I know this is hard to believe, but I wasn’t necessarily the most popular kid in High School. I ran track briefly just to check the block for military pursuits that were to come later, but a jock I was definitely not. I was kind of a cerebral kid who got along with everybody. However, there was never any real threat that I might win Most Handsome or be nominated to escort the Homecoming Queen.
Throughout it all, I was pretty comfortable in my own skin. School violence back in my day was restricted to two rednecks fighting with their fists over something stupid and soon forgotten. Kids brought guns to school all the time, but we left them locked in the trunks of our cars for hunting and shooting excursions afterward. In the days before the Internet, nobody really thought to take things any further.
At some point between then and now something fundamentally changed. The World Wide Web connected folks with weird proclivities in ways we never might have imagined. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a Florida man named George Frandsen has the largest collection of privately-owned fossilized turds in the world. As of 2016, this 36-year-old owned some 1,277 samples of coprolite or fossilized excrement. He even operates an online Poozeum to show off his crap. You can find it here.
Before the Internet, George Frandsen just would have been some harmless guy with a curiously strange hobby. Now this deep into the Information Age, however, Mr. Frandsen can connect with like-minded poo collectors from all over the world. While collecting fossilized turds is, in reality, indeed fairly harmless, the Net takes some other people to much darker places.
Nothing brings out your inner victim like connecting with like-minded lost souls. The dark subject of our discussion today is Scott Beierle. Scott self-identified as an Incel, or part of the Involuntary Celibate community. Distilled to its essence these are most typically hetero males who define themselves as being unable to obtain or maintain a romantic partner despite wishing they could. Theirs is a curious online subculture frequently characterized by self-pity, self-loathing, and a sense of entitlement to sex. Such stuff can also cross a little invisible line to become quite terribly dangerous.
The Guy
Scott Paul Beierle was born in October of 1978. According to his Facebook profile, he was a military veteran, but I couldn’t find many details about his service. After leaving the military he taught Social Studies and English in the Anne Arundel County Public School System. He also served as a substitute teacher at surrounding schools but was oft disciplined for performance problems.
In one case, Beierle was fired from a substitute position for touching a female student on her abdomen and asking if she was ticklish. In 2012 and 2016 he was officially charged with battery for groping women’s buttocks. Over time this disturbed young man came to view all women as the impetus behind his many manifest problems. His online activity reinforced this twisted vision.
Beierle was active on social media. He posted several YouTube videos that allowed him to vent over his sordid state. In one 2014 video, he described himself as an Incel and voiced support and empathy for Elliot Rodger, a mass shooter who also projected his personal shortcomings onto women in general. Rodger ultimately killed seven people and injured another fourteen. This twisted guy posted an online screed just before his attack titled, “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” wherein he verbalized his hatred towards women for rejecting him and sexually active men because he envied them.
Beierle also hated African-Americans and got seriously tooled up over interracial relationships. Illegal immigration set him off as well. He wrote song lyrics that glorified the torture and murder of women. He titled one of his videos, “Dangerous Diversity.”
It Has a Name
The textbook definition of a misogynist is, “A person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.” Not unlike woke or gaslighting, this is one of those obscure terms that no one really paid much attention to until lately. Scott Beierle took it yet further and earned the title “Misogynistic Terrorist” from the ICCT.
ICCT stands for International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. It was founded in 2010 and is based in The Hague. Per Wikipedia, “The ICCT is an independent think tank devoted to providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical support focused on prevention and the rule of law as it relates to combatting terrorism. ICCT’s work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human rights-related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement, and victims’ voices.” I have no idea what all that really means, but the ICCT really doesn’t like people like Scott Beierle.
The Event
November 2, 2018, was a Friday. At 5:37 PM, Scott Beierle walked into Tallahassee Hot Yoga carrying a 9mm Glock 17 handgun. For those of you who, like me, might not get out much, hot yoga is apparently the act of performing yoga in an artificially torrid environment.
