Who's to Blame for T.J. Lane?

T.J. Lane is the most recent teen to take a gun to school and kill defenseless kids.  Immediately the media tries to profile the young mass murderer.  What’s wrong with T.J.?  What would move him to do something like this?

The talking heads bait the questions wanting desperately to cast T.J. as the victim.  The common scapegoat, he must have been bullied.  He was an outcast.  People picked on him.

So he killed them.  That explains it.

Teen bullies have joined the long list of scapegoats for bad behavior.  Also in the fraternity is the millionaire, the evangelical Christian, and the social conservative who opposes homosexuality and/or abortion.  The media regards murder as unfortunate, but given the environment of such heinous social pressure why are we so surprised?  As tragic as homosexual suicide, teen pregnancy, and a plethora of crimes amongst economically oppressed sub-cultures may be, the behavior is not condemned because the blame for it all rests squarely on someone else.  T.J. Lane killed those kids, but someone else pulled the trigger. 

The media would lead us to believe that for there to be a world absent of ills all we need is to exile the millionaire, the Christian, the conservative, and the bully.  After all, they are all one and the same.  If not the same, they are at least close kin.  The conservative is the bully of progress.  The millionaire is the bully of the middle class poor.  The Christian is the bully of tolerance.  In a world with such bullies it is no wonder that people flip their lid.  This is why planes fly into towers and somehow we deserved it.  In a country with this mentality the President’s job is no longer to lead us, but to apologize for our success.  The next time we are attacked it will be by our victims and the world will applaud because we deserved it.  Because we are now a society of liberalized cowards we will probably even take the time to wonder if they are right.  

What we have forgotten in all of this is that there is no excuse for murder.  God defined it clearly, “You shall not kill.”  It doesn’t matter if you were picked on or penniless, there is no excuse for taking the life of another person.  What’s wrong with T.J. Lane is that he had no respect for human life, period.  He believed he was the victim and the rest deserved to die.  In a twisted sort of way the media asks the questions and tells the stories in a way as to insinuate he was right.  If he had not had bad days, plenty of opportunities, and if the world was free of bullies T.J. would not have done this.  T.J. didn’t kill his classmates, his world did.  

Count how many times in the coming days you hear it told that T.J. was a good kid.  A long time ago we made no excuses for murderers and never dared to categorize them as good.  Their motives were plain and simple.  They were evil, not otherwise good people who had simply been victimized.

Every killer has a story.  T.J.’s will come to light soon enough, but nothing that surfaces gave T.J. the right to kill his classmates - bullies or not.  Bullies are total morons, but life is full of jerks.  We all must learn to deal with them.  None of us have the right to kill them, period.  The best of us actually grow through adversity.  We don’t shoot people because of it.

If there is anything to blame in all of this it is a society that has become life-lite.  If you don’t like the way things are, abort the baby, pull the trigger, blur the lines, confuse the issue, blame someone else.  You are not responsible for your own life.  Why then should you possibly be expected to take responsibility for the life of someone else?  Where is the editorial that says murder is wrong and there is no excuse?  Where is the justice for the people T.J. killed?  

T.J. may have been bullied, or not, but now T.J. is a murderer; nothing but a bully with a gun.