You may already know about this:
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown revealed new details about Friday night's drive by shootings in Isla Vista during a Saturday morning news conference, including a new death toll and a possible link to an ominous YouTube video....I'll post that video below, though I wonder if it'll be taken down soon. In fact, it's one of several videos posted Rodger on the same subject, many of them yesterday. In addition to "Elliot Rodger's Retribution," there's also "My reaction to seeing a young couple at the beach, Envy," as well as "Life is so unfair because girls dont want me" and "Why do girls hate me so much?" Rodger's black BMW is featured in many of these videos. (UPDATE: "Retribution" is gone from Rodger's YouTube page, but the other videos, oddly, are still up there -- the links still work. I've substituted the LiveLeak version of "Retribution.")
Witnesses described seeing a black BMW speeding through the streets, spraying bullets at people and various targets....
Deputies found the suspect inside the BMW dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Brown said he did not know if the suspect was shot and killed by deputies or if the wound was self-inflicted....
In total, the sheriff confirmed seven people were killed, including the gunman; seven others are hospitalized either with gunshot wounds or traumatic injuries -- one with life-threatening injuries; there are nine separate crime scenes....
Word on the street quickly spread about an ominous YouTube video posted by a young man who identified himself as Elliot Rodger, titled "Retribution." The nearly seven minute long rant blasts women who've ignored or rejected him over the past eight years and warns that he will "punish you all for it."...
Rodger is the son of Peter Rodger, a filmmaker best known as the director of a documentary called Oh My God, which is an attempt to answer the question "What is God?" (Among the experts consulted in the film are Ringo Starr, Seal, snd Hugh Jackman.) Rodger was also an assistant director on The Hunger Games. In addition, he's a photographer whose work includes arty nudes.
I know what the NRA crowd is going to say about this: Nine separate crime scenes? In California, a gun control state? That's what you get when there isn't a good man with a gun around. (Right, because it's really easy for a good man with a gun to stop a shooting who's driving around trying to kill people.) The right in general is going to blame Hollyweird. (Because, y'know, there are no incidents of this kind anywhere else in America.)
But after we endure all that, I'm dreading the reaction of Ross Douthat. Now, maybe he'll decide that the story is just too tawdry for a man of his refinement. But if he does weigh in, I fear he'll focus on something Rodger says at about 0:53 in the video above:
I'm 22 years old. I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years -- more than that, actually -- and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. But in those years I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair.Is Douthat going to go there? Is he going to say that we wouldn't have had Elliot Roger cruising around with a gun if there weren't so much of that awful pressure on campus to have sex? Is he going to call for a return to in loco parentis and parietal rules?
But hey, maybe these folks have a point. Maybe we should do as both the gunners and Douthat propose -- we should have a gun free-for-all in all fifty states, and we should bring back a culture of enforced chastity for young people.
Hmmm ... do you think that's the right combination? Do you think there'd be a reduction in the number of suicidal mass murders if we had more weapons, plus increased pressure to maintain sexual purity?
Let me think....
