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So the other day a garden variety Turner Diaries survivalist made that faint snapping sound that you hear whenever one of them gets the uncontrollable urge to consummate his relationship with his guns. This one dressed up like a twelve year old playing Rambo and shot a couple of cops in Pennsylvania (warning: autoplay ad). In his story I noticed something odd between the lines.

Eric Matthew Frein loved guns and war. He read about survivalist skills, but lived with his parents and drove their Jeep Cherokee the last two years.

The 31-year-old suspect in the Friday murder of state police Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II, 38, and serious wounding of Trooper Alex T. Douglass, 31, learned to shoot from his father, a retired Army major with 28 years of service.

The father, Eugene Michael Frein, 64, told state police his son was a better marksman than he and someone who “doesn’t miss.”

[…] State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan described Frein as someone with “a lot of training” as a “survivalist,” which is someone who can live by his wits on his own outdoors.

[…] “He has made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and also to commit mass acts of murder,” he said. “What his reasons are, we don’t know, but he has very strong feelings about law enforcement and seems to be very angry with a lot of things that are going on in our society.”

The guy’s dad taught his kid everything he knows about killing and survival. He lives in dad’s home, grows increasingly insane, talks all the time about killing and murder. Then one day the kid disappears in the family jeep with camo paint and a sniper bible, dad’s AK47 and a scoped high-powered rifle. Soon after that someone sniped a couple of local cops in exactly the way that junior had practiced and talked about and whoever shot them used the caliber of rifle that junior took.

Eric Frein drove off with his Most Dangerous Game play set and (presumably) never came back, yet for some reason the cops only heard about him three days after the shooting when someone found the family jeep in a retaining pond. As a parent I get that you don’t necessarily want to point the cops towards your own kid, particularly when they have less than the usual interest in taking the suspect alive. But.

E. Michael Frein, the suspect’s father, told troopers he is a retired U.S. Army Major and had trained his son in shooting skills, adding that his son, who had been a member 0f the high school rifle team, “doesn’t miss.”

In the absence of any other public statement, the only message we have from from E. Michael Frein sounds kind of proud of his son. This is a tough time for a parent but I might suggest at the very least making a public appeal for Eric to turn himself in. Imagining as a parent would do that the kid still might be innocent, a message like that could save his life.

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