7 dead in Californian Shooting

Lou.m

beks101 wrote: »

Pathetic. This whole sorry mess and the sorry state of this sick individual's head.

I've worked in big newsrooms across the world for years and no story even comes close to paralleling the frequency that these shootings by privileged/white guys in the US pop up and the extensive coverage that they get.

While mental illness is obviously at the root of it, there's just so many factors at play that it's hard to see how these kind of incidents will ever go away - from second amendment and gun ownership laws and attitudes to this 'celebrity' culture created around the asshats who perpetrate these crimes, to the narcissism and materialism and oneupmanship bred by facebook/online culture, on and on ad nauseum. Those seemingly harmless albeit annoying features can become dangerous among people like this most recent individual, who clearly had chronic social and interpersonal skills, a personality disorder and a propensity towards violence and anger...and then easy access to a bunch of lethal weapons.

I hate that this guy's innermost thoughts are blasted across the web for all and sundry to read and be influenced by. That he can name-drop a bunch of innocent people who are just going about their lives and all of a sudden they're the gaze of the internet and their lives are changed for the worse forever more. Not to mention his victims of course.

What made him think that his innermost thoughts and takes on the world were of any consequence or interest to the public in the first place is what's so wrong with this narcissistic-inspired celebrity culture around these mass murderers. Fcuk his manifesto. Fcuk 'learning a lesson' from this. How many more 'lessons' does America need to learn?

Not usually a Michael Moore fan but he pretty much sums this whole thing up for me -

I don't know if that made him think the way he did.

But I think you are right in the way that being rich etc helped him get away with his attitude and behavior for so long.

Apparently he had pushed people at a party off a ledge ...if he had been poor or something I think something would have been done. He would have had been checked into a hospital or something.

this most recent individual, who clearly had chronic social and interpersonal skills, a personality disorder and a propensity towards violence and anger...and then easy access to a bunch of lethal weapons.

Strip away the accessorizes and look at just the person and that was what he was. If he had not had the accessorizes of wealth and respectability perhaps people would have seen the rest of him sooner.

gctest50

EyeSight wrote: »

..........The way the media hype up the perpetrator may have something to do with it also. The media here are awful, we agree on that
This individual wasn't affected by most of those problems

To the ones like that, the whole being all over the media, police cars, and and and is just their next best dream come true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8rMYyegT5Y

jill_valentine

Wompa1 wrote: »

The media seems to have turned it's attention towards the Misogynist angle which I think sucks because it doesn't look at the bigger picture and may be why they are going that route. The call of hate crime when the majority of those that died were men seems misplaced to me right now. Also the hate crime angle only being played towards the women is a little insulting when he talked ill of the Asian fella at the party and his Asian housemates..he also killed three Asian men (Him identifying as a EurAsian and emphasizing his whiteness)

I agree that there were a few things at play here, but the thing is, his target was a sorority, and his ramblings only really talk about hating men in relation to women. Just because he was bad at killing women doesn't mean he wasn't motivated wholly or in part by a hatred of them, and I think his writing makes that fairly clear. If you think about somebody like the Shankill Butchers, they killed a number of protestants by accident, but nobody doubts their motivation as a hatred of catholics.

It's also worth noting that this is the latest in a couple of recent and very troubling incidents with a common theme. It's the first I've really seen get mainstream coverage, but you have to think of it in that context. I would argue that there has been far more blame put at the door of mental illness than misogyny by many outlets, and frankly I'm not entirely sold on that as the be all and end all.

Wompa1

jill_valentine wrote: »

I agree that there were a few things at play here, but the thing is, his target was a sorority, and his ramblings only really talk about hating men in relation to women. Just because he was bad at killing women doesn't mean he wasn't motivated wholly or in part by a hatred of them, and I think his writing makes that fairly clear. If you think about somebody like the Shankill Butchers, they killed a number of protestants by accident, but nobody doubts their motivation as a hatred of catholics.

It's also worth noting that this is the latest in a couple of recent and very troubling incidents with a common theme. It's the first I've really seen get mainstream coverage, but you have to think of it in that context. I would argue that there has been far more blame put at the door of mental illness than misogyny by many outlets, and frankly I'm not entirely sold on that as the be all and end all.

My local news outlet has been playing the misogynist angle. CNN also went that route but seem to be losing interest in the story. Al Jazeera on the other hand haven't talked much about it at all and didn't show pictures of the guy and just about mentioned his name about half way into the story. It started with calling him madman..

