, and racist/misogynist/anti-establishment views into consideration, what conclusion can we draw? I propose that this child, raised by a highly conservative father, and lacking any sense of self, strove to find meaning, albeit immaturely, in a militant totalitarian right-wing philosophy. This did not spark his killing spree; it was merely symptomatic. Marshall’s sense of personal failure and confused identity fed his resentment and anger, which in turn affected his ability to achieve, creating an increasingly rapid loop of hatred. Feeling that his life had spiralled completely out of control, Marshall sought power in the only place he’d ever found it: guns. At some point in 2006, he seems to have forsaken hope, giving in to his twin urges to kill and, in turn, bring an end to his pointless existence. Yet simultaneously, he still wanted to be someone. By murdering sex offenders, Marshall satisfied his need for destruction and to establish an identity, becoming a “vigilante hero” in his own eyes and those of many Americans. But this was no Christ figure, self-sacrificing for the benefit of all humanity; rather, he was a confused and misanthropic young man who used his victims’ criminal status as an excuse to commit murder. The psychological parallels with Marc Lépine are startling.

*
Terri’s name is a pseudonym.

**
a. This is the first of many incidences in which Marshall seeks to distinguish himself from “real criminals.” In his bizarre logic, threatening a teenager with a loaded assault rifle does not constitute a “serious crime.”

b. However, Marshall seems to believe that kids who “do drugs” are more “serious” criminals than himself.

c. If this were true, Marshall, who obviously views himself as a kid raised on “good values,” would not have conceived using the rifle to threaten Nathan Tyler in the first place. That he did undermines his entire argument.

d. Here Marshall is being coy. He pretends to have been oblivious to the fact that Nathan Tyler had been scared, when the entire purpose of pointing the weapon at him in the first place was to intimidate him.

e. It is a testament to Marshall’s lack of remorse that he sees fit to continually remind the reader of Tyler’s assault on Reisdorph. The reformative purpose of the essay was for Marshall to address the influence that guns had played in his own crime. He has already explained that he intervened to stop Tyler’s assault on Reisdorph. We understand. Still, he reminds us again, even though there is no context to necessitate this.

f. So in Marshall’s world view, the definition of a “serious crime” is one he sees on television?

g. Though we do not know the extent of Reisdorph’s injuries, I, perhaps controversially, agree with Marshall’s decision to intervene. People can be killed in fist fights, and it is unreasonable to rely solely on police protection, considering the time it takes for them to arrive on the scene. However, there were many less extreme courses of action available. For instance, Marshall might have continually shouted for help while trying to physically separate the two boys (unlike Reisdorph, he was around Tyler’s age at the time). That Marshall’s first reaction was to grab a gun perhaps reflects his physical insecurity (related to his asthma?) and unhealthy obsession with firearms.

h. Note that Marshall doesn’t bother to include or comment on these specific views; rather, he shrugs them off as “respectable” and continues with his polemic.

i. Point taken. What Marshall fails to realize is that he is a criminal. This comes back to the issue of him attempting to distance himself from the “real criminals” he sees on television.