What about the killers?

We need to think about the killers. We have made such wonderful progress in identifying and moving to help those who suffer from mental illnesses. Just think of the strides we have made in these past years spotting things like obsessive compulsive disorder, or dyslexia, or attention deficit disorder. Before, not long ago, those would have been lumped together into a sub-heading of bored or hyper active.

But, what about the killers? You know, the people who need to murder. Who need to see blood and guts and feel the tactile sense of life ending at their own hand. Is that not also a mental disorder? As it stands right now we lock those people up. We put them into cells and we throw away the key and punish them for the way their mind works. In some parts of the world those people are killed for being killers.

Perhaps, one is lucky to identify that they have this predisposition and illness and go into a field where it is a boon to them. Maybe, they join the military or they become a doctor, or perhaps a hang-man.

Should we not protect these people? I read once that of the soldiers that experience traumatic events 2% have no response. That is, they have killed someone in the line of duty and return home unaffected from their experience. Extrapolated, this would mean that potentially 2% of the population has the disposition of a serial killer.

Now we should fight fear and should seek not to label these people if we are to help them. Indeed, that is the failure we made before as we called women forced into bland marriages bored and we gave them drugs to combat something that was systemic and not a personality disorder.

So, I ask you all what about the killers? Do they not also deserve our compassion? Should we not seek to understand an illness rather than condemn it? As we move forward and catalogue so many other types of mental illnesses why are we so hesitant to do the same for those folks who are born with an absence of a moral compass.

We now try to educate individuals on mental illness. Do not judge someone with bi-polar disorder they have a difficult cross to bear. Be kind to the person suffering from depression. They are in a dark depth and require more empathy than others. But, spit on the killer.

I urge you to educate yourself on the killer. Perhaps, in understanding we can help them and bring them into our homes in the spirit of rehabilitation. We will become a greater society if we do. We need to stop looking at a series of calculated slayings as simply a crime, but rather, a cry for help.

Please donate to the Church of Xenophon the patron saint of murders. Your donation will go towards helping killers.

–A pamphlet left at my door.