If he did have Aspergers, it explains his difficult time socializing. It also may explain his attitude towards women. The tough time people will have with that is the fact he was getting treatment...so, perhaps the treatment didn't help. Over here that will hurt the NRA's argument about funding for mental illness rather than stricter gun controls. If treatment might not help and someone like him can get a gun....it doesn't give much confidence

Carlos Orange

jill_valentine wrote: »

I agree that there were a few things at play here, but the thing is, his target was a sorority, and his ramblings only really talk about hating men in relation to women. Just because he was bad at killing women doesn't mean he wasn't motivated wholly or in part by a hatred of them, and I think his writing makes that fairly clear. If you think about somebody like the Shankill Butchers, they killed a number of protestants by accident, but nobody doubts their motivation as a hatred of catholics.

Pretty sure the 3 guys he stabbed to death at the start of his rampage weren't accidental.

Tail Docker

auldgranny wrote: »

Manic Moran you say the police cannot look for a warrant without just cause. A man's parents going to them and tellingv them he had psychiatric problems and had posted threats online would not seem like just cause enough to you?

They should have just phoned in to say he was an Al Quaeda supporter and was making threats - he'd have been in the back of a SWAT van within the hour. Editing a few of his missives would have done the trick, change a few "bullies" into "infidels" - job done.

jill_valentine

psinno wrote: »

Pretty sure the 3 guys he stabbed to death at the start of his rampage weren't accidental.

Rather think you've missed the point there.

diveout

beks101 wrote: »

Pathetic. This whole sorry mess and the sorry state of this sick individual's head.

I've worked in big newsrooms across the world for years and no story even comes close to paralleling the frequency that these shootings by privileged/white guys in the US pop up and the extensive coverage that they get.

While mental illness is obviously at the root of it, there's just so many factors at play that it's hard to see how these kind of incidents will ever go away - from second amendment and gun ownership laws and attitudes to this 'celebrity' culture created around the asshats who perpetrate these crimes, to the narcissism and materialism and oneupmanship bred by facebook/online culture, on and on ad nauseum. Those seemingly harmless albeit annoying features can become dangerous among people like this most recent individual, who clearly had chronic social and interpersonal skills, a personality disorder and a propensity towards violence and anger...and then easy access to a bunch of lethal weapons.

I hate that this guy's innermost thoughts are blasted across the web for all and sundry to read and be influenced by. That he can name-drop a bunch of innocent people who are just going about their lives and all of a sudden they're the gaze of the internet and their lives are changed for the worse forever more. Not to mention his victims of course.

What made him think that his innermost thoughts and takes on the world were of any consequence or interest to the public in the first place is what's so wrong with this narcissistic-inspired celebrity culture around these mass murderers. Fcuk his manifesto. Fcuk 'learning a lesson' from this. How many more 'lessons' does America need to learn?

Not usually a Michael Moore fan but he pretty much sums this whole thing up for me -

America is never going to learn as long as it keeps scapegoating these individuals.

I disagree with Moore on one fundamental claim he makes. Violence is way more saturated and woven into the fabric of American life. I have to turn off the news when my child is in the room. Stories of gun shots and 7 year olds getting raped on their doorsteps. EVERY SINGLE night. So I turn it off.

Elementary school students get lock down drills now, along with their tornado and firedrills, thus validating the school shooting as a normal part of life.

Narcissism, materialism, entitlement, the violent solution, the gun as a symbol of individual power, as well as sexual exploits tied into male self esteem.... everyone is complicit in creating these values and then everyone scapegoats the monster when everyone had a little part in his creation. When everyone takes that on board, maybe America will learn its lesson.

Davei141

jill_valentine wrote: »

Rather think you've missed the point there.

They haven't really. You mentioned Shankill Butchers and accidentally killing protestants, he didn't accidentally kill men he targeted them as well. The guy hated absolutely everyone, men and women, different races etc. he just focused on women more. It was symptom rather than a cause IMO.

jill_valentine

Davei141 wrote: »

They haven't really. You mentioned Shankill Butchers and accidentally killing protestants, he didn't accidentally kill men he targeted them as well. The guy hated absolutely everyone, men and women, different races etc. he just focused on women more. It was symptom rather than a cause IMO.

To clarify then; my point is that the ultimate breakdown of victims isn't solely what determines somebody's motive. If somebody spends hours and hours ranting about how much they hate women, and hate men because of women, and then sets out to shoot down a sorority, it's safe to say their perceived issue with the world is not how Subway put the cheese on.

Again, yes there were plenty of other factors, and yes he hated everyone, but as you say, he focussed on women in particular. All I'm getting at is that looking at the intended victims would probably offer more insight than just looking at who he managed to actually kill. Once something like this actually starts happening, there's a large element of "opportunity targeting"

Azwaldo55

The morale of this story is for normal well adjusted people who know odd, creepy and weird people to try and get to know them, attempt to help them if they can and if they can't be helped keep an eye on them before they blow up.

