German teen gunman targets girls in shooting rampage
March 21, 2009 - On Mаrch 11 of this year, a 17 year old referred to only as 'Tim K.', burst into his former high school in Winnenden, Germany with a Beretta 9 mm and began shooting.
His targets? Girls
Of the nine students he killed - some found slumped over their desks, shot in the head, pencils still in hand - 8 were female. On his way out of the school he shot three teachers - all female.
His rampage continued haphazardly from there. He ran downtown and shot two passersby. He hijacked a car but let the occupants go, then shot a car dealer and a man shopping for a car. When police swarmed him he shot at them, wounding two of them. He himself was shot, staggered down an alley, and was found there dead after shooting himself in the head.
Perhaps because of the random violence before he took his own life, or perhaps because its standard practice these days, news outlets aren't making much of the fact that his primary targets, the first people he chose to kill, were all female. "There was no immediate indication of motive" news stories claim.
We know better.
Tim K was apparently a 'below average' student who didn't partake in school events. It's easy to read into that a social misfit, unsuccessful with women and incapable of impressing them with intellect or skill. And like most monsters, he decided to take his revenge on these women, who had the nerve to want for something better than someone 'below average'.
His motive, like that of so many others before him, was to destroy the thing he couldn't have. To eradicate the good that was so clearly nowhere to be found in himself. To kill beauty, and the women who embodied it, for reminding him daily what a failure he was. His later victims were 'collateral damage', random and unimportant once he had already accomplished his real purpose.
What's worse - being targeted and gunned down for embodying beauty, or having the world ignore the fact that this is why you were killed?
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