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But the CT shooter was never in trouble with the law and wasn't known to have any violent tendencies. And most people are not like the OP blogger: they aren't g

by joonix 14y ago

But the CT shooter was never in trouble with the law and wasn't known to have any violent tendencies. And most people are not like the OP blogger: they aren't going to turn in their child to the authorities. A schizophrenic may not ever have violent tendencies. Then, one day a voice tells them to kill everyone. Meanwhile, someone without a mental illness has a moment of rage and threatens to kill a guy at a bar. Do we lock him up and drug him too? What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance.

javajosh 14y ago
>What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance. This is, of course, the crux of the matter. Clearly there is something in America's environment that makes us far more prone to this sort of thing than other places, with or without gun control. Identifying what that is will be critical to preventing this from happening again. Gun control can reduce the body count, but even a body count of one (suicide) is not acceptable. The silver lining to this is that these events raise a dramatic warning to us that there is something deeply, seriously wrong with our culture.
- pjscott 14y ago
  Do we actually have statistics showing America to be worse about this than other places? It sounds like the kind of thing that people just assume after hearing about a sensational, attention-grabbing tragedy. Remember when there were huge epidemics of suicide and Satanic ritual abuse in the 80s? Or rather, people said there were. In reality, suicide rates remained mostly flat, even declining slightly overall, and the evil Satanic cults were a myth. So, be careful about postulating something deeply wrong with our culture, when there may well be another explanation.
  - slyn 14y ago
    >15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. In second place is Finland, with two entries. That's a bit of a disparity. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...
    - pjscott 14y ago
      The United States also has more than 50 times the population of Finland. Normalize!
      - slyn 14y ago
        Clearly you didn't take time to read the aforementioned article at all, or you would've seen the graph that puts the USA at roughly a bit more than triple the assault deaths per 100k vs an eyeball average of the other OECD nations (down from maybe 8-9 times as many in the 80s.) I pulled the above statistic because of the specific context of mass shootings. But hey, at least you got a pithy retort out of it.
      - justincormack 14y ago
        Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings-of-the-past-50-years/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings... It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...
        icebraining 14y ago
        Apparently, Brazil had its first just last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_school_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_school_shooting
        mosselman 14y ago
- pm90 14y ago
  Have you considered that this might be a purely statistical phenomena? What I mean is, isn't it possible that such things occur in the US only because there are so many people in the US, and once the population gets large enough, the number of outliers get large enough, in absolute terms, to become noticeable? It's often forgotten that US has the 3rd largest population, after China and India (although admittedly far behind either one)
  - thinkling 14y ago
    I'd certainly be curious to see statistics that adjust for population. The stat quoted by 'slyn above is that the next country for gun violence over the last 25 years would be Finland with 2 incidents, but Finland has 1/30th the population of the U.S. It would be more appropriate to look at the EU overall for comparison. Last year there was a shooting in Norway with 70+ dead and I believe one in southern France in a school.
    - ht_th 14y ago
      It is interesting to see of the Norway shooting falls in the same statistical category of "mad shooter" or in something like "homeland terrorism". But yes. There seems to be a rise of similar incidents all over the developed world, although access to guns is in the USA a lot easier than elsewhere and that reflects on these excesses. For example, knivings (is that a word?) seem to be more common than shootings around here.
      - syncopatience 14y ago
        The most common term is "stabbing", e.g. "stabbings are up 25% this year."
        ht_th 14y ago
        That makes sense: with a gun we shoot -> shooting; with a knife we stab -> stabbing. Although it could also be a slicing or dicing then, I suppose :-)
- gyardley 14y ago
  In my opinion, this is the correct way to think about the problem, but you should go deeper, and keep in mind that cultural traits aren't solely good or solely bad - they might be both good and bad, like a prescription medication with side-effects. Elsewhere in this thread I wondered if American dynamism and individualism produces individuals both great and vile - and that America tempered the 'vile' segment with moral education and community ties that's since gone on the decline. That's my culturally-based theory, but I'm sure we can find other plausible ones as well.
bjourne 14y ago
I'm betting on that you are completely wrong about that. That the signs were completely obvious to everyone around these guys. People knew that they were some deeply fucked up kids with huge mental problems long before they went on their killing sprees. But mental illness is something incredibly shameful around the world and maybe even moreso in the US. Almost no parent will ever be able to admit that there might be something wrong with their children. And for the people around them, the most convenient path is to ignore the problem and say it's "a phase" they are going through.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There are plenty of deeply fucked up people with huge mental problems who do not go on to kill anyone. Should we lock up those people to prevent the small number who might go on to commit violent crime?
  - bjourne 14y ago
    There's a huge number of possible ways to offer help to people. A million things can be done, but what everyone does is pretending the problem doesn't exist.

