6 ms·

This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically someone with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly differentiate between rig

by mtgx 10y ago

This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically someone with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly differentiate between right and wrong. The FBI is basically seeking these people out, handing them all the weapons and bombs and they need, and then say "see that school over there? Go ahead and lay waste to it. Come on, you'll feel good about it. We'll even give you money to do it!" This is the danger of having unaccountable authorities that have a profound lack of respect for the rule of law and due process, and think they can do whatever they want to further whatever they think the "mission" is. Eventually they become the enemy of the people and instead of improving public safety, they actively work to undermine it. If they are so worried about people with mental issues, they should be seeking them out to give them help, not arm them. You'd think that should be common sense. But when civil law enforcement becomes militarized, something like that is anything but common sense. > Karen Greenberg, for example — author of “Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State” — believes that the “tension between security and liberty” that can result from these tactics is a good thing. > “The amount of money, time and resources that have been put into rethinking law enforcement since 9/11 has made us safer,” she told Business Insider in an interview. “And now we’re sort of trying to figure out where the lines are.” I'd like to see some evidence for that. How many mass shootings still happen in the U.S. every year? - "But we don't count those as terrorism!" - Oh, okay. But you do when it's the government itself that trains these people and encourages them to do these acts against itself?!

dragontamer 10y ago
> This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically someone with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly differentiate between right and wrong. Of the many mass shootings and terrorist attacks that have occurred over the last decades... Starting with Columbine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre To Timmothy McVeigh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh To the Beltway Sniper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks To Virginia Tech Shooter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting To the Virginia on-air killing: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34090236 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34090236 To the Charlestown shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting To the Boston Marathon Bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing To the Aurora Shooter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting Only two of these guys strikes me as "insane", the Virginia Tech shooter and the Aurora Shooter. Everyone else were just assholes. These are just normal people who got stressed out by their peers and then attacked back. The fact of the matter is, the vast, vast majority of crimes (and even mass-shootings and terrorist attacks) are done by 100% sane people. Assholes for sure, but people who are sound in body and mind. An insane person rarely has the capacity to plan an attack that will successfully kill people. Seriously. This "mental health" myth needs to die, and people need to realize that NORMAL people are killing others. The big daddy of them all: 9/11 required careful collaboration between four groups of distinct people (four groups, four aircraft. Near simultaneous execution across the country). They had to get pilot training, work together, coordinate an attack at the same time. Ditto with the Paris and Brussels attacks. This complicated planning and coordination of a large group of people can only happen if all members of the group are mentally stable. It really takes a lot of work to plan a terrorist attack. The study of "radicalization" says that people become radicalized when they are increasingly isolated from their peers, become stressed to a breaking point to the point where they wish to lash out and attack.
- jo6gwb 10y ago
  You missed Newtown, CT. The shooter certainly had "mental issues."
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Yeah. He had Asperger syndrome and sensory-integration disorder. Last time I checked, my friend's brother with Aspergers wasn't shooting up people. To blame the shooting on the mental illness of the Sandy hook shooter is a harmful slur against the many peaceful people who struggle with various mental health issues. What I'm saying is: mental illness seems to occur in these violent shootings about as often as they occur in average people. The mental illness does NOT seem to be a contributor to whether or not someone starts shooting people randomly. Radicalization theory offers a stronger basis of argument. And the Sandy Hook shooter matches the basis of radicalization far stronger than his mental illness. As all of the other Radicalized people: Lanza cut off ties with his brother and father, and also stopped discussing things with his mother. Social isolation is a major pattern seen by radicalized individuals. Perhaps this social isolation was self-inflicted, or maybe there was a family issue that occurred at some point of the guy's life. ---------------- To blame shootings on mental illness is 1: an unnecessary slur to the community of disabled. 2: Ignores that the root problem is completely separate from mental issues.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  Regarding radicalization, it's a term that's only used by talking heads. In security work you assume that everyone is a motivated self-aware bad guy who can find many valid reasons to shoot you. The idea that only simpletons, who go through a "radicalization" process (usually guided by a priest), become "terrorists" is dangerously wrong. In the industry you'd be laughed at for a risk-analysis using that term or even that thought-process. Many of those killers had a very specific reason for their attacks that was at least as good as our military uses. Not right or wrong, but as well developed and contextually reasonable. For instance, Timothy McVeigh attacked a military installation because he felt (largely rightly) that they'd illegally and unreasonably conspired to kill his countrymen on trumped up charges. He did the equivalent of bombing an Iraqi military HQ because they'd violated international norms. It's likely that had the initial Waco attack not happened that McVeigh would have had a peaceful life - he wasn't shopping around for targets. I say this not to forgive him but to explain how suicidally stupid our public discourse on internal dangers is. If we really want to be "safe" we have to realize that these aren't random, unguided, and unskilled, attacks. If we shoot up someone's friends we will get responses. Not from radical crazies, but from sane people who believe they're next. Because the FBI believes its own rhetoric they're looking for radical-looking people (usually slightly crazy, as a result) and then try to work backwards to the terrorist attack they assume must be cooking in their head. This will never fail to find them funding, but will never make us one iota safer. The main take-home is that there isn't a special terrorist type that we can find all of, thus making us safe. All of us are potentially terrorists by someone else's definition, French freedom fighters, spies behind Nazi lines, etc. (We now consider those to be "good" but the people on the ground acted from their own initiative at the time, not a comfortable societal safety net which vetted their ideas.) Security can't protect us from ourselves.
ipsin 10y ago
I think that the most charitable interpretation (for the FBI) is that they believe their targets are some kind of "unexploded ordnance". That is, people who haven't been radicalized, and who aren't likely to go on shooting rampages, but who could be convinced to "kill" people with some psychological distance by firing a fake missile or pushing a button. The problem from my point of view is that these are simultaneously victims who will spend years in prison, and people capable of clearing a low bar in terms of willingness to kill strangers. My sense is that these are people who could go the rest of their lives without harm, but of course I don't know. It reminds me of the old ethics saw. It's a box where, if you push the button, some American you don't know dies and you get $1,000,000. The FBI is making the death roughly that abstract, and sending people to jail for pushing the button.
fiatmoney 10y ago
Most things counted as "mass shootings" in the US are gang-related attacks on other gangs.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  And as we all know, those don't count because gang members' lives aren't worth anything. It's only a real mass shooting if it was nice white children who died.
  - fiatmoney 10y ago
    It's not about it "counting", it's about what patterns violence follows. Mental health interventions, gun control, counterterrorism operations, etc don't help gang-related shootings.

