By Miguel A. Faria, M.D.

We may have to brace for more rampage shootings and murder-suicides with the coming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays — and the concomitant mainstream liberal media exploitation of the tragedies to clamor for more gun control. The end of the year holidays seems to spark irrationality and violence in those with mental illnesses or prone to criminality.

Subject to the mass shooting derangement (MSD) syndrome that I discussed at some length in my new book, America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements, more deranged freaks may enter the race for morbid celebrity status. In fact, the headlines are already blaring not only in California, where political correctness and gun control are suffocating, but also elsewhere in the United States.

Duncan, Oklahoma: 3 Dead in Walmart shooting — this one an apparent murder suicide…” Later it was reported “the shooter turned the gun on himself when confronted by an armed citizen. (Nov 18, 2019)

Fresno California: 4 Killed, 6 Wounded in Shooting at Fresno Backyard Football Watch Party —About 35 people had gathered in a backyard in Fresno, California last night to watch a football game when they were attacked…. (Nov 18, 2019)

Southern California: School Shooter Struck on His Birthday Using a .45 Handgun, Tried to Commit Suicide — A student gunman opened fire Thursday at a Southern California high school, killing two students and wounding three others before he was captured in grave condition after shooting himself in the head.… (Nov 14, 2019)

Che Guevara, an icon of the left, thought that socialism and egalitarianism would create a “new socialist man” dedicated to the common good without the need of material incentives to work and live. Che lived long enough to see it did not, although he persisted.

Socialistic policies have instead created deranged individuals who resent the success and blame others for their failures, and at some point become killers.

It does not bode well for us as a society that we have a broken criminal justice system, with revolving prison doors, that panders to criminals and forgets the victims. We have the popular culture of Hollywood, which led by producers like Harvey Weinstein and actors like Kevin Spacey, glorify antiheroes.

We have a mainstream liberal press that sensationalizes crime and grants celebrity status to mass killers, while it has moved so far to the left that it has become a propaganda organ of the Democrat Party. It glorifies sex, vulgarity, and violence, and then clamors for gun control and not crime control.

And if the popular culture glorifies antiheroes, the media sensationalizes mass murder: Every shooting rampage is supposedly the “worst case of a single shooter in the workplace” or the “deadliest case of multiple shooters in a school place incident,” or some variation thereof.

So deranged killers end up with various motivations, from psychopathic hatred in their hearts to competing with each other for sociopathic ghastly notoriety. And there are always voices in the media ready to take advantage of these situations. One journalist even called for gun control after the 2017 New York City truck terror attack.

It does not bode well that the socialistic egalitarian ethos promulgated by the liberal press, the progressive academic establishment, and the popular culture, has so permeated our society that when borderline individuals and outright malcontents are not able to reach for the stars and succeed to the grandiose dreams promised them by the intelligentsia, they blame society and seek deadly revenge on others.

Men have been told they are equal, and because of the limits of public education, the meaning of the phrase has not been explained to them that they are equal in front of the law and in their freedom to pursue happiness, but not in looks, IQ, motivation, intellect, industry, or what they ultimately attain in life. When their great expectations are not fulfilled and their delusions come crashing down, they seek victims because they believe they have been cheated or wronged.

Mass shooting derangement (MSD) syndrome is a psychopathic-sociopathic character disorder created by the politically correct nonsense and the progressive modern liberalism (socialism) of the last several decades, particularly since the 1990s.

The perpetrators who survive need to know that they would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, face capital punishment, or be locked away in a mental facility for life. And that they will also be stigmatized and studied as the homicidal freaks of nature they are.

There is no doubt in my mind the progressive zeitgeist of the last several decades has contributed immensely to MSD syndrome: the institutionalization of government dependency; the nauseating and depraved popular culture on TV and the cinema, especially the garbage coming from Hollywood; the incitement of the politics of envy and class warfare hatred by political demagogues (constantly underscored and hammered in by the academic establishment and the mass media)— all have been major contributors to this alienation and derangement disorder we see so clearly in America.

All the politically correct nonsense, such as gun free zones, zero tolerance for guns (including, ludicrously, water guns and even pictures of firearms, all banned in schools and which have resulted in young children being suspended from schools) must cease.

Demonizing guns — inanimate objects — at the same time that criminals are coddled in the criminal justice system must stop! More armed good citizens are needed in crowded places, including teachers in schools and ministers in churches. The nonsense political correctness and the breakdown of America’s culture must end, or we all will have to be carrying concealed — locked and loaded — to ensure we can stop the madness when it occurs.