I wonder were he got this information because this is the first I heard of it. It sounds like made up slanderous postulating to me.
Does the article say what in Rand’s work has anything to do with it?
One thing I’ve noticed about many highschool shootings is that many of the perpetrators were bullied or misstreated by other students. This has been remarked upoin in the media, though I don’t know if any studies ahve been made about it. But it does make a lot of sense to me, because in junior highschool I was bullied by other students. I can tell you the anger that builds up from such treatment can lead to murder. No, I never killed anyone, but there were times I was so blinded with rage, I would have shot some bullies if I’d had a gun with me.
Of course that’s a purely emotional reaction, one that cannot stand a second of rational thought. Would I kill someone because he’s making me feel angry and impotent, if that meant spending the rest of my life in prison? Of course not. I did get into fights sometimes, but overall no more than most kids at that age do. I got beaten up, too, most times.
I do want to explain the depth of feeling, though. I was mostly verbally bullied, made fun of, disrespected, rumors were started about me etc. That’s bad enough, but when I turned towards teachers or the principal all I got was “oh, just ignore them and they’ll get bored and leave you alone.” Which never works, because the constant bullying just can’t be ignored. My parents came up with the same advice. That’s what makes the rest so bad, that you can’t do anything about it and no one else cares about what happens to you.
So you go on and try everything you can think of. You try to ignore them, you try to fight them, you try to do to them what they do to you, you try to find places where they won’t follow you (things like hanging out with the chem teacher in the lab during recess, or chatting with the librarian’s aides and such). But nothing works for very long. And sometimes you get overcome with anger and fury and want nothing better than to do somethign that will make them leave you alone.
I endured such things for about three years, then finally persuaded my parents to let me go to another school. The change of schools solved that particular problem (there, that’s another virtue of private schools).
I’m saying all this because there is nothing in Ayn Rand’s work in general, or AS in particular, that suggests I should have obtained an arsenal and shot them all dead.