by mtgx 10y ago

dragontamer 10y ago

> This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically someone with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly differentiate between right and wrong. Of the many mass shootings and terrorist attacks that have occurred over the last decades... Starting with Columbine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre To Timmothy McVeigh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh To the Beltway Sniper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks To Virginia Tech Shooter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting To the Virginia on-air killing: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34090236 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34090236 To the Charlestown shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting To the Boston Marathon Bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing To the Aurora Shooter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting Only two of these guys strikes me as "insane", the Virginia Tech shooter and the Aurora Shooter. Everyone else were just assholes. These are just normal people who got stressed out by their peers and then attacked back. The fact of the matter is, the vast, vast majority of crimes (and even mass-shootings and terrorist attacks) are done by 100% sane people. Assholes for sure, but people who are sound in body and mind. An insane person rarely has the capacity to plan an attack that will successfully kill people. Seriously. This "mental health" myth needs to die, and people need to realize that NORMAL people are killing others. The big daddy of them all: 9/11 required careful collaboration between four groups of distinct people (four groups, four aircraft. Near simultaneous execution across the country). They had to get pilot training, work together, coordinate an attack at the same time. Ditto with the Paris and Brussels attacks. This complicated planning and coordination of a large group of people can only happen if all members of the group are mentally stable. It really takes a lot of work to plan a terrorist attack. The study of "radicalization" says that people become radicalized when they are increasingly isolated from their peers, become stressed to a breaking point to the point where they wish to lash out and attack.

