To the Editor:
With no known motive for the LV shooter, maybe he did it for fun.
Shooting a full-auto machine gun is the ultimate gun fun. Some bases on Armed Forces Day offer shooting a machine gun with blanks. I know some guys who were all excited about just firing a Tommy Gun. One was a war vet who had fired machine guns. Shooting a machine gun, even in a computer game, has a visceral appeal.
Did he want to be famous? This shooter could have used his intelligence, time and money to kill more people by other means. He had 50 pounds of unused explosives. I suspect shooting was more fun for him than building and planting bombs. Another contributing reason might have been that it was easy for him to legally buy dozens of guns, including the makings of machine guns, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition. Maybe he figured there was less chance of getting caught than if he had placed a dozen bombs or used poison.
Most people who love shooting guns have enough empathy and morals not to get fun by shooting people. I suspect a mental problem prevented him from exercising self-control. But his motivation was not his mental problem. If his motive was to have fun shooting, then his mental problem was just the enabler.
Bill Sayer
Village of Summerhill
