After the massacre in Binghamton, and the news of a shoot out in Pittsburgh, I thought I would take a quick check on reports of gunmen upset over losing their jobs or homes.
Over the last 20-some-odd years, there are generally 2 or 3 large-scale incidents a year reported by the media. Obviously, this doesn't include the people who simply commit suicide. But recent events got me wondering if these "isolated incidents" were really all that isolated.
Compared to the last several years, it seems the frequency of incidents has started to increase dramatically in the last couple of months:
Here's a sample of what I found with just an hour of searching:
Dec, 2007 9 killed
Omaha mall gunman Robert Hawkins was a depressed, deeply troubled teen who broke up with his longtime girlfriend two weeks ago and apparently snapped after losing his job at McDonald's
July 2008 2 killed
Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps, had 76 rounds with him when he entered the church and pulled a shotgun from a guitar case during a children's performance of the musical "Annie."
August, 2008 2 killed
The man who fatally shot the chairman of the state Democratic Party after he lost his job had a Post-it note at home with the victim's last name and phone number along with 14 guns, antidepressants and a last will and testament, according to court documents.
October 2008 6 killed
When police turned up on Monday morning after calls from a concerned neighbour waiting for a carpool ride, they found the body of 45-year old Karthik Rajaram, an unemployed financial advisor, lying in one room with a handgun he had used to shoot himself dead.
With him lay his two youngest sons Arjuna (7) and Ganesha (12), both shot dead. In different rooms across the house they found the bodies of Karthik’s wife Subasri (39), his mother-in-law Indra Ramasesham (69), and his eldest son Krishna (19). They all appeared to have been shot to death by Karthik Rajaram.
November, 2008 2 killed
A worker returned a day after being fired from an Alaska hospital and shot his ex-supervisors Wednesday, killing one and critically injuring another.
December, 2008 10 killed
According to California police, the gunman who killed nine people in a Christmas Eve bloodbath at his ex-in-laws' home intended to flee to Canada but was severely burned before he killed himself.
However, things seem to be accelerating.
March 2009 8 killed
Robert Kenneth Stewart, the accused killer in Sunday’s rampage at the Pinelake Health and Rehabilitation Center, endured marital and financial woes as he eked out a living painting houses.
March 2009 11 killed
The man who went on a shooting rampage that killed 10 people in Alabama told friends in the days leading up the attack that he was depressed and felt he was a failure.
Michael McLendon spoke to friends about being upset over not being able to have a career as a marine or a police officer, investigators said at a news conference late Thursday night.
Nine of McLendon's 10 victims were gunned down with bullets from a semi-automatic weapon in two rural Alabama counties near the Florida border Tuesday afternoon. The 10th victim, his mother, was weighed down on a couch in her home and set ablaze by the suspect.
March 2009 3 killed
Glasco, 47, had suffered some losses in recent years – first his marriage, then the house near Alpine that he saw as an escape from urban aggravation – but police yesterday were still unraveling why he turned violent after working at the agency for 29 years, his entire adult life.
He shot Benjamin Mwangi, 37, a maintenance foreman, who died at the scene, and Michael Stevenson, 55, a mechanic, who was taken to University of California San Diego Medical Center. Stevenson was placed on life-support and died at 3 p.m., the Medical Examiner's Office said.
April 2009 2 killed
Neither the man or woman's family could explain what might have happened leading up to their deaths but said the married couple had not been happy or seeing eye-to-eye lately.
Tania Crosby, Tyrone Crosby's sister, said her brother had been depressed recently and had lost his job at Lowe's.
Apr 2009 14 killed
– Jiverly Wong was upset over losing his job at a vacuum plant, didn't like people picking on him for his limited English and once angrily told a co-worker, "America sucks."
April 2009 3 killed
A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
While I was writing this, these two stories came across the wire:
April 2009 6 killed
Armed with two .45-calibre semi-automatic pistols he recently bought, the 42-year-old engineer with Yahoo went on a rampage at the family's rented three-storey townhouse in Rivermark, an upscale and quiet neighbourhood in Santa Clara, California.
He gunned down his wife, 34, their son Akhil Dev, 11, and daughter Neha Dev, 4.
He also shot three relatives who were visiting from India - his wife's brother, Ashokan Appu Poothemkandi, 35, the brother's wife, Suchitra Sivaraman, 25, and their 11-month-old baby.
He then turned the gun on himself.
April 2009 2 killed
Police declined to discuss a motive for the apparent murder-suicide or the family's financial situation.
April 2009 6 killed
Washington state investigators say five children between 7 and 16 years old have been found dead in a Graham area home and they may have been killed by their father.
The last two are awfully recent ... but I won't be surprised if they turn out to belong in the same category. One thing is certain. These "isolated incidents" are starting to come more frequently and with more fatalities. It is also notable that the age of the shooters is often mid-40s. These are not impetuous kids. Something else is going on here. One aspect of this I find especially disturbing is who the victims are. Traditionally, depressed middle-aged white guys tend to limit themselves to suicide, usually with a gun. I think the increasingly common decision to take their family with them is particularly ominous.
Local reporters are starting to reach the same conclusions just looking at mass fatalities:
It began on March 10, 2009 with Michael McLendon, 28, who killed 10 people including family members in Alabama before he killed himself. March 29, Devan Kalathat, 42, shot and killed his two children and three other relatives, then killed himself in an upscale neighborhood of Santa Clara, California. Across the country, Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, North Carolina that same day. Now, April 3, a gunman takes 14 lives including his own at a immigrant center in Binghampton, New York. In all, 39 people are dead in less than a month.
Actually, from what I found, 33 people were killed in the last week