jo6gwb 10y ago
You missed Newtown, CT. The shooter certainly had "mental issues."
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Yeah. He had Asperger syndrome and sensory-integration disorder. Last time I checked, my friend's brother with Aspergers wasn't shooting up people. To blame the shooting on the mental illness of the Sandy hook shooter is a harmful slur against the many peaceful people who struggle with various mental health issues. What I'm saying is: mental illness seems to occur in these violent shootings about as often as they occur in average people. The mental illness does NOT seem to be a contributor to whether or not someone starts shooting people randomly. Radicalization theory offers a stronger basis of argument. And the Sandy Hook shooter matches the basis of radicalization far stronger than his mental illness. As all of the other Radicalized people: Lanza cut off ties with his brother and father, and also stopped discussing things with his mother. Social isolation is a major pattern seen by radicalized individuals. Perhaps this social isolation was self-inflicted, or maybe there was a family issue that occurred at some point of the guy's life. ---------------- To blame shootings on mental illness is 1: an unnecessary slur to the community of disabled. 2: Ignores that the root problem is completely separate from mental issues.
EdHominem 10y ago
Regarding radicalization, it's a term that's only used by talking heads. In security work you assume that everyone is a motivated self-aware bad guy who can find many valid reasons to shoot you. The idea that only simpletons, who go through a "radicalization" process (usually guided by a priest), become "terrorists" is dangerously wrong. In the industry you'd be laughed at for a risk-analysis using that term or even that thought-process. Many of those killers had a very specific reason for their attacks that was at least as good as our military uses. Not right or wrong, but as well developed and contextually reasonable. For instance, Timothy McVeigh attacked a military installation because he felt (largely rightly) that they'd illegally and unreasonably conspired to kill his countrymen on trumped up charges. He did the equivalent of bombing an Iraqi military HQ because they'd violated international norms. It's likely that had the initial Waco attack not happened that McVeigh would have had a peaceful life - he wasn't shopping around for targets. I say this not to forgive him but to explain how suicidally stupid our public discourse on internal dangers is. If we really want to be "safe" we have to realize that these aren't random, unguided, and unskilled, attacks. If we shoot up someone's friends we will get responses. Not from radical crazies, but from sane people who believe they're next. Because the FBI believes its own rhetoric they're looking for radical-looking people (usually slightly crazy, as a result) and then try to work backwards to the terrorist attack they assume must be cooking in their head. This will never fail to find them funding, but will never make us one iota safer. The main take-home is that there isn't a special terrorist type that we can find all of, thus making us safe. All of us are potentially terrorists by someone else's definition, French freedom fighters, spies behind Nazi lines, etc. (We now consider those to be "good" but the people on the ground acted from their own initiative at the time, not a comfortable societal safety net which vetted their ideas.) Security can't protect us from ourselves.

ipsin 10y ago

I think that the most charitable interpretation (for the FBI) is that they believe their targets are some kind of "unexploded ordnance". That is, people who haven't been radicalized, and who aren't likely to go on shooting rampages, but who could be convinced to "kill" people with some psychological distance by firing a fake missile or pushing a button. The problem from my point of view is that these are simultaneously victims who will spend years in prison, and people capable of clearing a low bar in terms of willingness to kill strangers. My sense is that these are people who could go the rest of their lives without harm, but of course I don't know. It reminds me of the old ethics saw. It's a box where, if you push the button, some American you don't know dies and you get $1,000,000. The FBI is making the death roughly that abstract, and sending people to jail for pushing the button.

fiatmoney 10y ago

Most things counted as "mass shootings" in the US are gang-related attacks on other gangs.

Analemma_ 10y ago
And as we all know, those don't count because gang members' lives aren't worth anything. It's only a real mass shooting if it was nice white children who died.
- fiatmoney 10y ago
  It's not about it "counting", it's about what patterns violence follows. Mental health interventions, gun control, counterterrorism operations, etc don't help gang-related shootings.