Ceaselessly Into the Past

The use of firearms requires training, and not just in how to most efficiently bring death upon your target, but in knowing when doing so is actually necessary.

Self-control. Putting the situation before oneself. Recognizing the terrific and irreversible consequences of the trigger pull. These are the behaviors of the fit owner of a firearm. The fit owner is mature, careful, and draws his or her weapon only when death is clearly at hand.

Michael Dunn is not a fit owner of a firearm. I’m not even sure that he’s a fit member of society. Check out the video below to see how his story ended:

Before I get to the point, I want to give credit to Rhonda, Dunn’s fiancee, for her courage in telling the truth. Instead of scurrying and resisting and hiding and lying, she gave the testimony that incriminated her man, even though it clearly broke her heart. That she put justice before herself gives me hope for humankind.

So, what the hell, man? Why did this happen? Many of the comments on the above video say that Dunn is a racist, that he felt an immediate hatred for those boys because they were black. I’m not sure that that’s the chief reason. Prejudice certainly played a part in the motive, but I think what spurred Dunn was something more fundamental than that.

At the introduction to the video, the creator wisely holds on the telling phrase, “I’m the victor, but I’m also the victim,” which reveals, I believe, all we need to know about Dunn to explain this case.

Dunn was a successful man, and I’ve found that success often breeds paranoia. Once you have things, you start to worry about losing those things. Opportunists have reaped fortunes in money and power by exploiting real threats to successful people, and much more by selling perceived ones.

To an old, successful person, nothing is more threatening than the lands beyond the walls, where the indigent and misguided await to take over the world. With their stupid clothes and their fidget spinners and their weird, weird music, these creatures exist only to tear down all that the oldsters hold dear. Of course, this is exactly what every generation does, but let’s not think about that.

The disgust and distrust that every generation has for the next always amuses me. I’m guilty of it too; I hate the culture that teens have constructed, with their bronies, selfies, foodies, besties, and normies, but I try to remember that I was once no different from them. What must my parents have thought of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or the surfer-dude lingo we once found so bodacious, or the anti-adult rhetoric of most Nickelodeon programming? It’s a cycle, and every generation insists that the next one is the worst one yet.

Even so, they feel a need to perpetuate it, and then they congratulate themselves for it. New parents say, “I just want my child to have a better life than I had.” Old parents say, “Kids today have it too damn easy.” I’m tough, they’re weak, but I loved them enough to make them weak. A classic ego stroke that works from both directions.

And the reason they stroke themselves is that the truth is hitting them hard. The system never gave them the rewards they were promised for their years of back-breaking work, and now has turned its greedy eye to the kids, to the young, to the liberal, to the ones who are relevant now. All the advertising is aimed at them. All the music is aimed at them. All the great shows aren’t on TV anymore; they’re on these new-fangled streaming services. And these kids, suddenly they’re interested in politics, talking about gun control and pollution and housing costs, and showing their anger that their parents didn’t do anything to ensure a better future for them. What a bunch of bratty little ingrates! While the old and middle-aged rock in their recliners, wondering why retirement isn’t making them happy, these kids are all over television, acting like thugs, rioting about issues they don’t have any right to be involved in, and spouting “OK Boomer” to their elders. It’s like they think they can do whatever they want! It’s all scary and foreign and impossible to understand. Of course, a lot of the examples I’m giving here occurred after Dunn’s crimes, but the sentiments are evergreen.

So I think that the sight of those annoying, selfish punks, blaring their wicked music in a public place, struck a nerve with Dunn. In those kids, Dunn saw all the threats in the world, everything that made him feel small and sad and marginalized as a middle-aged man in a secluded suburb, and he decided he’d had enough. In shooting at those boys, he would strike a blow against this sick, dangerous world that just didn’t make sense to him anymore.

It’s all pretty grim, but that doesn’t mean I feel sorry for Dunn. His victimhood was entirely fabricated. The world was never out to get him. Certainly, none of the kids in the car he shot up were. He thought it was, though, and he had a need to fight back, even if he didn’t know exactly what he was fighting against. This need to be the “victor” was born of an ego made fragile by perceived powerlessness. Here he stood, the last sensible man facing the representatives of the future, a throng of smartass kids and encroaching thugs, all giving the finger to authority with their militant hip hop music, and no one standing up to do anything about it. Until now…and look where it got him.

I think the lesson to learn from this tragedy is pretty clear, but if it isn’t, I’ll spell it out for you: NO ONE IS OUT TO GET YOU, OKAY? THE GHOULS ARE NOT SCALING THE WALLS TO STEAL YOUR TREASURES. YES, KIDS ARE LOUD AND ANNOYING AND DISRESPECTFUL, BUT YOU WERE THE SAME WAY. IF YOU REALLY THINK KIDS ARE THE PROBLEM, THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO STOP HAVING KIDS.

Having shown no remorse for Jordan Davis’s death, Dunn may never really understand why he was convicted, and why should he? Believing oneself to be a martyr provides the greatest sense of moral superiority, and there’s no more comfortable place than the couch of complete delusion. This is why I find the hateful noise in our culture so unsettling; there are people who really believe that the world outside their doors is full of monsters to be slain. Or, if they don’t think it is already, then it will be after the inauguration. They’re prepping for doomsday when the doom is all in their heads, and they’ll fire the first shot if they have to just to make sure it happens.

Is this how you want to live? Bitter, enraged, convinced that your cherished property is under attack from all sides? Seriously? You think on that a little, then get back to me.