Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

In its Criminal Complaint against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the FBI charged him with “unlawfully using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely, an improvised explosive device).” That is, the FBI labeled the pressure cooker device that killed two people and injured more than 200 others a WMD.

Boston Marathon bombing site. Photo by Aaron Tang used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Glen Greenwald, in the Guardian, wrote a powerful essay entitled “Why is Boston ‘terrorism’ but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?” Reminder:

In Aurora, 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded with multiple weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle.
In Sandy Hook, 20 school children and six adults were murdered with a semiautomatic assault rifle.
In Tuscon, six people were killed and 14 (including Gabrielle Giffords) were wounded by a semiautomatic pistol.
In Columbine, 12 students and one teacher were killed and 24 others were injured by several weapons, including a semiautomatic pistol.

So, here’s another question: When can a weapon or weapon system be called a weapon of mass destruction? Choose one or more of the following answers:

When it falls into the category of nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) weapons.
When its sale and use does not profit the weapons industry.
When it can result in as many fatalities over time as nuclear weapons systems.
When it serves the purposes of the military-industrial-corporate media complex.

Let’s consider these possibilities in relation to the Tsarnaev brothers’ pressure cooker devices.

The most common definition of WMD has been NBC weapons. Pressure cooker bombs do not fall into this category.
The pressure cooker bomb does not profit the weapons industry, although semiautomatic weapons do.
Since World War II, pressure cooker bombs have accounted for a miniscule portion of fatalities. In contrast, as reported (opens in PDF) by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “small arms” have killed as many people as all other weapons combined.
You decide: in what ways can frequent use of the term “weapons of mass destruction” play into the hands of the military-industrial corporate media complex that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned our country to beware?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Jared Lee Loughner, caught at the scene of the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six other people, has been repeatedly described as crazy, a nutbag, disturbed, and mentally ill—labels that put the blame for the violence on him as another “sole gunman” who has committed a heinous act.

Gabrielle Giffords shooting scene — Tucson shooting scene. (Photo by Steve Karp, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. From Wikimedia Commons

But heinous acts take place within contexts, and Loughner grew up within contexts where the spreading of hate and calls for violence against various groups have become rampant.

To understand fully the factors that contributed to the violence in Tucson and similar incidents, one must do an ecological analysis.

As described in our post on August 23, 2010, an ecological analysis assumes that the character and behavior of adult humans are shaped by forces at different levels:

The individual level (e.g., genetic predispositions, brain functioning)
The microsystem level (primarily the family)
The exosystem (e.g., the neighborhood)
The macrosystem (broad cultural values and mores)

Also important is the chronosystem, which focuses on changes in the individual’s environments over time that may affect his or her development.

In today’s post and the following ones, we examine how factors at each level could have contributed to Jared Lee Loughner’s attack on Congresswoman Giffords and others.

At the individual level, there is considerable evidence that Loughner may suffer from some sort of mental illness. There are also many reports that he abused drugs. Far too many people suffer from severe psychological symptoms, and far too many abuse drugs, but the vast majority of these people do not try to kill other human beings.

What other factors may have contributed to Loughner’s deadly behavior? We will return to this question in our next two posts.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

When to call it a weapon of mass destruction (WMD)?

Violent behavior in context: Tucson and beyond