Amy Bishop: murderer in a ‘Rage of Blind Violence?’ Or should we have seen it coming?
Bishop being arrested, from the Sunday Times Online
When a female professor, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville–Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist who had been denied tenure–pulled out a gun at a faculty meeting Friday and killed several of her colleagues, bloggers and reporters started writing about how unusual it was for a woman to commit a crime like this. In past years, on-campus shooting sprees have generally been undertaken by male students. This was a woman, a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, and Kate Dailey blogging for Newsweek, wrote this about it:
Sadly, shootings on college campuses have become all too common. …writer Nick Reilly notes the role of violent gun crimes in American culture—and universities have been the backdrop for some of America’s most notorious shooting sprees. But in his research, Reilly also found that women were very rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings.
What Reilly (a professor at Northeastern University) wrote was that the vast majority of mass shooters are men, and women are more likely to turn their anger inward and kills themselves, rather than others. When they do turn violent, wrote Reilly “they’re less likely to use a gun.”
There are a lot of different parts of this story that are worth focusing on, but perhaps the truth is less political. First, the idea that a woman–a white woman, a white woman with a PH.D. a mother of four, an entrepreneur who just received early-stage funding for her startup company (not an easy thing to do these days) –could do this, boggles many minds. Then there’s the context: the “the academic pressure cooker” as the New York Times’ put it yesterday, and how in the world of biotechnology start-ups, there is a dependence on academia to give these entrepreneurs “a leg up.” Could that kind of pressure—coupled with the knowledge that tenure at Huntsville was out of reach–have caused Bishop to snap? Looking at her life from here, she seemed quite successful, otherwise. Yet this is the description of what happened from the Times’ story:
Ms. Bishop presided over her regular neuroscience class before going to a biology faculty meeting, where she sat quietly for about 30 or 40 minutes, said one University of Alabama faculty member who had spoken to people who were in the room. Then she pulled out a gun and began shooting, firing several rounds before her gun either jammed or ran out of bullets, the faculty member said.
So what’s the most hard to grasp part of this story—that she was a woman? a professional? not a grad student under grad-student-pressure, not a member of the postal service? Perhaps what’s much easier to grasp, is that Amy Bishop had a troubled past, and a past that involved guns. Maybe she was just a woman on the verge… on the verge of instability because of psychological problems. Which makes much more sense, even if what she did is no less heinous.
See this by Gina Barreca in yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education:
Not only did she murder her colleagues with a 9 mm; more than twenty years ago, Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother. This is a woman who should not have had a gun. This is a woman who should have had more help. This is a woman about whom people will say, “How come nobody who worked with her day in and day out knew?” and “Are there more like her?”
Yes, the one thing we haven’t seen much reporting about is this woman shot and killed her 18-year-old brother in 1986, in Braintree, Massachusetts. Here’s the story from The Boston Globe:
According to the current Braintree police chief, Paul H. Frazier, Amy Bishop fatally shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth, on Dec. 6, 1986, but was set free the same day by Braintree Police under orders from then-Police Chief John Polio. In news accounts at the time, Polio called the death an accident that happened when Bishop was learning how to unload a shotgun.
Frazier challenged that account today, saying instead that Bishop shot her brother during an argument and fled on foot with the 12-gauge shotgun before being captured by police, who handcuffed her and took her to the station. The case file, including the report of the incident, disappeared shortly thereafter, he said.
Reading this, it looks like there was some kind of cover-up: this was a young girl, she remained with her mother and people accepted that shooting her brother was a tragic accident and left it at that. But underneath, something clearly remained amiss in Bishop. Ms. Barreca, a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, summed it up just right, I think. She wrote yesterday that this was not, as the NY Times story put it: “a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who was described by her colleague as being “not as good as she thought she was” who was mangled by a system she then sought to destroy in a rage of blind violence.” Barreca instead, with empathy uncommon in situations like this, writes that Bishop was:
a different soul, one who howled out her pain and rage twenty years ago, one who might have been rescued or restrained, one who might have been cured or caged or at least taken out of circulation. But because she was smart and because someone was willing to take care of her, the system forgave her–only to have her attack and kill those who represented another kind of system, one that did not reward her to her satisfaction, twenty-four years later.
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Although Amy Bishop had a difficult personality, so do many people and they don’t kill others. There is a strong possibility that Ms. Bishop was taking an antidepressant to help her cope with a denied tenure.
