A bizarre story from 2023 that was immediately buried: 20-year old Diego Barajas-Medina amassed an arsenal and body armor (a familiar refrain) and intended to massacre amusement park goers in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He was armored and armed and ready to kill, but instead killed himself in the women’s bathroom. Before offing himself he scrawled “I’m not a killer, I just want to get into the caves”, which sounds as if something was compelling him to kill, but he was able to muster the willpower to resist. AR-15, body armor, explosives, this all sounds too familiar. I’ve lost count of the number of mass murderers who are identically armed, and carry out identical attacks before either dying by their own hand or at the hands of responding officers. This deserves far more scrutiny than it has received: why are these killings so similar? How do they get the resources to carry them out? What drives them to do it? Is it really just one big coincidence, and are they acting of their own volition? There are echoes of Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Audrey Hale, the New Zeleand Christchurch shooting, Anders Behring Beivrik, and countless others.
