Profile of a School Shooter: Ingredient 7 - Natural Selection, Supremacy, and Feeling God-Like

When studying these boys one sees a certain superiority complex over and over. On the surface it appears to be narcissism, but I do not to believe it to be so. Mass shooters often held a vision of themselves as being higher than others, some even referring to themselves as godlike.

In the public writings they referenced natural selection, and a feeling of being above normal human beings. They had become so cynical about life that they saw their lack of emotion or feeling towards their fellow human beings as a sort of a gift. They had freed themselves of a conscience, but when I read their more private writings it was clear they really hadn't.

Were they trying to convince us they were god, or were they trying to convince themselves? Over and over these boys wrote about being godlike. It was almost a mantra.

Jeffery Weiss was self professed Native American Nazi on a white supremacy board, who professed hatred as a mantra. He turned around on supernatural board and said that he was interested in Nazi's but did not agree with what they had done, even seemed apologetic for mentioning it.

The boy on the supernatural board was polite, likeable, and had his feeling hurt when someone mentioned a topic that reminded him of the death of his father. He was concerned with what seemed to him to be bad omens, and said he wanted to live. In his livejournal he wrote of hope after his suicide attempt.

The other boy he became on the Nazi board was filled with hate and discontent, he wanted to know what he could do to further the Nazi cause. They hardly seemed to be the same boy at all. It was as if he were fragmented into two people.

Jeff eventually walked into Red Lake High School and gunned down nine people and injured five.

Dylan Klebold talked of unrequited love. His mother and friends described him as a sweet boy. Yet his writings were dark and angry. He also talked of carnage far beyond the school, he wanted to go on a cross country killing spree and end it by crashing a plane into a building two years before 9/11.

Now if any of us still have a connection to our teenage selves knows that trying on new identities was par for the course, especially those who had difficult childhoods. Over and over I saw boys who professed to be free of emotions publicly, but wrote privately of inner pain and turmoil.

Did imagining themselves to be god give them that power they sought, that control they desperately needed over their lives? Who were they really trying to convince?

There is no way to know for sure what happened in their heads. I do have a theory though. As a domestic violence and sexual assault advocate I deal with a lot of people who have been deeply hurt. Many who suffer abuse learn to place walls around themselves. Those walls not only serve to protect the person within, but to keep others out.

Perhaps these boys erected their own walls, they hid behind these images of themselves as being Godlike as a form of protection. No matter what your view of God is, in most cases he is seen as being the most powerful being imaginable. He is invincible. He is in control.

Given the movies they chose to emulate, I believe this is highly likely. They chose media where heroes victims who became powerful. The smaller, weaker person. The one that people laughed at. Those people rose up and attacked those who hurt them, and in many cases they took it out on society as a whole.

Imagine for a moment living in a world where you felt powerless. Real life is constantly kicking you in the teeth, so you turn inward to a fantasy world. That's exactly what many of these boys did. The fantasy world eventually took over the real world, and that line blurred.

The school became a symbol f powerlessness to them. It stood for everything they saw as painful in their life. As wrong. As Gods destroy those who defy them, these boys struck out at their schools in destructive ways. They did not seek out particular victims in their rampages but rather aimed specific groups of people. The Christians, the jocks, the popular kids. They killed anyone else who was in the way no matter what group they belonged to.

In many cases they let acquaintances go. Not necessarily good friends but people they knew better than others. As they did so, they did it with an air of importance. There seemed to be a focus on the power of deciding who would live and who would die.

These boys also mentioned Darwinism in passing, though they didn't seem to understand the actual concept. They spoke of being highly evolved and of survival of the fittest. They spoke of Nazi's.

The spoke of power.

All we can really do with any of these shootings is guess at the motives, but there certainly was a distinct focus on being "Godlike."