The Physicians Desk Reference states that SSRI antidepressants and all antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, abnormal thinking, paranoia, hostility, etc. These side effects can also appear during withdrawal. Also, these adverse reactions are not listed as Rare but are listed as either Frequent or Infrequent.
Go to http://www.SSRIstories.com where there are over 3,600 cases, with the full media article available, involving bizarre murders, suicides, school shootings/incidents [53 of these]workplace violence, and murder-suicides – all of which involve SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc, . The media article usually tells which SSRI antidepressant the perpetrator was taking or had been using.
This raises an issue I talk about whenever I talk about women and gun use, the subject of my book — the link between gun ownership and mental illness. It’s very poorly tracked, for all sorts of civil rights and legal reasons, but it’s a major problem and one that means this sort of massacre/horror is always going to happen again. It’s just a matter of when or where — 30 percent of American homes contain a firearm and it’s said that 25 percent of Americans will suffer a mental illness in their lifetime.
Do the math.
Very true Caitlin, good point. I just felt like the media reports were all shocked she was a woman, and then they were saying well, it’s the pressure cooker of academia/biotech startups, etc. And sure, all that’s contributing but she owned the 9mm that did the job, and if she hadn’t, well…you said it very well in your comment.
In response to another comment. See in context »As a Liberal AND a firearms enthusiast (yeah, almost as weird as being a Log-Cabin Republican- but then, I’m male, and from a rural background), and standing between, and with a foot in, both camps, I have to question your math. 30% of all households having a gun, + 25% mental illness rate SHOULD = a lot more incidents, like this tragedy, than actually occur. But it doesn’t. As big a media splash as incidents like this make, statistically, they’re quite rare. 25 or 35 or 50 (how many actually ARE there?) a year is clearly far too many, but spread across a population of 300+ million- sorry, they’re just not common. Not saying that they aren’t tragedies, or that something shouldn’t be done about them, but the question of exactly what should be done about them is a far more tangled problem than I’ve heard either pro-gun or anti-gun activists admit.
For starters, exactly what is a gun? Example: one may only ship a gun through the mail or a private carrier unless one has an a Federal Firearms Licence. Now, can one disassemble a fiream and ship it through the mail without an FFL- is it, disassembled, still a gun? The BATF answers that the part of the gun that carries the serial number is the gun- even if, as usual, it is the receiver, a part that will never ever go bang and discharge a projectile. How is this relevant? It should begin to display the complexity of firearms regulation, is how. A municipality cannot ban a firearm by name- DC tried to ban the TEC-9, and it didn’t work- all the old ones were grandfathered, and the new ones, well, the manufacturer simply changed the name. In Arizona, one may not- without a concealed carry permit- carry a firearm under the seat of your car- but ON the seat, it’s OK. In NYC one may own a firearm- if it’s registered- depending on how DC vs. Heller sorts itself out in the courts- but one cannot recieve a cleaning brush in the mail. It’s a mess, ain’t it? And I can’t see how applying the same laws to rural Arizona and urban NYC will make it less of one.
As for defining “mentally ill”- that’s another mess. Is a paranoid schizophrenic who has never been diagnosed or treated legally insane, and barred from firearms possesion? How about a person who isn’t currently mentally ill, but was prescribed Paxil for a 3 year period 15 years ago? Whom do we bar from firearms possesion for reasons of mental illness? No matter what lines we draw, they’re going to be unfair- to somebody- and imperfect.
Guns are totemic objects, charged with psychological significance that far transcend mere questions of ideology, or policy. (No one feels strongly about wrenches, or frying pans, even though they too can be 100% lethal. We care differently about cars, because they’re transport and a symbol of a different kind of power than a gun, even though they’re more commonly lethal than guns.) I’ve come to believe that the whole ideological divide on firearms regulation- liberal/anti vs conservative/pro- is largely an artifice. The real divides are rural vs urban, and male vs female. In other words, environment and heredity, as opposed to ideology. It’s ideology that makes these questions more difficult than they already are; it’s our psychologically motivated presuppositions that make what answers there are more tangled, more contradictory and irrational, than they already are.
