Random Murderous Rhetoric

     Rhetorical actions are not always healthy ones focused mainly on the compromising of an issue. Often times these actions are a product of internal anger, frustration, aggression, and other negative emotions. Although they result from a destructive place in the person, the action is no doubt rhetorical due to the hidden reasons that the person argues for the action. Actions such as suicide and murder are those rhetorical arguments that stem from a dark place. In particular, murderous shootings are examples of a form of rhetoric that aim strictly to harm others and communicate a person’s rage through violence.   

     For example, recently the shooting at the high school near Cleveland, Ohio on Monday, February 27^th illustrates the extent to which a person can unhealthy demonstrate his rhetoric. T.J. Lane, the young 17-year old, took his anger out at Chardon high school’s cafeteria that Monday with a .22-caliber gun killing three students and injuring two others. This murderous outrage was done at a school that he did not even attend and was not even a result of drugs, alcohol, or bullying that he had received. He “chose his victims at random,” states the county prosecutor David Joyce.



T.J. Lane Facebook picture found with USA Today article



     Lane’s victims were all between 16 and 17 years of age and male. Thankfully, prosecutors were given until March 1^st to charge the shooter and hopefully he will be charged as an adult rather than a minor, which would only lessen his consequences. His actions may have been repercussions of a troubling household in which his father and mother had had continuous domestic violence charges upon the both of them, but this is in no means an excuse for his unnecessary and harmful actions.

     Not only did Lane murder three and injure two, but he hurt and devastated an entire town. Trust is lost and now fear engulfs the school, town, parents, students, and teachers alike. The school plans to reopen this Friday in order for the students to be reunited with each other, but the hearts and safety of the people in Chardon will never be restored. Lane’s rhetorical actions that ultimately expressed his feelings that he had at a split second destroyed the lives of an entire community forever.