Hunting Is Only The Beginning For A Troubled Mind

[Chronicles of Reasoning]

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Good morning Houston;

Over the years, things change, as the case with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the mental health condition, generally associated with veterans. The disorder can develop after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event, causing intrusive memories, avoidance, and negative mood shifts.

This expands the reach of PTSD.

Charles Whitman, the Texas mass murderer and former U.S. Marine, remembered as the University of Texas tower mass shooter on August 1, 1966, killing 16 people; including his wife and mother earlier that day, and the wounding of 31 others before police officers shot and killed him on the tower's observation deck is an example of the expansion of PTSD.

PTSD common symptoms are flashbacks, vivid nightmares, and unwanted scary thoughts, but there is no mention of Whitman ever involved in actual combat, as in a war. He was just an ordinary, everyday Marine.

Included in PTSD symptoms are; feeling jumpy, getting angry fast, or having trouble sleeping, and mood shifts, such as feeling sad, numb, or detached from other people.

All of the above is reported as reasonable behavior patterns that could lead to the act of mass murdering, such as what Whitman did on that tragic day, and the cause behind the mass shooting is labeled as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM); a grade 4, fast-growing, and aggressive cancerous brain tumor that starts from star-shaped support cells called astrocytes. It is the most common and dangerous primary brain cancer in adults, causing symptoms like bad headaches, seizures, and weakness.

There is no mention of thoughts of committing mass murder.

For the record, PTSD is not a direct physical cause of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), but it can be associated with brain tumors in specific contexts, such as psychological trauma from a life-threatening diagnosis, physical head trauma preceding a tumor, or chronic stress influencing tumor progression.

Before the mass shooting from the tower, Whitman stabbed and shot his wife, and his mother at their homes the night before and morning of August 1. He managed to ascend the University of Texas Austin clock tower with a military footlocker containing multiple rifles, pistols, and a shotgun, and when he settled in, he fired indiscriminately at people on campus and the surrounding streets for roughly 90 minutes from the 28th-floor observation deck.

Eventually Whitman was killed on the deck by Austin Police Department officers Ray Martinez and Houston McCoy.

Whitman was a former Eagle Scout and Marine sharpshooter who had been experiencing 'severe personal and emotional turmoil, and he reported having intense, sudden headaches and overwhelming aggressive impulses in the months leading up to the shooting, leaving notes asking for an autopsy.'

That autopsy revealed the glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor pressing against his amygdala, leading scientists to study whether the growth contributed to his sudden violent behavior.

Regardless of what caused the behavior, which is more closely associated with PTSD, but without combat experience, it is reported that Whitman's father bought him a rifle when he was young, taught him how to hunt, and now, the end results reflects, the Marine Corps taught him how to kill humans, or perhaps the end results were always with Whitman, since the beginning of his hunting lessons.