The Psycho-Anatomy (Formative Influences) of One of the Mass Shooters.

By Gene W. Edwards.

I’m not describing myself, below. I am, instead, describing mass shooter X (one mass shooter in particular): the mass shooter type profiled by Dr. Jillian Peterson, a criminologist and forensic pathologist, and the personal history of mass shooter X, recounted below by the consummate, brilliant, genius researcher of social and group psychology, Howard Bloom. Here goes:

· You are the grandson of a California State Assemblyman, now retired, one who was (and is?) a Trump supporter and who, regarding the deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, said, “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny,” He added. “Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear-in on January 20th.” Later he backpedaled his statement, tried to deny and dismiss his on-the-record comments.

· Your mother is the wayward daughter of that assemblyman.

· Your father is a homophobic Mormon porn actor and mixed martial arts instructor who said, “I praised him [X] for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant, and you’ll get immediate results.”

· A year before you were born, your father is convicted of domestic battery (your dad beats up on your mom), and he extends his beatings to you. Your parents file for divorce one year after you are born.

· Your mom (with you) moves from CA, to TX, to CO. Your mom has a rap sheet. She has alcohol problems. The police convict her of public drunkenness and give her three years probation. At one point, she calls the police and says her home was invaded and she is under attack. She is found on her bed by the police with her wrists and legs duct taped, but she did the duct taping herself. Why? She was lonely. The police assign to her to psychological testing.

· Your grandmother periodically tries to step in and rear you.

· When you are 16, your father is still acting in portn and gets a job on the A&E cable TV show named Intervention. It’s about people addicted to alcohol, fentanyl, crack, and meth.

· It humiliates you. You legally change your name, and your mom calls your dad in California from Texas and says you have committed suicide.

· Your father goes into mourning and has a minor breakdown. Until you call him six years later, he thinks you are dead.

· The kids at school shun and bully you mercilessly. Among other things, they put up a Facebook page with photos of you, making fun of you, especially of your 260-pound weight on a 6’4” frame.

· Your mom doesn’t help. When you are 21, your mom calls the police to report that you are threatening her with a bomb. The police come but do not find any explosives in the house (implying she made up the story?)

· Your name is Anderson Lee Aldrich, You are now 22 years old (May birthday). On Saturday, 11/19/2022, you go to a local LGBTQ nightclub in my Colorado Springs, CO, Club Q (for queer or different). with an automatic rifle and a handgun. You kill five people and injure (now) 22. You have channeled your humiliation into anger. You have finally gotten attention. For a minute, you felt you were actually in control. (A day later, your mother is engaging in disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. She will probably be charged on 11/25 — for loud yelling in her apartment building. Here’s the mother and son story: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/colorado-springs-shooting-suspects-mom-arrested-hours-after-club-q-attack/ar-AA14Hydw

*****

There had been 606 mass shootings in the USA this year by the above 11/19 date. What Dr. Jillian Peterson says is, the shooters are us, are among us. They blend in? Most of these mass-killer psychological influences and psychological problems could be spotted in advance and treated successfully before anyone is killed.

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Because we’ll be pushing 700 mass shootings in the USA just this year, I couldn’t find the stat but suspect the USA is not only the leader in the world in mass shootings, but also had more mass shootings in 2022 than in all the other 195 countries, and 50+ territories, of the world combined! In a world of 8 billion people, the USA contains only 1/3rd of one billion persons. Where did we go wrong?

[Note: a mass shooting can generally be defined as a public shooting (doesn’t include war) in which three or more people die. Private shootings in homes among family members aren’t counted among the totals.]

*****

When I’ve looked at other mass shootings, it is bullying, or a horrible upbringing, that surfaces in most of them, and that seldom is reported. Blessed are those who stand up for the downtrodden and against bullies. They save lives. Equally blessed are those who identify potential shooters and see that they receive the necessary treatment/prevention.

Deserving high praise are also those who want automatic weapons outlawed, as well as high-bullet-number ammunition clips for guns. Had our colonists had the kind of random gun violence all around them every day, such as I described above, the British would have been the least of their worries!

Internally, the America of today is perhaps the leader as the most violent, within, of all the world’s most unsafe, and violent, nations. We have seen ourselves in the mirror and the enemy is . . . us; our enemy is within — I use the word “within” to refer to psychological pressures: in short, stress, and faux freedom from it! This is more than a national boundaries thing. It is a modern phenomenon assembled of intricate causes and fewer cures.

There have to be better ways to gain Andy Warhol’s “Fifteen minutes of fame” — or one minute of it, of raw joy from committing vigilante mayhem! The soul of too many in America is sick, and they are too hard to identify except in retrospect.

I happen to live 10.8 miles away from the club Aldrich shot up. I lived only 5.2 miles from Columbine High School, where all this mayhem seemed to start. I once worked in Boulder, CO just a short distance away from the Safeway mass shooting there in 2021. I’ve lived uncomfortably close to other mass shooting locations in far too many other cities suffering from same.

If you find yourself inescapably in such a mass shooter situation, bend over, twist around, drop your pants, twist around, and maybe you’ll just have time to kiss your sweet ass goodbye!

*****

Coda. And now I have a confession to make. I can be decidedly intolerant and rigid in some ways. When I heard that patrons in Club Q — notably two or three of them? — beat up Aldrich to within an inch of his life, and he’s in too much pain and injury now to barely even talk now — and my thought was “Good! Had it coming. Justice before mercy for the unrepentant.”

Then when you look at the above, you get a bigger picture. Not forgiving (but don’t forget!) only makes problems worse; copycat crimes follow, and bounce-back unfinished business resulting in history rhyming and echoing amiss. At some point in his life, Aldrich may wake up from his pointless, painful life, regret who he had become, and mend. As a big and tall man, 6’4” — the best height for a man — if you saw him. you might have thought he had it made. We live in a world of survival of the fittest — but qualities of heart and character matter more, unlike the species imperatives in the animal kingdom favoring size, power, bullying, and even savagery.

I believe in a forgiving God, no hell. Somehow, in the long view, Aldrich’s future personal path and evolution will eventually bring him to God (the Creative Forces), even like the Hitler’s, Stalin’s, and the Putin’s personal paths, and that of some of our most venal politicians, who densify and pollute the moral atmosphere within America. In the meanwhile, many of the living around us suffer because of Anderson Lee Aldrich.

I could describe the afterlife, karma (evolution resulting from good or bad reaping), life planning by spiritual elders and oneself, and the rebirth (reincarnation) learning-process here but would lose most of you. Instead, just consider what your life could have been if your formative influences had been like Aldrich’s, and sowed the seeds of your, and others, destruction.

Love (not to hell in a handbasket),

Gene W. Edwards.

Posted 11/29/2022.

This blog is posted on my website http://www.genewedwards.com/blog Just click on Blog, not on my hundreds of Old Blogs. The weebly.com site contains all my new Blogs, starting in September 2022. It’s very easy to use. You can read all my recent blogs at one time.

It is also posted on the giant writer’s website, Medium. Just go to genewedwards.medium.com

I don’t like to post my edgier blogs, blogs surprisingly harmless like this one, on my, or on any, account on Facebook. Facebook censors (run by dummies!), using “key words’ or subjects’” algorithms rather than reading anything. I might post this one on Facebook and see if I can get lucky and they don’t take it down. I look forward to the new Twitter and will be posting daily on it soon! Musk will either fix it or let it drown = social media chaos!