Dear Rose: I’m glad that Donald Trump lived through the assassination attempts. That is not a political statement, just a human statement. Now there are more school shootings. Every time this occurs somewhere in the world, I ask myself, “How can these would-be assassins be so stupid?” Surely they know they can’t get away with it. I read somewhere that there are 5,000 unsolved murders in the U.S. every year. So some people do get away with murder. But assassins and mass shooters, no. They wind up in jail, or dead, or both. What is wrong with these people? — Stumped.
Dear Stumped: There have been many essays written about assassins and mass shooters, and “experts” offer different theories. The top theory is mental illness, of course. Then there’s political fanaticism, religious fanaticism, bad DNA, bad parenting.
Your theory can go here ____________________________________.
My own theory is “lack of imagination.” Sterling Moss’s explanation fits here.
Moss was a winning race car driver, and he was asked by an interviewer how he and other racers could continue to drive after witnessing a deadly collision. “Lack of imagination,” he said. The interviewer looked puzzled. Moss explained that race car drivers never see themselves as victims of accidents. Never. Whereas the ordinary driver has nightmare visions of crashes and broken bones after reading about an accident – or witnessing one – the race car driver only thinks about how he’s going to use the clutch around the next turn. Deadly crashes only happen to the other guy.
Shooters, in my theory, have the same blank imaginations. They don’t think about what happens after the bullets leave the gun. They don’t think about the pain of being shot in retaliation. They don’t think about lonely nights in jail, chaotic days in courtrooms, the electric chair. It’s not that they have lost their minds. No, they can still plan their deadly maneuvers, inch by inch. They simply have no imaginations about what could happen afterward.
Lack of imagination is probably the reason why death penalties have little effect on serious crime rates. If murderers can’t imagine being executed, then death-penalty laws don’t apply to them. They live in the moment.
Lack of imagination can be a good thing, too. Hypochondriacs, for example, imagine the worst illnesses constantly. They live in doctors’ offices because they imagine themselves afflicted. It’s better to be like most of us. We get our checkups because we’re supposed to, but we don’t sit around imagining cancer cells growing, hearts exploding, brains ceasing to work.
Lack of imagination is usually a negative, however. Why do toddlers wind up being injured or killed by their parents’ guns? Lack of imagination. Their parents simply can’t see their children going into a dark closet and extracting a loaded weapon. Most of us can imagine that scenario quite clearly. It’s the reason we don’t own guns, or, if we do, store them in locked gun safes.
I’m being somewhat facetious in this essay, but I really do think there’s something to Moss’s theory. Like DNA, however, there is no fix for lack of imagination. You either have imagination or you don’t. If you have too much, you are afraid to move from your chair. People with agoraphobia are like this. But if you have too little, you might become Evel Knievel or a killer. Just a thought . . .