Carlos Orange

jill_valentine wrote: »

Rather think you've missed the point there.

I didn't think it was a very good point. Aside from anything else very few of the Protestants killed by the Shankill Butchers were cases of religious mistaken identity. People are more than capable of having multiple motivations or indeed not having any.

Azwaldo55

psinno wrote: »

I didn't think it was a very good point. Aside from anything else very few of the Protestants killed by the Shankill Butchers were cases of religious mistaken identity. People are more than capable of having multiple motivations or indeed not having any.

Lenny Murphy the leader of the Shankill Butchers would probably have been a psychopathic murderer and criminal regardless of the Troubles.

The average loyalist murder was committed by a kid you had shaking hands when he ran up to a stranger presumed to be a Catholic and put a bullet in him and would not have been sure until he heard a radio bulletin or read the newspaper that he had actually killed someone.

Murphy meanwhile killed for kicks. He was totally cool and calm as he went about killing.
He had his mates would drive around in a black taxi to pick up Catholics staggering home from the pub. He enjoyed cutting them with butcher knives and beating them black and blue with a tire iron. When he killed his victims he cut their throat back to the spine with a cleaver and usually displayed the bodies in a grotesque posture so that the throat wound was laid wide open.
Killing people was as casual for Murphy as going for chips, getting drunk or picking up women.

Had Rodger been a taller more physically powerful man and if he had learned how to socialize and interact with women he would simply have been a more effective killer.

Ted Bundy for instance was a handsome man who was erudite and cultured, extremely intelligent, charming and adored by women.
Bundy could only get sexual satisfaction through the torture, rape and murder of women so the facade of a man who your daughter would take home to Mom was an ideal.
He would befriend women by wearing a plaster cast on his arm or leg and struggle to carry a bundle of books so that women would be only too happy to help him carry them to his car where he would hit over the head and take them away.

Call Me Jimmy

Tail Docker wrote: »

They should have just phoned in to say he was an Al Quaeda supporter and was making threats - he'd have been in the back of a SWAT van within the hour. Editing a few of his missives would have done the trick, change a few "bullies" into "infidels" - job done.

That is actually a strangely interesting point.

Azwaldo55

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

That is actually a strangely interesting point.

The Muslim guys who were planning to bomb the Tyger Tyger nightclub in London constantly ranted about the "sluts" and "whores" who frequented the place. They adopted Islam because they were socially inept and also inept with the opposite sex and because Islam prescribes murder for women who break Islamic rules they plotted to kill infidel women. Islamist ideology was simply a mask for their psychopathic motivations.

Call Me Jimmy

I meant from the American perspective where one felt someone they knew was on the brink, other authorities have failed, if the 't'-word gets dropped, that person would be more likely to be detained.

I just thought it was interesting.

Call Me Jimmy

But I agree Islam is a good fit if someone harbours ill-feeling towards women.

Azwaldo55

Hollywood must be blamed for fueling the fantasies of lone shooters because the icons of American action movies are the laconic loners who come into town and blow everyone away such as The Man With No Name, The Terminator, Paul Kersey, John McClane, Mad Max, and Neo.

MY CUP OF TEA

carraig2 wrote: »

I have a brother with AS and you would not believe how difficult he finds it to see things as most others. He has a complete lack of empathy and it caused the family problems for years. When my grandfather died he told my mother he was not sad because he was old and sick and that's what happened to old and sick people. When my sister lost a baby he asked her why she was sad about something that was not even alive. He is not intentionally cruel or heartless, he just does not feel for others.
I am not saying he could ever do anything sick like this but he can be as emotionally detached as that guy in the videos.

Its seems to me this guy was extremely bitter, fuled from years of stewing over percieved injustice. I would have assumed this was an emotional mindset rather than an intellectual response? excuse my ignorance but do people with AS not generally view things more logically, ie with an emotional detachment like carriag says is the case with their brother? Or is there a variety in emotions that they might feel..like be void of empathy but able to compute jealousy?

My cousin is autistic and well capable of rage but it is generally as a result of logical reasoning, say for example, he cant fit a jigsaw piece together, his rage will be a snap reaction to that frustration? but he would never have the capability to "hold a grudge" against the jigsaw for previously annoying him?

Suppose it deppends where on the spectrum you lie, just interested to know?

pO1Neil

The far-right in America blame it on the gays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfYlJXHs27U

o1s1n

Azwaldo55 wrote: »

Hollywood must be blamed for fueling the fantasies of lone shooters because the icons of American action movies are the laconic loners who come into town and blow everyone away such as The Man With No Name, The Terminator, Paul Kersey, John McClane, Mad Max, and Neo.

