ABSTRACT
The United States, indeed the entire world, reached this state of affairs partly in response to attacks from terrorists, both foreign and domestic. However, policymakers began recognizing the need for increased security more than 3 decades ago, long before the threat of terrorism reached its current level. Violence serves many masters, not just those who use it for political, religious, or ideological goals. Indeed, the increased need for good security directly results from the increased use of violence by all sorts of individuals seeking different purposes. During just 10 days in November 2005 selected randomly, several incidents occurred that illustrate the scope of the problem:
• On November 12, Christopher Millis, despondent over the breakup of his marriage, first tried to set fire to several police cars parked at a Salem, Oregon, police station, then drove to the home of a neighbor with whom he had had a longrunning dispute. Arriving at the neighbor’s house, Millis shot at the neighbor’s car. Millis drove back into town and crashed his pickup through the front entrance of the county courthouse. He held police officers at bay for several hours before they shot him.‡
• On November 13, 18-year-old David Ludwig killed the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, then fled the scene with her. They drove from her home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Belleville, Indiana before police identified the car and forced them to stop. He confessed to intentionally killing the parents because they forbade him from seeing their daughter. She confessed to willingly going with him.*
• On November 20, Dominick Maldonado sent a text message to his former girlfriend announcing, “Today is the day that the world will know my anger.” As he entered the Tacoma, Washington, shopping mall, he telephoned police and told them to “just follow the screams” to find him. Then he opened fire, wounding six shoppers and holding four people hostage for 4 hours before surrendering. The ex-girlfriend thought he had been on Ecstasy.†
• On November 21, school officials at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, New Jersey, closed the school for a day in response to an instant message one of their students had received over the previous weekend. The message, sent from an ex-student now living in the former Soviet Union, said, “I just bought my new Glock handgun and you better watch out.” The instant messenger added, “Everybody at [the high school] ought to be careful.” The message also mentioned attacking the high school. Despite the vast distance between Kazakhstan and New York, officials refused to take any chances.‡
• On November 23, Joseph Cobb returned to H&M Wagner and Sons in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He had been fired from there a couple of weeks earlier. Upon entering the building, he ran into Raymond Himes, whom he immediately shot in the arm. Cobb then went directly to his former supervisor’s office. He shouted a profanity at the supervisor, then shot him twice in the stomach. After that, Cobb left the building. Once outside, he killed himself. His two victims survived. “The incident appeared to highlight the issue of workplace violence, which began to attract national attention about 20 years ago,” the Washington Post report of the incident noted, “It has become a major concern for advocates of worker safety.”§
Neither time nor season lessened the violence. Five months later, we took another 10-day period during which various newspapers reported the following acts of violence:
• On April 9, 2006, Brian L. Patterson, beating Omar Gonzalez by 8 years, scaled the iron fence surrounding the White House and ran toward the mansion, screaming, “I am a victim of terrorism.” Secret Service agents and uniformed guards gave chase with guns drawn, finally cornering him near the row of cameras set up for the daily White House news reports. “I have intelligence information for the president,” Patterson told his pursuers, “I’m not afraid of you.” The April 9 incident was the fourth time Patterson had gotten onto the White House grounds.¶
• On April 14, in Buffalo, New York, Craig Lynch, a convicted car thief living at a halfway house for recently released prisoners, killed Sister Klimczak, the nun who had run the halfway house for 16 years. Lynch had been paroled 3 months earlier. When Sister Klimczak caught Lynch in her room, he strangled and hit her. Once she was dead, Lynch borrowed a car from a relative and took the body to a shed behind a vacant house near his mother’s home. He buried her there in a shallow grave.*
• On April 14 in Purcell, Oklahoma, police arrested Kevin Underwood for the first-degree murder of a 10-year-old girl. Underwood led police to a closet in his apartment where he had stuffed the body in a plastic tub sealed with duct tape. Authorities accused Underwood of killing the girl, then sexually assaulting her. Finding meat tenderizer and barbecue skewers in his apartment, the police believed he intended to eat the corpse.†
• On April 16, in Corinth, Maine, Stephen A. Marshall went to the homes of two of Maine’s registered sex offenders and killed both men. Marshall got their home addresses from the Maine website listing the names and addresses of registered sex offenders living in the state. He also visited four other addresses where offenders lived, but did not find them home. Later that day, armed with three pistols, Marshall boarded a bus for Boston. Police stopped the bus just outside the city. When officers went on board looking for Marshall, he shot himself in the head. He died several hours later.‡
• On April 17 in Platte City, Missouri, police arrested two teenagers for threatening to carry out a school shooting on the seventh anniversary of the Columbine attack. The two students had told at least five classmates they intended to assault the Platte County R-3 High School. Their plan included planting explosives and bringing firearms to the school.§
• On April 18 in St. Louis, Missouri, Herbert L. Chalmers killed his girlfriend at her apartment, then drove to the local Walmart to replenish his ammunition. While reloading the pistol, he told a sales clerk he had just killed his girlfriend and was on his way to shoot his employer. The clerk alerted police, but they were too late. Chalmers arrived at Finninger’s Catering Service, from which he had been fired the day before, looking for the owner. Instead, he ran into the owner’s wife and daughter. After shooting them, Chalmers killed himself.¶
Jihadists hold no monopoly on acts of violence. Violence affects every social venue, from domestic settings to schools and workplaces to government facilities to public figures and officials. No social venue seems safe. Violence, too, crosses over the venues. No doubt Paul Simon and his wife have suffered stalking and harassment for being public figures, but even they have private lives into which violence crept.
