ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Dec. 13 2007

Focus on the heroes and victims in copycat killing sprees
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

"Badness," C.S. Lewis once wrote, "is only spoiled goodness. . . . Evil is a
parasite, not an original thing."

A painful reminder of evil's unoriginal character came bearing down on a
Colorado Springs megachurch this week. The scenario was sadly familiar: An
angry young man cloaked in black and armed to the teeth opened fire on a crowd
of innocent bystanders before dying in a blaze of gunfire. As the media focused
on his unfolding story — his reclusiveness, resentments and attraction to
violent entertainment — another young murderer got his 15 minutes of fame.

Just one week ago, the narcissistic gunman demanding our attention was a
19-year-old loner who killed eight strangers and himself in an Omaha, Neb.,
mall after bragging in a suicide note, "I'm gonna be [expletive] famous."

Details about this week's shooter are sketchier, but so far, he fits the
predictable profile. He was a 24-year-old loner who had sent hate mail to a
missionary training center in suburban Denver that had rejected him years
earlier after his sinister behavior had convinced its leaders that he was not
cut out for missionary life.

On Sunday, he returned to the center and shot four young missionaries, leaving
two dead. He then reportedly posted an Internet rant against Christians that
was copied almost verbatim from the 1999 manifesto of one of the Columbine
killers. Later that day, he turned up at New Life Church, killing two
churchgoers and wounding three others before shooting himself during a
confrontation with a security guard.

Despite their non-conformist battle cries, such nihilistic young killers are a
tragic cliché. From their trademark trench coats and combat boots to their
plagiarized suicide notes and slavish imitation of violent anti-heroes, nearly
everything they do is derivative. Convinced of the exceptional nature of their
own suffering, they use violence to shock us into listening to their posthumous
tirades. But their deranged rants are always the same: full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

The words and stories of their victims, by contrast, frequently overflow with
originality and potency. Among those killed Sunday: Philip Crouse, a
24-year-old former drug user and skinhead whose Christian conversion had
transformed his life and convinced him to become a missionary in Kazakhstan;
Tiffany Johnson, a 26-year-old snowboarding missionary known for her
hospitality to the homeless; and Stephanie and Rachael Works, teenage sisters
who recently had returned from a mission trip to China. Among those wounded was
Vietnam veteran Larry Bourbonnais, a New Life churchgoer who yelled at the
gunman to distract him from shooting others.

Especially striking was the story of Jeanne Assam, a churchgoer and volunteer
security guard who stopped the shooter before he could kill any more of the
7,000 worshippers. Armed with only her handgun and her faith, Assam calmly
faced down a gunman who was armed with two handguns, an assault rifle and
more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. She ordered him to surrender and shot him
when he refused; he ultimately died of a self-inflicted wound.

"God was with me," Assam said, when asked how she found the courage to risk her
life for others. "I asked him to be with me and he never left my side."

Like her pastor and fellow churchgoers, Assam has offered sympathy and prayers
to the gunman's family. Such magnanimity and resilience in the wake of a
horrific crime can get lost easily in our focus on the gunman's dark
obsessions. If we want to honor his victims and discourage future copycat
crimes, we can begin by refusing to wallow in the details of his evil acts and
focus instead on the men and women who overcame evil with good.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television host, and St. Louis-based
fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.