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a symptom of a widespread social ill: “the vain principle of personal honor,” an insidious ideal that led “the youth of the present age of the world” to demand violent satisfaction for any insult. To Bennett and others, Colt’s murderous deed was the direct consequence of this “false and bloody code” and Colt himself the living incarnation of what was widely perceived as a prevailing social pathology.
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Harold Schechter (Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer)