The Humanity Party®’s Portrait of a Mass Shooter.

This is a framed mirror.

This is THumP^®’s portrait of a mass shooter, of a killer, of a murderer, of a shooting victim involved in a suicide.

At any time, in the same circumstance of emotional imbalance and despair, any one of us could be in this portrait.

THumP^® has outlined its official response to the recent American mass shootings and our stance on gun control. (Here is a link to this response.)

Here are a few of the main points of our response:

 

There will be no effect on gun violence until there are rational changes made to American law and order.

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We do not believe that government should force the American people to give up their guns. We need the right form of government that can prove to the people that its “well-regulated militia” can do the job better, safer, and more efficiently than unregulated gun owners. Only when the people are convinced that the government is able, will they feel safe enough to trust a government controlled “well-regulated militia.”

Therefore, THumP^®’s first course of action is to establish a type of government in which the American people can trust, in which the rest of the world can trust. Only then can people be influenced to give up their possession and use of guns.

Furthermore, we acknowledge that most gun deaths are a cause of suicide. When people lose hope, they lose their desire to live. We insist that if the right form of government existed in which people could hope for a better world, less would want to end their life.

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Our patience comes from our hope that people will consider many of the underlying causes of violence against oneself or against others. Economic and social inequality is one of the root causes of desperate, hopeless acts of violence. Another one, just as important, is emotional inequality, where one feels less valued than others.

We have outlined our platform and presented our plan to give hope to people through economic and social changes, as well as personal self-worth and value. A strong, righteous government that is not self-serving can provide relief from the pressures of hopelessness and worthlessness.

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We ask people to please consider our proposals for the right form of government first. Keep your guns and back our proposals. Once we have proven to the people that the right form of government is one in which a person can hope, and we can prove that this government’s “well-regulated militia” can indeed provide safety and freedom to the people, then we hope that people everywhere will put down their guns and support human equality and a unification of the world.

“Hope” is the intrinsic measure of our humanity, or better, that which we feel can be possible in spite of the improbabilities that seem to be part of our present experience.

It is improbable that we can convince American gun owners to put down their guns, but if we do not try something different that demonstrates a measure of our shared humanity, that we feel can be possible, then there is no hope.

We all share the same humanity. None of us started out in life as one who would kill another person, or our self. So, what makes us become a killer?

What would we find out if we had the patience and took the time to get to know the perpetrators who take others’ lives, or their own? What happened that caused the moment of emotional imbalance when each decided to take the lives of other people, many of whom, in most situations, the perpetrators didn’t personally know?

Society doesn’t seem interested in WHY a person decides to kill others. Once a person makes the choice, the person is no longer seen as human. Society and the media brand them as “perpetrators,” “killers,” “terrorists,” “monsters,” or “mentally ill,” to name a few of the inhumane names given to these human beings.

It will not make a difference whether the U.S. passes stricter gun laws or takes away all the guns from people outside of a “well-regulated militia” (see and read the entire 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). A knife is a weapon. A rock is a weapon. And a properly aimed vehicle can take many more lives than any gun can, even quicker. Take away all guns and we will witness an emotionally imbalanced human use a vehicle to mow down tens of innocent school children as they walk in crosswalks, to their school bus, or down the street to their own homes.

These types of seemingly senseless violent acts will not end until, unless, we learn WHY human beings become emotionally imbalanced.

Many will say that all of us have personal problems, that all of us have experienced the unfairness of life, but that few of us would kill an innocent person. Can any of us honestly claim that we have had the same experiences, of whatever kind, that the perpetrators had? Have we walked in their shoes? Have we experienced life as they have experienced it?

It is The Humanity Party^®’s claim that all of us (the world) have contributed to these mass shootings and to the increase in instances of suicide.

Suicide holds the highest rate of death by a gun.

New York Times reports:

“When Americans think about deaths from guns, we tend to focus on homicides. But the problem of gun suicide is inescapable: More than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.

“Suicide gets a lot less attention than murders for a few reasons. One big one is that news organizations generally don’t cover suicides the way they do murders.  There’s evidence that news attention around suicide can lead to more suicides. Suicide is more stigmatized and less discussed than homicide.

“But, as a matter of public health, gun suicides are a huge problem in the United States. Suicide is the second-most common cause of death for Americans between 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across all ages, it is the 10th-most common cause of death, and caused 1.6 percent of all deaths in 2012.

“Not all of those suicides are by gun, but a majority are. And while some people feeling suicidal impulses will choose another method if a gun is not at hand, public health researchers cite two reasons guns are particularly dangerous: 1) Guns are more lethal than most other methods people try, so someone who attempts suicide another way is more likely to survive; 2) Studies suggest that suicide attempts often occur shortly after people decide to kill themselves, so people with deadly means at hand when the impulse strikes are more likely to use them than those who have to wait or plan.

“That means that strategies that make suicide more inconvenient or difficult can save lives. Guns, when they are in the home, can make self-harm both easy and deadly.”

It is our position that a child’s upbringing, culture, religion, and other societal pressures heavily contribute to suicide.

Take for example, a child who colors outside of the lines with crayons and says, “Look how pretty, mommy!”

A loving mother responds with caring platitudes of adoration and appropriate accolades. The child’s coloring is proudly taped on the refrigerator for the rest of the family and others to see. The child’s art is loved and praised, but later, if the grown child shows no natural artistic ability and shows their work to the world, the world rejects the person because the person draws “outside of the lines.” Where the child could once do no wrong, and no matter what the child did, the child received praise and acceptance, the world does not treat the aged child as the child was emotionally foundationalized.

The alignment of a child’s emotional balance begins from infancy. Children do not learn how to fail. Parents, teachers, the world, do not teach children that failure is okay. Children learn that failure is not an option. The aged child only receives worldly value and acceptance when the person meets the world’s conditions of value and success.

The child is loved, supported, fed, clothed, housed and cared for when sick or when emotional pain is experienced, but once the child reaches the age that the world has determined is adulthood, the child is thrown into a world of inequality and of forced economic livelihood (you either work like everyone else has to or you die.)

In the real world … in the adult world … no one cares about the child’s “out of the lines coloring.” Unless the aged child submits their free will to the enslavement of employment, they will have no money, and no one is going to clothe, feed, house, and provide health and mental care for them as their parents did.

The child loses an extreme amount of emotional self-worth and value to the world once the child becomes an adult. The child must forget about everything that the child did to find personal happiness in life from the personal freedom enjoyed as child, liberty that is ripped away when one becomes an adult.

Besides economic struggle and inequality, the self-worth and value that a child receives from established emotional anchors of religion and the prejudiced teachings learned from parents, are threatened as an adult. In the real world: Everyone is right. Which makes everyone wrong.^®

If we base our individual self-worth and value on our personal right, and another tells us we are wrong, we naturally respond in self-defense. And so many times throughout our shared history this self-defense results in killing through murder and war.

Why can’t we have a world where everyone is right? Why can’t we teach our children that everyone has their own version of right; that the version taught to the child is pertinent and relevant to the child only; that every other child has the right to be right and protected and supported in this individual right? We do not teach this to our children because it threatens our own emotional anchors of, I am right and everyone else is wrong.

We have a world where no one really cares about anyone outside of their circle of loved ones and friends. We stand in this circle, protected, praised, and supported. The circle has replaced our parents and the security of our childhood home life. Few dare to step out of this circle because once one steps out of the circle, and if one does not step into a new circle, the one feels lost, unloved, valueless, and hopeless. Why wouldn’t one take their own life and end this emotional pain and suffering?

The above things are about suicide. What about mass shooters? Why do they do what they do?

