Shooting at D.C. Holocaust Museum

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By Dr. Brian Russell
Recently, a lone gunman entered the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and opened fire. Security guards returned fire, leaving one security guard dead and the shooter hospitalized. Before I go any further, I want to recognize the heroism of the security guard who lost his life saving the lives of others and to express condolences to his family. Now, if you haven’t heard about this, picture the gunman. Are you picturing an 88-year-old American of European descent who supposedly served in the U.S. military in World War II? Probably not, which goes to show, once again, how dangerous a lone ideologue, intent on committing murder and willing to die trying, can be. We saw it also in the recent shootings of abortionist Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion ideologue and of a soldier at an Arkansas military recruiting office by an anti-American ideologue.

And as usual, this never should’ve been able to happen. The shooter served 6.5 years in prison in the 80’s for attempting to take the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank hostage. Think about that. How many times have you taken a gun into a public institution and threatened violence? Zero? That’s what I thought. And it hasn’t been hard not to, has it? No, it hasn’t. People should have one chance in a lifetime to do something like that, and when they do, that’s it, game over, they should be out of society forever, period. Right? Well, this guy was released, and since he’s been back on the streets, he’s been blogging about how he thinks that Jews are the source of his and the world’s problems and that Hitler was right to kill Jews. In addition, he apparently acquired at least one gun somewhere along the line despite being a convicted felon. Surprise, surprise, he was still dangerous, and his behavior escalated. How many times have you heard me say that that’s the rule, not the exception with these people?

One of the potential issues that I think may be in play here is an outdated understanding of the relationship between the ages of criminals and their dangerousness. I think that many Americans, jurors and even some judges, may still have the misconception that it’s safe to release older people from prison because their advanced age makes them harmless. There may have been something to that 50 years ago, when average life spans were shorter, but today, most people in their 60’s and many people in their 70’s and 80’s have relatively few health problems. That means there’s really no reason to think that because they’re older, they’re harmless. In fact, they may be just as dangerous as they ever were. After all, it doesn’t take that much physical ability to walk into a building and pull a trigger.

Some have opined that the economy pushed this shooter “over the edge.” I don’t think so. He may have blamed Jews for the bad economy, just as Hitler did 70+ years ago, and that may have been his “excuse of the day” on Wednesday, but I think he’d been on this trajectory for a long time and could just as easily have found another “excuse” if the economy were thriving. After all, economic conditions have actually been looking up, ever so slightly, in some respects lately. It’ll be interesting, however, to see whether the same crowd that blamed the recent shooting of Tiller on media personalities who reported negatively about him will similarly blame Wednesday’s shooting on media personalities who reported negatively about Jewish financial figures like Bernie Madoff. If so, that crowd will be just as misguided this week as last week (but consistent at least!).

Then there’s the security at the building. I’m not “blaming the victim” here — nobody but the shooter attacked this institution and killed its security guard — but I want to understand how this guy got into the Holocaust Museum with a firearm. I mean, the museum exists because the Nazis blamed Jews for the world’s problems and murdered millions, and we know that there are still people in the world whose psychology and intentions are dangerously similar. Other Jewish institutions have in fact been targeted in recent years, both by American anti-Semitic ideologues and by Middle-Eastern anti-Israeli terrorists. I would’ve expected visitors to the Holocaust Museum to at least have to pass through metal detectors to enter that facility. Maybe they do and this guy got around the detectors somehow — after all, he has a history of getting guns into major public buildings — but clearly, the procedures that were in place today were inadequate (unfortunately, foreseeably inadequate in my estimation).

(First posted June 11, 2009)

Dr. Brian Russell is a licensed psychologist, attorney at law and familiar national television pundit on psychological, legal and cultural issues.

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