The Root Cause of Senseless Acts of Violence

On Monday evening, February 13, 2023, Anthony McRae committed a senseless act of violence.  He shot and killed three students at Michigan State University (Lansing, MI) and critically wounded five others.  Shortly thereafter he took his own life.

My heart goes out to the families of the students who were killed and critically wounded.  I pray for the souls of all the deceased – including Anthony’s.  And my heart also goes out to Michael McRae, Anthony’s father, who lost his son.

The Detroit News reports that according to neighbors Michael McRae is “just an old man, minds his business.”  Bridge Michigan quotes a neighbor as saying McRae is “retired from General Motors Corp. and a Christian who went to church every Sunday.”

Apparently Michael McRae became a scrapper after retiring.  He and his wife Linda would “travel the neighborhood in a wood-paneled truck picking up metal from neighbors.”  (A scrapper collects primarily metal items people put out for trash pickup and then sells the metal items to metal recyclers.)  The Detroit News notes that “Linda died about two years ago.”

About a year ago, Anthony moved in to the 960-square-foot home that his father owns.  Michael McRae said Anthony worked in warehouse for a long time.  About six months ago he abruptly quit his job.

Michael McRae also said in another Bridge Michigan article that “he was troubled by his son’s behavior, a concern he shared with at least one neighbor. He said he urged his son to seek help, but his son never did.”

Anthony McRae

By all accounts it appears that Anthony McRae was not a model citizen. It seems he was also a troubled individual.

McRae was arrested in 2019.  He was carrying a hand gun, but he did not have a concealed weapons permit that would have allowed him to legally carry the gun.

According to the Bridge Michigan story, “McRae was charged with a felony punishable by up to five years in prison in district court but later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in circuit court.

“He was put on probation in 2019 and was discharged from it in 2021. The plea deal was offered under then-Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon.” In 2021, Siemon, a Democrat, “pledged to limit the use of felony firearm charges because she said they disproportionately affect Black residents.”

A felony conviction would have prohibited Anthony McRae from ever legally owning another firearm.  Of course, this does not mean he would not have been able to illegally obtain a firearm.

Previous Arrests and Other Troubles

Also according to the Bridge Michigan story, “Court records indicate he [Anthony McRae] had several run-ins with local police for speeding, driving without insurance and other motor vehicle offenses. He pleaded guilty to those charges in Eaton County in 2006 and 2008 and in Ingham County in 2007 and 2008.

“He also had a string of debts that prompted court-ordered collections between 2005 and 2010, according to LexisNexis, an online database of public records.”

The Bridge Michigan story also says that, “After McRae killed himself, police found a note in McRae’s pocket that “indicated threats” to two public schools in Ewing, New Jersey, the hometown of McRae’s deceased mother and residence of surviving relatives, according to a news release from the Ewing Police Department.

“Investigations revealed McRae had a history of mental health issues, the Ewing department said.”

The follow up story about Anthony McRae at Bridge Michigan goes into more detail about him.  It said McRae “was a recluse with unaddressed mental health issues, who rarely spoke to neighbors, occasionally fired guns out the back of his house, and whose behavior worried his father.”

Evil Acts

It’s impossible to know what Anthony was thinking on the night of Feb.13.  There’s no way to know what led him to commit the senseless acts of violence. It is pretty evident though, that he was not in a sound state of mind.

Had he not been able to procure a gun, he may still have committed the senseless acts.  He could just as well have used a hammer, a baseball bat, a machete, a katana, a knife, or a crossbow.

Lawbreakers break the law – it’s what they do. Illegal drugs, for instance, despite being illegal, are everywhere today. Cartels and drug dealers are getting rich selling illegal drugs.  And almost 1 million people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose. In 2021 twice as many people died from drug overdoses than from firearms.

In all likelihood, making guns illegal would probably not have prevented the violence of February 13.  Making guns illegal will only take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens.  It will not prevent lawbreakers from obtaining them or using them to commit senseless acts of violence.  A gun itself is not the cause of a gun death any more than an illegal drug itself is the cause of a drug overdose.  And anyone who cannot see this is just not thinking rationally.

Progressives, of course, will say guns are to blame for the senseless killings.  They could just as easily say bad parenting was responsible for Anthony’s actions.  They will, however, ignore the obvious cause.

The Root Cause

I think that somewhere along the line the devil took hold of 43-year-old Anthony McRae. The devil is the root cause of all senseless acts of violence.

Satan may have convinced Anthony McRae that his life had no meaning.  The devil may even have convinced him that he needed to take lives to give meaning to his own life.  Or perhaps the devil convinced him that he needed revenge for real or imagined offenses to his dignity as a person.

The devil has, after all, been putting in a lot of overtime over the last 50 years.  He’s convinced a lot of people that God’s truths are false.  He’s even convinced people that they are smarter than God.

We will never know for sure what drove Anthony to commit these senseless acts of violence.  But had Anthony’s life been God-centered we might not be reading about him now.  He and the three young people whose lives he took might all still be alive today.

50 Years of Stupidity

For the past 50 years the relativistic secular progressives among us have been trying to re-shape society.  They’ve done a lousy job.  Msgr. Charles Pope recently summed up the results of their efforts:

“Consider these observations about life in our country today:

• In the last fifty years there has been an increase of more than 500% in violent crime.
• There are more than half a million abortions each year.
• Since 1970, the divorce rate has quadrupled. The overall number of divorces may have declined recently, but it is due more to people not getting married in the first place.
• More than 40% of children today do not live with both their biological parents. Since the 1970s, the percentage of children living in single-parent homes has tripled.
• As the family has broken down, here is what has been happening to our young:
• a quadrupling in juvenile arrests,
• a 400% increase in births outside of wedlock,
• one million teenage pregnancies annually,
• three million teenagers treated annually for sexually transmitted diseases,
• a 200% increase in the rate of teenage suicide,
• a drop in average SAT scores,
• two-thirds of high school students have experimented with illegal drugs.
• In the schools, one cannot pray or mention religion, yet condoms are freely available and all sorts of aberrant and alternative lifestyles and philosophies are openly promoted.
• Parental consent is required for a child to go on a field trip or to get an aspirin, but in many states abortion referrals can be made without parental consent.
• Our neighborhoods are devastated by poverty, injustice, crime, and despair.”

What to Conclude?

I would add to Msgr. Pope’s list that many state employed educators today also think it is okay to lie to parents about their child’s sexual confusion.  They prefer lies over truth.  This probably makes the father of lies very happy.  All the violence and immorality in the world is probably making him very happy as well.

And so, I restate the assertion I made recently in a CS article on January 28:  “We need better people.”  We don’t need more laws.  We do, however, need better prosecution of existing laws.  But more than anything, “We need God back in our culture.”