Hot yoga began with someone named Bikram Choudhury. The mission is to replicate the heat and humidity of India, where yoga first was born. The goal is to sweat a lot and, in so doing, “prepare the body for movement and remove impurities.” Whatever. That all sounds pretty miserable to me. However, it does reliably attract women.
After dissecting his digital footprint in retrospect, investigators found that Beierle had been planning his attack for months. He briefly masqueraded as a yoga student before opening fire on the folks in the studio. A lot of stuff happened fairly quickly at that point.
Patrons in a bar across the street reported people streaming from the yoga studio. A man in a badly-bloodied white t-shirt then ran into the bar and claimed that he had attacked the shooter in an effort to buy time for the other patrons to escape. Other survivors backed up his claim.
Beierle ultimately shot six people, killing two. The dead victims were a 21-year-old student at nearby Florida State University named Maura Binkley and a 61-year-old physician named Nancy Van Vessem. Binkley was due to graduate the following year. Dr. Van Vessum worked as the Medical Director for a health insurance company.
The man who resisted Beierle’s attack fought back with whatever he had handy. At first, this was a vacuum cleaner and later a broomstick. Though he wasn’t shot, Beierle did beat him severely with his handgun. Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo later applauded the students who, “fought back and tried not only to save themselves but other people.”
The Aftermath
The cops arrived onsite three and one-half minutes after the first shot was fired, which is frankly pretty amazing. However, by then it was all over. Binkley and Van Vessum were already dead, and the loser Beierle had taken his own life.
There were subsequently tributes aplenty to the innocent victims of this egregious rampage. The following day an instructor at Tallahassee Hot Yoga led a yoga class specifically intended to heal the community in the middle of a nearby street. The following year, Maura Binkley’s parents sued Tallahassee Hot Yoga and the property owners for failure to provide adequate security measures.
Ruminations
There is always ample blame to go around in horrible situations like this. There are those who will immediately attack the gun, but this example is even more tenuous than is typically the case. This wasn’t an “assault weapon”–whatever that actually is–or some uber-deadly implement of war. It was just a pistol. Even hypothetical magazine capacity restrictions wouldn’t have touched this one. Scott Beierle was just a really horrible person.
The owners of the yoga studio got sued for what exactly? I could post some scary-looking guy with a black rifle at the front door of my business, but I doubt that would do much to enhance my patient flow. Scott Beierle is the reason I carry a gun every time I’m not asleep or in the shower. When seconds count the cops are often only minutes away. Their response was, per usual, absolutely incredible. It is simply that bad stuff like this typically unfolds very quickly.
I would assert that Scott Beierle is not the problem. Scott Beierle is a symptom of the problem. When I was a kid, stuff like this never happened. Now it seems to happen all the time. What exactly changed?
A point of personal privilege–the absence of light is dark. Similarly, the absence of God is godlessness. Our culture has ejected God from our public spaces and embraced a pervasive depressing nihilistic humanism. If we persist in raising our kids to believe that life doesn’t matter and that sex is the ultimate end-all then we should not be surprised when the Incels of the world become convinced they have nothing to live for and take it out on the rest of us. Jesus is the only thing I have found that reliably displaces the darkness, even such darkness as Scott Beierle.
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We did NOT need to know this mutts name.
As always Doc, great article, keep them coming.
Glad to know that someone appreciates the FACT that a personal relationship with God the Father, expressed by His mercy and grace through the substitutionary death of His Son is the answer to most of our problems.
Amen, brother!
Well Said.
” The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom”
Dr Dabbs thank you for being willing to bring up Jesus…He saved my life & continues to be a deep confidant that i place my hope in each day. To be forgiven of sin is a big deal!
Entitled, white conservatism is the biggee problem. Hate is promoted every day by conservatives and so-called Christians. I see it every time I read an article in Gunsamerica. Putting faith in a magical being to save us is certainly not the answer, especially as so many use his or her “words” to promote hate of people who are different from them.
All the while people like “Daniel” push for abortion on demand still missing their blatant sense of entitlement. He also misses his own promotion of hatred of White conservatives and Christians in just those three shallow sentences he of wrote about people who are different from him.
