The problem is that Americans don’t cotton to being told what to do. You need to entice them to do it. You know, with offers of guns or money.
Thank you Fractalmstr. Does anyone really believe that the names of Cho, Kliebold or Lanza are glorified?
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It IS NOT FAME.
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No, it’s not fame, but for these people, infamy is just as good. In their minds, at least they will be remembered and talked about, and that’s all that counts.
For this guy, just being talked about (even after death) sounded good. Here is what the killer from yesterday said about the TV reporter who killed two people in Virginia:
“On an interesting note, I have noted that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
If we don’t name them, then they don’t get what they crave, which is to be noticed (for whatever reason). That’s my only point.
@JustOneDad Why do you suppose it is that no other developed country has “defective humans”? Is America the only place where such humans are being generated?
^^^That is my take on it as well @FilmerMom.
And he described himself on a dating website (I’ve seen the original post) as “Not Religious, Not Religious, but Spiritual” so I’m not sure he was targeting Christians specifically.
It also sounds like he was possibly mentally ill and that his mother, with whom he lived, may have had some mental health issues herself: http://nyti.ms/1VrLeBc
I’d like to see a focused campaign to lift the restriction on the CDC’s ability to study and quantify gun violence. It is too easy for people to say they are buying a gun for protection – if the statistics were shown, it would turn out that it is more likely that gun would be used for a suicide, an accidental shooting in the home, or a crime or mass shooting than in a successful defense of the gun owner or their family. I have no problem with guns for hunters (big game hunting aside), but think there is no reason a gun in the hands of a civilian should be able to fire more than a couple of shots at a time without reloading.
I’d like to see that too, @intparent but that’s no more likely to happen than background checks or anything else. The NRA doesn’t want us to have that information, and for very good reason.
Do people really remember the killer’s name? I don’t, except Columbine, and even then I only remember one of the names. I cannot even remember the most recents ones - the news reporter killer, the recruiting office killer, or even the killers name in Charleston. What I do remember is where these killings took place( school, mall, church, etc., and the city/ state where they happened. And approximately how many people were gunned down.
There are just to many killers to remember their names, imo.
The Medical Center - area hospital. The MD in charge is talking on CNN. They had 10 at the hospital - 1 died in ER; some (4) had surgery there at the hospital and the ones needing neurosurgery went to bigger hospital/airlifted. 3 in that local hospital now, with one likely to be released today. One in critical condition. 3 had been transferred to level 1 or level 2 based on their trauma criteria - they are in serious condition too.
Sheriff’s office may not have released the names of the ones dead at the college yet.
I bet the media got the name of the shooter by witnesses.
Hospital was only 5 miles away from the Community College. They had 10 minutes notice; level 3 trauma center - the MD said as soon as community was alerted, MDs and nurses reported in to help handle the large number of patients coming in like this.
They said the people were shot in the head, abdomen, chest, limbs. Women shot in the head that survived and were sent on to the other trauma centers.
In a small community like this, hospital workers of course are personally affected by knowing some of the killed and injured.
We do need to pray specifically for those that are hospitalized in serious condition, in addition to our other general prayers. On the aftermath of the shooting at UAH in 2010 where three biology professors were killed, my friend, a biology professor, not only survived a bullet injury to the brain, he is now back to teaching full time; he lost an eye and has weakness on the affected side and of course other things - but he survived and is thriving. I also know another person that survived severe brain trauma and is thriving, albeit with struggles - Vanderbilt wanted to throw in the towel on her (they absolutely didn’t think she would be able to ‘come back’ and her husband insisted they not give up on her; she did ‘die’ briefly and met her mother in heaven and was told she had more time on earth).
So… Those two items give a specific goal to work toward. Background check and mental health restrictions get bogged down in procedural and system discussions… I am not saying they aren’t important, but the complexity of those areas make it easy for the NRA and gun nuts to muddy the waters and derail the conversation. These are pretty tangible goals.
After Sandy Hook, I stopped giving money to politicians at any level who aren’t willing to introduce and push gun restriction legislation. No one in the 2016 races has gotten a dime from me yet, as I don’t see the political will in any of the candidates declared so far to make this a signature issue. When I get asked for money, I email saying why I am not giving. I have given donations to Moms Demand Action, though. The left has a lot fewer “single issue voters” than the right… I don’t really like being one, but have decided that more of us who are willing to do this are the only way to put political pressure on.
The NYT profile of the killer is reminiscent of Adam Lanza-quiet loner ,insulated by his mother, with an online presence linked up with other mental outliers. So far, no history of any violence at all has been reported.
Yes, mass murderers names are sometimes remembered, but usually it is serial killers who were real sickos (Gacy, Dahmer, etc.). The idea that someone kills and keeps killing is more infamous than someone who flips and takes out people because the latter almost always ends in suicide by self or cop. The idea of active serial killers is more frightening than someone possibly flipping at one single point of time.