by joonix 14y ago

javajosh 14y ago

>What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance. This is, of course, the crux of the matter. Clearly there is something in America's environment that makes us far more prone to this sort of thing than other places, with or without gun control. Identifying what that is will be critical to preventing this from happening again. Gun control can reduce the body count, but even a body count of one (suicide) is not acceptable. The silver lining to this is that these events raise a dramatic warning to us that there is something deeply, seriously wrong with our culture.

pjscott 14y ago
Do we actually have statistics showing America to be worse about this than other places? It sounds like the kind of thing that people just assume after hearing about a sensational, attention-grabbing tragedy. Remember when there were huge epidemics of suicide and Satanic ritual abuse in the 80s? Or rather, people said there were. In reality, suicide rates remained mostly flat, even declining slightly overall, and the evil Satanic cults were a myth. So, be careful about postulating something deeply wrong with our culture, when there may well be another explanation.
- slyn 14y ago
  >15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. In second place is Finland, with two entries. That's a bit of a disparity. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...
  - pjscott 14y ago
    The United States also has more than 50 times the population of Finland. Normalize!
    - slyn 14y ago
      Clearly you didn't take time to read the aforementioned article at all, or you would've seen the graph that puts the USA at roughly a bit more than triple the assault deaths per 100k vs an eyeball average of the other OECD nations (down from maybe 8-9 times as many in the 80s.) I pulled the above statistic because of the specific context of mass shootings. But hey, at least you got a pithy retort out of it.
    - justincormack 14y ago
      Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings-of-the-past-50-years/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings... It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Apparently, Brazil had its first just last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_school_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_school_shooting
      - mosselman 14y ago
pm90 14y ago
Have you considered that this might be a purely statistical phenomena? What I mean is, isn't it possible that such things occur in the US only because there are so many people in the US, and once the population gets large enough, the number of outliers get large enough, in absolute terms, to become noticeable? It's often forgotten that US has the 3rd largest population, after China and India (although admittedly far behind either one)
- thinkling 14y ago
  I'd certainly be curious to see statistics that adjust for population. The stat quoted by 'slyn above is that the next country for gun violence over the last 25 years would be Finland with 2 incidents, but Finland has 1/30th the population of the U.S. It would be more appropriate to look at the EU overall for comparison. Last year there was a shooting in Norway with 70+ dead and I believe one in southern France in a school.
  - ht_th 14y ago
    It is interesting to see of the Norway shooting falls in the same statistical category of "mad shooter" or in something like "homeland terrorism". But yes. There seems to be a rise of similar incidents all over the developed world, although access to guns is in the USA a lot easier than elsewhere and that reflects on these excesses. For example, knivings (is that a word?) seem to be more common than shootings around here.
    - syncopatience 14y ago
      The most common term is "stabbing", e.g. "stabbings are up 25% this year."
      - ht_th 14y ago
        That makes sense: with a gun we shoot -> shooting; with a knife we stab -> stabbing. Although it could also be a slicing or dicing then, I suppose :-)
gyardley 14y ago
In my opinion, this is the correct way to think about the problem, but you should go deeper, and keep in mind that cultural traits aren't solely good or solely bad - they might be both good and bad, like a prescription medication with side-effects. Elsewhere in this thread I wondered if American dynamism and individualism produces individuals both great and vile - and that America tempered the 'vile' segment with moral education and community ties that's since gone on the decline. That's my culturally-based theory, but I'm sure we can find other plausible ones as well.

bjourne 14y ago

I'm betting on that you are completely wrong about that. That the signs were completely obvious to everyone around these guys. People knew that they were some deeply fucked up kids with huge mental problems long before they went on their killing sprees. But mental illness is something incredibly shameful around the world and maybe even moreso in the US. Almost no parent will ever be able to admit that there might be something wrong with their children. And for the people around them, the most convenient path is to ignore the problem and say it's "a phase" they are going through.

DanBC 14y ago
There are plenty of deeply fucked up people with huge mental problems who do not go on to kill anyone. Should we lock up those people to prevent the small number who might go on to commit violent crime?
- bjourne 14y ago
  There's a huge number of possible ways to offer help to people. A million things can be done, but what everyone does is pretending the problem doesn't exist.