Someone call the circus, we found their missing clown.
OK so doing “hot yoga” which I never heard of but hot babes doing hot yoga might make me want to attend at least one class. How am I going to carry a 1911 in that environment? At least I can carry an NAA mini revolver in 22 magnum. Not ideal but its better than a vacum cleaner. Point of my stupid post is this- you can be attacked at any time. Theres no such thing as a safe place,safe town, safe location. Lucifers Children are everywhere and his time has arrived.
Amen! Jesus is the only thing that truly displaces the darkness.
The Holy Spirit of Jesus doesn’t stop bullets
God bless you, Will. Thank you for having the courage to act and speak your faith.
“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
John 3:19
Well said! Jesus is the answer.
You had me until you decided that Jesus is the answer. It’s a great idea in theory, but in practice it produces the vast majority of the people who call me slurs daily and shout about me burning in Hell while I’m doing volunteer work.
“Christians” who skipped the parts about turning the other cheek and praying privately in your room instead of a street corner and might decide to bash some Jesus into me are the main reason I carry.
I clearly understand what you mean and looking at what mankind did most of the time with the “God thing”, you could be right. The mistake here is mixing what mankind has done and is doing with everything God related to the real message itself.
Yes Jesus (or whoever God could be for you) is the answer, but keep it discreet, for yourself, until you have an humble understanding of what it means. Real Faith is not a given, it is a reward. Better work hard and in the right manner for it or it will always escape human comprehension. This life here is not a goal, it is a training, for the hardest challenge any human will ever face, to be the most ready possible for the “Other Life”. Do and think whatever you want, but in the end, everyone will face what he did and thought. Be happy, life is really hard because it is the only way we can learn the dearest things here, but rather often through your own path, she also could be rewarding if you do your best.
Will, this one is not only a good one, it is a great one. I will not argue a coma on this one ; intelligence and life experience put to most excellent use. Thank you very much for this one, it gives me hope that some still have their heart at the right place. Myself I feel rather helpless against all that and the only way I found is to concentrate on what is around me, not much further. “Modern” mankind has chosen to walk away from the “God thing” and the world is now turning on his own.
Enjoyed the article despite the sordid source material, agree 100% with the Godliness comment, if we don’t get back to that general way of thinking as a society we will continue to devolve into whatever our “progressive” brethren think is the natural way our species should go.
You are 100% correct Dr. Dabbs and thank you for sharing this.
God tells each one of us to seek the Truth and Truth will free us from the darkness, God tells us “Jesus” is that Truth and He is the Light of this world. There is a very vocal minority that is promoting “their truth” which wants to turn us further away from the Light, understand their plan is as intentional as it is dark, this evil is not by accident and their desire to change this country and the world has already had a huge negative impact and will only get worse unless we stand up to this insanity, we must stand together or we will surely fall apart.
H.H.
Excellent article sir. You hit the nail right on the head. Please keep informing the public and God bless you.
Amen.
All I can say about this article is so true. I can remember that my teacher even brought in a bow for me to buy from him with the arrows during schools hours. In the fall we would generally meet in the parking lot and switch guns to one or two vehicles as it was usually a group of us going out to one or another’s family farm to hunt pheasants. Late fall it would be rifles for deer season and nobody thought anything of it. I just don’t get it now. At least my Grandkids know when I get a new weapon how to handle it and you should see the excitement in their faces anticipating the time when they can shoot the new gun.
Thank you, Dr. Dabbs, for an excellent article. Your points are spot on. The Woke Left’s obsession to re-write history, tear down monuments, punish parents for speaking up at school board meetings, requiring schools to have gender affirming policies, and aggressive censorship of all speech they dislike is already having quite an effect on this country. And Big Tech is assisting with all of this ! Pretty sad if we don’t try and turn this mess around. But like you said, it’s really no surprise when you are required to use preferred pronouns, need safe spaces, and can identify as a tree. Thank you, Sir.