I think the gun issue is insoluble. I don’t think teachers or professors should be armed. I don’t think people should generally be allowed to be armed in public unless they are a trained professional. But others think they should have a right to be armed in public. Yet they would mostly agree that you can’t take a crap in public, or beat your kid in public, or wave a knife around in public. Or even take off your clothes in public. They think gun rights supersede all other rights.
I do think that if people would be more civil, to everyone, and if people no matter their profession would realize that their safety and the safety of those they deal with is tantamount, no matter what they do, these types of things would decrease.
And I do think the public has a right, despite HIPAA, to know whether these shooters are all under a psychiatrist’s care and whether there were signs. Psychiatrists get paid more than enough money to have the burden of responsibility when someone shoots people, if they knew there was talk about that, they should have notified authorities who THEN should have a staff of emergency psychiatrists specifically trained in defusing such situations. If the Colorado shooter’s psychiatrist didn’t just say “sure he talked about killing people, but so do a lot of my patients” as if it was “normal”, and she did her job and got him put in a psych unit for at least a week, would lives have been saved?
Do we need to rethink involuntary committing of individuals who threaten to harm others? As a separate law from “normal” procedures for involuntary committing of individuals?
-Yes, there is a strong link to mental illness. But other countries have citizens with mental illness and they do not have these mass shootings.
-Yes, there are a lot of marginalized loners out there and the internet has made things worse. But other countries have citizens who are marginalized who live in the murky corners of the internet much of the day and they do not have these mass shootings.
-Yes, bad guys are going to do what they can to get guns. But other countries have bad guys who use guns but they do not have these mass shootings.
-In states where laws are tougher, the deaths are less. That’s simple. The deaths are less.
I am heartsick. And if we couldn’t change our country when 6 year old were laying on the floor bleeding to death, I’m not sure we can now. But I sense a lot of anger now from everyone. Maybe, maybe now? Please?
Wringing our hands is not productive. Political action is what is needed. We need to hold our politicians accountable for aggressively pushing legislation at all levels of government, donate to and campaign for those who make it a priority issue at all levels of government, and donate to special interest groups working against the NRA’s agenda.
Part of the problem with background checks is how thorough are they, and how good is the data? For example, the federal background check that is required for all gun purchases basically relies on data from states which in turn basically decide what they have or don’t have in their databases, states don’t have mandatory reporting on mental illness (for example, the guy who did the virginia tech shooting, had been declared mentally ill by a judge 2 years before the shooting, but was able to pass a background check). The other big hole in the background check process is it does not cover private sales of guns, which amount to about 20 percent of all purchases.
The other claim is that this won’t deter criminals, that all background checks do is stop law abiding citizens from purchasing guns and that isn’t true. If we had better background checks, for example, the virginia tech shooting may not have happened, if there were thorough background checks Nancy Lanza may not have been allowed to own weapons having a mentally disturbed person living in her house, or would have been required to keep the weapons off site or in a secured vault (yeah, she still could have been stupid, but if the law had some teeth to it, maybe it would have deterred her from letting a kid who was clearly off the deep end have access to guns). Maybe someone, like the kid in South Carolina who shot up the church, would be in the database for ties to white supremacist groups or for a criminal past that didn’t show up (if he had one, I vaguely recall he did). Better background checks would likely cut down the percent of crimes committed with legal weapons, by filtering out mentally ill people, or requiring states to keep their db’s up to date and to broaden reporting of crimes that right now are not reported (some states if the web site I read are correct, only report felonies, so someone charged with misdemeanor assault or such would not be on the background check).
The more significant thing, the real problem IMO, is the refusal to have accountability for gun ownership, that we have for cars and boats and such. The zealous school of gun ownership fights registration, claiming that it infringes the second amendment, and claiming that the government tracking their ownership of guns takes away their right to defend themselves, is an intrusion, and more than likely in some cases, think it is the government getting ready to get rid of guns entirely (which is impossible, the supreme court has made that clear, you can regulate guns, but you cannot take the right away). This is where the argument about the black market, how criminals will go to the black market, falls apart. With the lack of registration, and more importantly, accountability that comes with registration, the black market is being fed with a steady stream of weapons that are fed by lax gun purchase regulations. If I go to a gun show (which are not required to do background checks, some have it there as a courtesy, or isn’t required), or I buy the gun collection of some guy who has an arsenal, I can take those weapons, and sell them in the black market, and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to me in many states in this country. I can also walk into a gun store in many states, fill up my trunk with guns, sell them in the black market, and if they trace those guns back after use in a crime, via the federally required records gun shops are required to keep, to me, I can say “gee, must of been stolen or I lost them”, and there is nothing that can be done to the person, if you lose a gun or have it stolen, you don’t have to report it in many states. Something like 65% of the guns that are pulled off the streets in cities like NY and DC were bought legally and sold into the black market, and it comes from a handful of states with lax gun laws.
Why would cutting this off make a big difference? That flow of guns from legal purchases makes the cost of guns in the black market cheap, it is simply supply and demand. If legal gun purchases were taken out of the picture, supply would drop, prices would go up and demand would drop. Smuggling guns is a lot harder than getting them from legal sources, so if we cut this off, it would make the black market less attractive.
