Now that we know the identity of the suicide-gunman - Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak - from Thursday’s mass shooting at Northern Illinois University, it answers the "who" question of what happened. And we already know the "where," "how," "what," and "when" aspects of his evil act, taking the lives of five NIU students and wounding 20 more, which I wrote about in my Saturday column, found at http://www.post-trib.com/news/davich/index.html.
Now comes the tricky part, attempting to answer the final question in our minds: Why?
As I've written before, we’ll surely hear from countless experts, guessing what triggered the 27-year-old killer to do what he did, like they actually have a clue.
Yet they don’t.
Not really.
It’s the “why” about such human acts of inhumanity that grips us, confounds us, and perplexes our personal prism of understanding.
Still, we will now try to make sense of the senseless.
We will attempt to extract logic from the illogical.
We will try to comprehend the incomprehensible.
It’s human nature to do so.
In this case, to find "answers" explaining Kazmierczak's actions.
But sometimes there are no such answers to be found.
To illustrate my point, again, go back to Jan. 29, 1979, when 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer committed a similar shooting spree at a San Diego elementary school.
That morning, she killed two and wounded nine, including several little kids, for no apparent reason.
After the six-hour ordeal ended, police asked her the same question we now wonder about the NIU shootings. Why?
Spencer calmly replied, “I don’t like Mondays.”
That simple, that complex, that senseless.
Later, her infamous quote became a hit rock song for the Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays.”
“And nobody's gonna go to school today, she's going to make them stay at home.
“And daddy doesn't understand it, he always said she was as good as gold.
“And he can see no reason, ‘cause there are no reasons.
“What reason do you need to be shown?”
After Thursday's massacre at NIU, a NIU professor told media that Kazmierczak "seemed as normal as you or I." Of course he did. Isn't that often the case?
This is just another reason why maybe we shouldn’t look for reason in an unreasonable scenario.
Maybe it’s a good thing we can’t fathom this madman’s mindset or motive.
Maybe we should simply admit we don’t know why. And be thankful we don’t.
Jerry Davich is the metro columnist for the Post-Tribune Newspaper. Since 1995, he’s written thousands of columns and stories with one goal in mind – to create a dialogue with readers, not a monologue. He hopes this blog expands his goal into cyberspace.
Leave a comment