Dad angry about "custody dispute" attacks police department headquarters (Dallas, Texas)

I don't get generally around to reposting from other blogs, but this analysis is so spot-on that I'm making an exception.  Dad is identified as JAMES BOULWARE.

James Boulware: Another male rage bomb goes off in Dallas

Jun 13

Posted by David Futrelle

Last night, as you probably have heard, a Dallas man named James Boulware launched a one-man quasi-military assault on the Dallas Police Department headquarters, firing an automatic rife with such abandon that early reports suggested that there were as many as four different shooters. After fleeing the scene in an armored “Zombie Apocalypse Van,” leaving behind an assortment of improvised explosives as a kind of going away gift, Boulware was cornered in a restaurant parking lot; after a long standoff, he was eventually killed by a police sniper’s bullet. It was something of a miracle that no one but Boulware ended up dead.

Boulware’s father told local news that his son had been “pushed past” his “breaking point” after losing custody of his son. Men’s Rights activists often describe men who “resort to violence” after losing a custody dispute as victims of a cruel family court system. But in Boulware’s case, it appears, nothing could be further from the truth.

Because, you see, he lost custody of his son two years ago — after a violent incident that offered a chilling prequel to last night’s rampage. As the local NBC affiliate reported at the time

A Paris man was arrested after family members reported to authorities that they were concerned he could go on a shooting spree. …

Officers confiscated several guns from a Paris home, after arresting the owner. “There are four or five long guns and three or four pistols, tubs full of ammunition, and the body armor,” says Paris Police Chief Bob Hundley.

James Boulware, 33, allegedly grabbed and choked his mother in Dallas on Tuesday morning, and he has made other threats, police and family members said.

“That he was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” says Hundley.

“He had been talking about the schools and churches being soft targets, being easy targets because no one in them was armed,” a man who identified himself as Boulware’s brother “Andrew” said.

After this incident, a judge handed over custody of Boulware’s son to Boulware’s mother; it seems rather clear that the court was right to deem him unfit to care for the boy.

Further confounding the standard Men’s Rights narrative is the fact that the mother of the child, reportedly a drug addict, was also deemed unfit; both were ordered by the court to pay child support to Boulware’s mother.

Boulware was well-known to local police for this and other family disputes — as well as for repeatedly threatening the judge involved in his case.

Indeed, he littered Facebook and other websites with comments ranting about the alleged injustice done to him, alongside angry and often hateful attacks on “Comrad [sic] Obama” and the “fag loving, abortion have typical queer American brain washed troll[s]” who argued with him online. After a commenter called him “dumb” in one recent discussion of American foreign policy, Boulware declared that “I’M TRYING TO FIND OUT WHERE YOU LIVE SO I CAN DRAG YOU OUT OF YOUR TRAILOR AND BEAT YOUR BITCH A$$!!!!”

His conspiracy theories may have been driven by delusions; Boulware’s mother says her son “heard voices” and that she and other family members had tried in vain to get him the mental health treatment he needed.

After last night’s events, Boulware’s father told local media that, while he didn’t think what his son had done was right, “we all have a breaking point, and they pushed him past it.”

But Boulware, it seems fairly clear, was already plenty broken long before “the system” got to him.

And no matter how sad or angry he was about losing custody of his son, nothing justifies a violent attack on innocent strangers with assault rifles and explosives. Most people, even if they were pushed far past their breaking point, wouldn’t respond with attempted mass murder. We are not all rage bombs waiting to go off. And that’s when this post comes back around to the Men’s Rights movement. No, despite his anger at the police and courts for “taking away his kid,” and his penchant for calling people “BITCHES” in comments sections he doesn’t seem to have been a Men’s Rights activist.

But his was the kind of rage that Men’s Rights activists like to “warn” us all about; his violence was the sort of violence that MRAs all too often excuse.

See the rest here.