Better control of gun access like this won’t stop all such shootings, nothing can prevent it, but it almost certainly could make it a lot more difficult to happen. Mass shootings happen in Europe, but what needs to be pointed out is that mass shootings in let’s say the EU, which has roughly the population of the US, is significantly less than in the US, they are a rarity. One stat that was posted last night was that in the first 279 days of this year, there were 245 days with incidents where multiple people died from being shot.
Gun control opponents are not wrong, that part of the answer is better mental health care in this country, identifying people who otherwise would be likely to commit crimes, or for example who are depressed and you get where the father kills his wife and kids then himself, which is not uncommon, or a kid that kills his family, and it turns out they had problems. There is no simple solution to this problem, banning guns won’t stop it, allowing everyone to have guns freely certainly won’t stop it, and it needs to be a multiple point of attack. Modifying certain parameters of gun ownership, like requiring background checks on all sales, like requiring guns to be registered and tracked for accountability so legal buyers can’t easily sell into the black market, would certainly help with gun related crimes, but so would also having better handling of emotionally disturbed people and better treatment, it isn’t an either/or.
And the Santa Barbara shooter with his deranged manifesto.
Are women ever mass shooters?
Yes, with what little we know at present, this Mercer fellow seems to be cut from the same cloth as Adam Lanza. Likely mentally ill or far worse.
A bit about the local constable, from the NYTimes;
“Sheriff Hanlin had forcefully lobbied against gun control after previous school shootings, but on Friday he told CNN that now was not the time to discuss gun control.” A change of heart (a Judgment Day conversion?) by Sheriff Hanlin wouldn’t make me feel a whole lot better.
That’s very true. After a massacre, Europeans draw the obvious conclusion and change their laws. Unfortunately, that won’t happen here. If 20 babies murdered in their classrooms wasn’t motivation enough, nothing ever will be.
@intparent:
The saddest part of this IMO is that I believe greed, rather than individuals fighting for the right to own guns, is behind this, that the gun industry has hijacked the issue into being access to markets for them. The NRA at one time was supported primarily by members dues and at least based on the NRA members I knew, they were willing to talk about reasonable restrictions on gun ownership and such, as long as it wasn’t too onerous on law abiding citizens (and to be honest, that may only be because living in NJ, I wasn’t exposed to a majority view, most of the people I knew were hunters and sport shooters, who weren’t interested in having an arsenal or whatnot). Over the past 35 years or so, most of the NRA’s funding has come from the gun industry, and the leadership seems to see themselves not surprisingly as the lobby for the gun producers IMO. Like with Tobacco being legal, it is mostly about greed, d**n the consequences (with tobacco, for example, states talk about the health consequences, won massive lawsuits against the industry, but also get significant tax revenue from sales of the products), and what should be a talk about how to balance the rights of people versus what is good for society, it turns into about how to maintain a cash cow with lobbyists basically turning it into it is either all or none, of ‘freedom’ rather than a middle ground. I can remember the NRA when they banned teflon bullets, whose only purpose is to cut through body armor, saying that any ammunition should be legal, because if you ban any, you are banning all (at the time, news sources also pointed out that the teflon ammunition sold at a major premium and was very, very lucrative for the makers).
I too think the problem is intractable, there is too much money for one on the side of loose gun laws, and too much political advantage to be gained (from both sides I’ll add), for this to end up with a rational solution in the middle. People float around the 2nd amendment like it is holy writ that can’t be touched (which isn’t true, all rights have burdens on them, restrictions on them, and the courts have agreed, everything except for blanket bans on owning any kind of guns can be legal), and someone in an area heavy with gun supporters can make big political hay out of screaming about gun control meaning taking away guns, while gun control absolutists in another place can paint all gun owners as paranoid nuts wanting to overthrow the government, and gain big political hay from that, it is just too divisive, too easy to take the extreme position, to have much compromise. It is funny, I wonder if something like the Kennedy assassination happened today, if the same kind of response would have happened, where we tightened up gun laws, or when Reagan was shot with the Brady bill, if anything at all would come of it, I tend to doubt it.
There are common themes with the Sandy Hook, theater, Oregon and other mass shootings. The perpetrators all seem to be White males, introverted, and have mental issues. There has to be something we can to find out why this is happening. I also wonder if many of these shooters had their fathers in their lives? In my view, some of the contributing factors are: social media, lack of mental health care, and parenting.
I think a lot of kids are “over parented” and unable to cope with everyday life. There was a recent article in psychology today that talked about declining student resilience.
I spoke to my son who is very introverted, a gamer, a bit awkward, and a self identified “blerd”=black nerd, his words not mine. I asked him about the chan board, where this Oregon shooter allegedly posted. My son was upset because he said every time there is a shooting, it gives nerds a bad name, as if they are all ticking time bombs. He said the chan board is for those who are really out there, and nothing that he nor his friends frequent.
In regards to the will to change laws, I wont hold my breath. Honestly, I believe until we change the gerrymandering laws, and political contribution laws, which allow extremists on both sides, to hold seats with no accountability, nothing will change. Our pleas will fall on deaf ears.