4 ms·

Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?

13 points by malshe 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
Unfortunately the profile is "male" and leads to situations like the time they broke into my son's locker at school because he had a Chap-Stick and a girl thought it was a bullet. (My joke was that he should have made a rubber-band gun that shoots Chap-Sticks out of a clip but that would have been even more trouble.)
egberts1 4y ago
Simply Put Media Is Propagating Mass Murderers Just Stop That
- neverartful 4y ago
  Media loves dirty laundry. Don Henley's song 'Dirty Laundry' captures it quite well.
malshe 4y ago
Something I found interesting: "I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed. It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides. But it’s a critical piece because we know so much from the suicide prevention world that can translate here."
- havblue 4y ago
  Also: >The Parkland shooter had just been expelled from school and then came back. This is not a problem we can punish our way out of. I believe a lot of the problem is collective nihilism among low status "disposable" men. Lack of career prospects, lack of marriage prospects and lack of social attachment render people resentful outlaws. The option other than ending it all is to stay indoors consuming and do the bare minimum, passing a meaningless existence. I don't think we have many narratives to get them out of the hole they're in.
  - RGamma 4y ago
    > I don't think we have many narratives to get them out of the hole they're in. I believe the US chose this path (by accident) by yielding control to open sociopaths (particularly thinking about Trump and how he came to be president), contrary to what would be required to maintain a high functioning civilsation. Somewhere down the line in US cultural evolution the axiomatic acceptance of common good, civic values and middle class society were cast to the sideline and replaced with dog-eat-dog competition and status chasing/signalling. I realize it's a large, diverse country and YMMV, but there's definitely a bad aftertaste. I believe by and large individual psychology tends towards self-preservation and a lot of people must subconsciously feel the gun to their head. No wonder so many are going crazy under the pressure; the online noise notwithstanding (it's a common impression in Germany). And those, who can't or don't want to adapt, decompensate: In Japan they become hikikomori, in the US they shoot up schools (generally speaking): It's a final "fuck you" to society.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      I agree. I think another way to sum it up is simply a combination of nihilism and pessimism that has been growing in America for decades.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > Lack of career prospects, lack of marriage prospects and lack of social attachment At least in many cases, these problems are caused by the men themselves (or by their mental conditions, if you prefer). That "low status "disposable"" thing you mention isn't some arbitrary fluke of what society values; these people generally aren't victims of social standards. They tend to be ostracized by their peers who notice patterns of psychosis and violence years before any shooting occurs. The shooters aren't victims; the victims are the peers of these dangerous males who's concerns aren't taken seriously by adult authorities before it's too late. Since adults don't take the problem seriously until people start dying, all the other kids are left to deal with the problem themselves using the limited tools they have available; shunning, bullying, etc. Then when that fails, adults suddenly notice the problem and blame the kids who were ostracizing the shooter without bothering to ask why they were ostracizing the shooter. They misidentify a failed mitigation as the root cause.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Woodi 4y ago
"It really shows the limitations of our current systems. Law enforcement investigated, but the shooter had no guns at that moment, so it was not an immediate threat. The mental health facility concluded it was not an immediate crisis, so he goes back to school. If it’s not a red-hot situation in that moment, nobody can do anything. It was none of these people’s jobs to make sure that he got connected with somebody in the community who could help him long term." Disaster happen between competences - short-sighted or over-rigid (so dumb) system. Maybe things like old fassion boy scouts groups could help ? But modern with modern training like drone building ? Out of school groups not useless psychologists to do evaluations on kids. And certainly mass spying apps won't help :>
yellowapple 4y ago
> Densley: In Uvalde, there was an army of good guys with guns in the parking lot. The hard approach doesn’t seem to be getting the job done. Maybe if that army of ostensible "good guys" had been in the school getting more than just their own children out - rather than spending more than an hour in that parking lot physically preventing actual good guys (with or without guns) from intervening sooner - there would've been a much different outcome in Uvalde. 21 dead via a combination of both the absolute shitshow that is American mental health and the absolute shitshow that is American law enforcement. Both are decades overdue for some rather drastic changes.

