From A Taller Tower: A Book Review

 

“There is no silence on earth deeper than the silence between gunshots. It’s terrifying. It’s deafening. It drowns out everything else,” writes Seamus McGraw in his recently published book, “From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter.”

“. . . There is no silence on earth deeper than the silence between gunshots. It’s only human nature that we try to fill it, stuffing it with all our suppositions and conjectures, half truths and misconceptions.”

McGraw has done a tremendous amount of research — reading FBI and police reports, interviewing experts, survivors and first responders, and even corresponding with a few of the murders — taking us from the first modern mass shooting at the University of Texas in 1966 to the mass killings at the Mandalay Bay Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas in 2017. 

“These are not tragedies,” he writes. “These are atrocities. These are things we do to each other.

Through his wonderful, concise prose and extensive research, he takes us along on an inquisitive and informative journey, thoroughly examining the questions, myths, misconceptions, fallacies and truths relating to the causes and continued occurrences of these atrocities. 

He looks into the role of easy access to deadly weapons designed for war; mental health and illness; a culture of victimization, narcissism and more. 

“We search for easy answers. Tumors, video games, mental illness. Evil. But there are no easy answers.,” he writes.

“Myths are as durable as diamonds. And they’re found in abundance in our culture – the dark, silent places where our grudges spore, the places where narcissism and victimhood ooze together and become more toxic,” McGraw writes. “A culture that seems often to celebrate self-centered rage and antisocial grandiosity, a culture in which were both hyperconnected and isolated from each other, is a culture that creates an environment that validates and inflames these killers and gives them places to hide.”

Another excerpt: 

“We are who we are, and we are who we have always been: a people capable of doing great things, embracing and advancing the best human instinct. But we are also an angry, divided, fearful, and violent people, among the most violent nations on earth. . . We are a nation armed to the teeth . . . There are among us decent, honorable, God-fearing people who believe in perfect faith that they have a divine ordinance to stockpile ordinance, including weapons originally designed to kill on the battlefield, and all the hundred round drum magazines they desire.”

This is a powerful, important, thought-provoking book. I highly recommend it. 

“There is no silence on earth deeper than the silence between gunshots. It’s terrifying. It’s deafening. But it never lasts for long.”