Indeed, we must put a halt to all media that portrays violence in any way for fear of lone gunmen!

Quick, hand in your action movie DVDs for destruction before we're all blown away! :eek:

Duggy747

Well, there's the usual conspiracy theories out there that satanism had something to do with it or that Elliot Rodger doesn't exist ("Where is his body!?!") and this was a ploy to take guns away from Americans.

And, of course, the Illuminati :pac:

Lyaiera

Duggy747 wrote: »

Well, there's the usual conspiracy theories out there that satanism had something to do with it or that Elliot Rodger doesn't exist ("Where is his body!?!") and this was a ploy to take guns away from Americans.

And, of course, the Illuminati :pac:

I blame chemtrails. Which are illuminati clouds so we should get rid of clouds too. I'll be busy yelling at them.

Nerdlingr

From quickly reading through it two things struck me

He played ALOT of video games.
And he didnt know the Lottery existed till he turned 18!

robindch

Foxhound38 wrote: »

How many times does some unhinged nutcase need to shoot up a school before the US does something about its gun culture?

The US won't, since the gun lobby has (a) purchased enough politicians that it can kill pretty much any laws that might restrict the sale of guns and (b) wound up the public into such a state of fear that they feel that the only answer to their continually violent society and the lurid reporting of it is, well, to buy lots more guns.

One possible way out is if enough of the honest, decent, peaceful part of society can realize that there are enough of them out there to repudiate the gun lobby. But until that time though, the gun lobby will continue to help perpetuate the slaughter.

Otherwise, well, what The Onion says:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this,36131

Azwaldo55

robindch wrote: »

The US won't, since the gun lobby has (a) purchased enough politicians that it can kill pretty much any laws that might restrict the sale of guns and (b) wound up the public into such a state of fear that they feel that the only answer to their continually violent society and the lurid reporting of it is, well, to buy lots more guns.

One possible way out is if enough of the honest, decent, peaceful part of society can realize that there are enough of them out there to repudiate the gun lobby. But until that time though, the gun lobby will continue to help perpetuate the slaughter.

Otherwise, well, what The Onion says:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this,36131

Three of the victims were killed with knives. Rodger also tried to kill people with his car. He could have used petrol to burn down the sorority house and kill many more people.
Banning or restricting guns does not keep guns out of the hands of maniacs.
It prevents law abiding citizens from having a means to defend themselves.
Criminals and maniacs do not obey the law and therefore they would ignore bans and restrictions on firearms.
America is already so heavily armed a society that it is insanity for a homeowner NOT to own a gun or guns to protect his family.
There is no way in hell that people are going to hand over their guns if laws were passed against guns.

robindch

Azwaldo55 wrote: »

Banning or restricting guns does not keep guns out of the hands of maniacs. It prevents law abiding citizens from having a means to defend themselves.

I couldn't be bothered rebutting this tiresome nonsense for the zillionth time.

The statistics are strikingly clear and to one ratio or another, are repeated ad nauseam in every country in the world.

If you have a gun, you are far, far more likely to suffer from gun violence, either self-inflicted (intentionally or otherwise) or not self-inflicted (intentionally or otherwise).

Pretending otherwise -- or repeating long-debunked NRA-sponsored talking points as you have here -- isn't going to make somebody with a gun any less likely to suffer injury or death.

diveout

Azwaldo55 wrote: »

Three of the victims were killed with knives. Rodger also tried to kill people with his car. He could have used petrol to burn down the sorority house and kill many more people.
Banning or restricting guns does not keep guns out of the hands of maniacs.
It prevents law abiding citizens from having a means to defend themselves.
Criminals and maniacs do not obey the law and therefore they would ignore bans and restrictions on firearms.
America is already so heavily armed a society that it is insanity for a homeowner NOT to own a gun or guns to protect his family.
There is no way in hell that people are going to hand over their guns if laws were passed against guns.

Pity Adam Lanza's mom didn't have a gun.:rolleyes:

Azwaldo55

diveout wrote: »

Pity Adam Lanza's mom didn't have a gun.:rolleyes:

There are hundreds of millions of firearms in circulation in the U.S. There is no way Americans are going to give up those weapons therefore unless they want to be robbed and killed no American with any sense is not going to own a gun to protect themselves and their property. Basic common sense. It is different in Ireland where there are few guns in private hands.
The genie is not going back in the bottle in the U.S. Get real.

Carlos Orange

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

That is actually a strangely interesting point.

It is interesting to think about but I don't think it is remotely true. Lots of the US terrorism cases I have heard of in recent years involve somebody saying stuff on the internet. The FBI noticing , contacting them pretending to be Al Quaeda and collecting intel on them for months. Usually encouraging them alone the way so that they can collect good evidence.