To the Editor:
In my view, misogyny was incidental to the shooting in a Pennsylvania gym by George Sodini. Psychosis was the driving force of his behavior. And America’s gun culture, itself verging on psychotic, was the reason for the murders. No further explanation is needed.
America is saturated with guns. A fraction of its citizens suffers from psychosis, and many of them are untreated. A small fraction of people with untreated psychosis will act on their violent fantasies by picking up a gun from the corner supplier and using it.
As a society we have chosen to have a certain number of mass murders every year because we have agreed that guns should be universally available. Some of the people who are killed will be women, because some psychotic men with guns have delusional ideas about women and sex. Others will be fellow employees seen as persecutors.
And others . . .
William Ira Bennett
Cambridge, Mass.
Aug. 8, 2009
The writer is a psychiatrist.
Note from KBJ: Dr Bennett should seek treatment for his hoplophobia. This is as bad a case as I've seen.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 