Caitlin, all due respect, and I don’t really mean to be insulting, and I’m certainly not being dismissive, but your math is hogwash. There’s plenty- far too much- hogwash being bandied about by both “pro” and “anti” lobbies. Yes, I find it morally repugnant when the arch-conservative NRA casts nasty and false attacks on Sarah Brady’s- or, for that matter, your- character; but that doesn’t excuse, or exonerate, either side presenting- as fact, the sloppiest kind of numbers and stats. Did you know that 1000 children are killed by guns every year in this country? It’s true- IF you define “child” as 25 or under. When we define “child” as 18 or under, the number goes down to 300 or so- still a horrific number, but a much smaller public health problem. The 1000 per year number came from Dr. Garen Wintemuth- not an epidemiologist, but a Chicago emergency room physician. Now, nobody in this country has more legitimate reason to hate guns than a Chicago emergency-room physician; but that doesen’t change the fact that he bent the numbers to reflect something that wasn’t true.
(In passing, everyone seems to be shocked that in this case, the shooter was a woman. I’m surprised that it doesn’t happen more often, seeing as how a gun renders anyone lethal, instantly, and without training. If this case sets a precedent, of course, this makes these questions even more urgent- and probably, less rational.)
Caitlin- you say you’ve written a book about guns (I’ll have to check it out). How much do you know about them- their safe and unsafe uses, their legitimate and illegitimate uses, their operation, manufacture, marketing, distribution? Can you make one safe- would you, presented with one, know how to safely unload it? There’s a different procedure for each action type- a lever-action rifle is unloaded differently than a pump-action shotgun, or a semi-automatic pistol- and while each is simpler than driving a car, or filling out a 1040, they’re more complicated than turning a faucet, or hitting a light-switch, and the consequences for a mistake can be lethal. The one thing that any adult should know about a gun is how to unload it safely. If you don’t know even that much- frankly, I hope you do- how on earth do you think that you know enough about them to sensibly regulate their ownership and use? I have noticed among the gun-control crowd a wilful refusal to learn about guns- much like Christians, who, when offered a chance to study the ways of the Devil, in order to better refute them, will demur, in order to safeguard their souls.
The great paradox of the gun debate is that the organizations who understand them enough to offer sensible and necessary regulation are resolutely opposed to any kind of regulation at all (one of the reasons why I’m one of the estimated 29 million legal gun owners who don’t belong); while the organizations that support regulation too readily propose solutions that punish the law-abiding, while being ineffective against the criminal and insane.
Deep questions here: does freedom demand the potential to abuse freedom? Can we remove the abuse without destroying freedom? It seems cold, even to me, to raise these questions in the face of these last 3 tragic deaths- does that mean we shouldn’t raise them?
(Thanks for your patientce- I’m not usually this windy.)
In response to another comment. See in context »do what math?
In response to another comment. See in context »there is no explicit mathematical correlation
between these two statistical groups even if
i happened to think keeping guns in the house is crazy.
I’ll bet you Caitlin that fewer than 10% of that 25% with mental illness are violent people. And even fewer own and use guns. It’s factual that even a ballpoint pen or any number of items can be used to kill if one is so inclined. People can make bombs out of household items, if Dr. Bishop didn’t have access to a gun, I’m sure she’d have thought of something more effective.
In response to another comment. See in context »Let us just call a spade a whack job here..All this analysis means nothing to three..four,counting her brother dead people killed at the hands of an unstable person with a gun..Sometimes it is as simple as that…
Times are tough, and having the job one wants is important. But this woman must have been suffering some ‘head game’ brain damage, a ‘click’ casualty. But YEESH, it’s JUST A JOB! She should have flipped them off and walked, opened a workshop in her garage, get some patents, and made the lot of them eat crow. Maybe they did know about “the accident” suspected and penalized her for it. Quite a number of innocent people do go on to carry out exactly what they’re accused of, especially if they have to live with the stigma. Don’t know if that’s what it was, but I do think a Doctor of Science could do better than a teaching position.
So, if you all figure Amy Bishop is/was unstable she should get off w/the insanity plea? I think maybe NOT. I think Amy Bishop was really very angry, to the point she no longer valued human life. I think she felt her life ruined beyond repair (Hell if I know why w/a PHD and a few patents..HELLO? What?) and was doing a bit of pre-emptive retribution. I think she’s going to play the crazy card…to the hilt probably. But I think what Amy Bishop did was pre-meditated murder.