To explain why we will use a real-life scenario:

The Humanity Party^® has become the only supporter of, and we also could have provided a caring circle of humanity that could have surrounded a human being who lived by the name, Thomas Hamilton.

In March of 1996, Thomas walked into a Primary School in Scotland and killed 16 innocent children under the age of 8. He killed their teacher, then himself.

Why?

Thomas Hamilton isn’t around any longer to tell the world why, but we know why.

Here is why:

Thomas loved children. He was the Director of a few local youth clubs. He was the leader of a local Scout group of young boys.

“Thomas Watt Hamilton was born on May 10, 1952, in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother, a hotel chambermaid, was divorced from his father by the time Hamilton was born. Hamilton never knew his father and grew up with his mother’s adoptive parents, believing they were his biological parents. They legally adopted him at age 2. He also thought his biological mother was his sister until he was told the truth when he was 22 years old.”

A loner, Hamilton never formed any close relationships with adults of either sex and seemed particularly uncomfortable around women. Can one imagine why? If you were brought up to believe your grandparents were your parents and your mother was your sister, wouldn’t your view of normal relationships be affected?

There had been several complaints to police regarding Hamilton’s behavior towards the young boys who attended the youth clubs he directed. Claims had been made of his having taken photographs of semi-naked boys without parental consent. The entire local community was suspicious of his moral intentions towards boys.

Thomas was never arrested, charged, or convicted of ANY immoral act or behavior towards any boy, of any age, but the people spread their rumors. The police did their investigations. The world took away the only thing that gave Thomas self-worth and value: his ability to be involved with and help young boys.

Thomas Watt Hamilton took from that local community what it had taken from him.

How many lives have been destroyed because of rumor? How many lives have been destroyed because of the unregulated freedom of the press? How many innocent people have been arrested and charged with a crime that they did not commit, but had their name blasted in the media as the “alleged” perpetrator without being given the due process of law that Americans tout is part of their inalienable rights? Rumor, gossip, and the sensationalized media reports generated by unscrupulous journalists are a gross representation of what our humanity has become.

Let’s consider the more recent mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the United States:

In December of 2012, Adam Lanza outdid Thomas Hamilton and killed 20 children under the age of 8 and 6 teachers.

Why?

No one has ever investigated and reported why.

Why?

Because an honest investigative journalist would be crucified by his or her peers and blacklisted from journalism if he or she investigated and wrote a story about the human being … not the killer, not the monster, but the human being … named Adam Lanza. No media outlet in this world would dare publish an honest and thorough exposé of the real life of Adam Lanza and what was really going through his head when he decided to kill 20 innocent children and 6 innocent aged children.

The Humanity Party^® has done its homework. We are not afraid to tell the real truth. We are not afraid to report it. We know that only if we start to understand why, can we begin to find a solution to, not only mass shootings, but the increasing number of suicides.

Here is some of what the world believes and is taught about Adam Lanza:

“Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for four and a half years. He started at Newtown Middle School in 2004 but according to his mother, Nancy, he was ‘wracked by anxiety’. His mother told friends her son started getting upset at middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise was too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point his anxiety was so intense, his mother took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. In April 2005, she moved him to a new school, St. Rose of Lima, where he lasted only eight weeks.

“At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as ‘intelligent, but nervous and fidgety’. He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when Adam turned sixteen he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggests his autism was exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was taken out of high school and home-schooled by his mother and father. He earned a GED. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University.”

Some of the clues to the real truth about Adam Lanza are in what the world believes about him, but the world does not want to see Adam as a good, caring human being. The world wants Adam remembered as a monster, as a killer, as a mass shooter, as mentally insane.

The real truth: Adam did not want the children to suffer through the same educational process that he did. This is the only reason why he killed them … to save them from the world that had abused him.

The Humanity Party^® doesn’t want anyone to suffer through the same social and political processes that can change any one of us from a human being into a monster.

We are our biggest problem.

THumP^® has the solutions. No one else does.^®