13 points by malshe 4y ago

Unfortunately the profile is "male" and leads to situations like the time they broke into my son's locker at school because he had a Chap-Stick and a girl thought it was a bullet. (My joke was that he should have made a rubber-band gun that shoots Chap-Sticks out of a clip but that would have been even more trouble.)

egberts1 4y ago

Simply Put Media Is Propagating Mass Murderers Just Stop That

neverartful 4y ago
Media loves dirty laundry. Don Henley's song 'Dirty Laundry' captures it quite well.

malshe 4y ago

Something I found interesting: "I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed. It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides. But it’s a critical piece because we know so much from the suicide prevention world that can translate here."

havblue 4y ago
Also: >The Parkland shooter had just been expelled from school and then came back. This is not a problem we can punish our way out of. I believe a lot of the problem is collective nihilism among low status "disposable" men. Lack of career prospects, lack of marriage prospects and lack of social attachment render people resentful outlaws. The option other than ending it all is to stay indoors consuming and do the bare minimum, passing a meaningless existence. I don't think we have many narratives to get them out of the hole they're in.
- RGamma 4y ago
  > I don't think we have many narratives to get them out of the hole they're in. I believe the US chose this path (by accident) by yielding control to open sociopaths (particularly thinking about Trump and how he came to be president), contrary to what would be required to maintain a high functioning civilsation. Somewhere down the line in US cultural evolution the axiomatic acceptance of common good, civic values and middle class society were cast to the sideline and replaced with dog-eat-dog competition and status chasing/signalling. I realize it's a large, diverse country and YMMV, but there's definitely a bad aftertaste. I believe by and large individual psychology tends towards self-preservation and a lot of people must subconsciously feel the gun to their head. No wonder so many are going crazy under the pressure; the online noise notwithstanding (it's a common impression in Germany). And those, who can't or don't want to adapt, decompensate: In Japan they become hikikomori, in the US they shoot up schools (generally speaking): It's a final "fuck you" to society.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I agree. I think another way to sum it up is simply a combination of nihilism and pessimism that has been growing in America for decades.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > Lack of career prospects, lack of marriage prospects and lack of social attachment At least in many cases, these problems are caused by the men themselves (or by their mental conditions, if you prefer). That "low status "disposable"" thing you mention isn't some arbitrary fluke of what society values; these people generally aren't victims of social standards. They tend to be ostracized by their peers who notice patterns of psychosis and violence years before any shooting occurs. The shooters aren't victims; the victims are the peers of these dangerous males who's concerns aren't taken seriously by adult authorities before it's too late. Since adults don't take the problem seriously until people start dying, all the other kids are left to deal with the problem themselves using the limited tools they have available; shunning, bullying, etc. Then when that fails, adults suddenly notice the problem and blame the kids who were ostracizing the shooter without bothering to ask why they were ostracizing the shooter. They misidentify a failed mitigation as the root cause.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Woodi 4y ago

"It really shows the limitations of our current systems. Law enforcement investigated, but the shooter had no guns at that moment, so it was not an immediate threat. The mental health facility concluded it was not an immediate crisis, so he goes back to school. If it’s not a red-hot situation in that moment, nobody can do anything. It was none of these people’s jobs to make sure that he got connected with somebody in the community who could help him long term." Disaster happen between competences - short-sighted or over-rigid (so dumb) system. Maybe things like old fassion boy scouts groups could help ? But modern with modern training like drone building ? Out of school groups not useless psychologists to do evaluations on kids. And certainly mass spying apps won't help :>

yellowapple 4y ago

> Densley: In Uvalde, there was an army of good guys with guns in the parking lot. The hard approach doesn’t seem to be getting the job done. Maybe if that army of ostensible "good guys" had been in the school getting more than just their own children out - rather than spending more than an hour in that parking lot physically preventing actual good guys (with or without guns) from intervening sooner - there would've been a much different outcome in Uvalde. 21 dead via a combination of both the absolute shitshow that is American mental health and the absolute shitshow that is American law enforcement. Both are decades overdue for some rather drastic changes.