Girls with Guns

You know when I found this site I wandered around in it for a bit, and I found a story connected to Phoenix, the city I live in.

I don't know if any of you had ever heard of the story of the Phoenix Shooter(s), but we had for a few months to a year I think some multiple random shootings by what the police felt probably were two males. These men became listed on the America's Most Wanted list of the FBI.

They caught these two a few months ago, and the main shooter, the Alpha male, Dale Hausner, a boxing photographer, who hosted a one time show on cable, was well liked by many and who was going... somewhere.

I found a reference to it on this site that surprised me. The owner of the Girls with Guns site was unknowingly aquainted with the Phoenix 'shooter', knew him, liked him, had no knowlege of his 'other side' and had his site closed down for that 'relationship', slight and innocent as it was. This is that story.

http://www.girlswithguns.org/downtime.htm

I read that when you had first posted it.

It is odd, but in a way it isn't. People say that they would never be able to shoot someone in the face, but I believe they grossly overestimate themselves. (Or underestimate, depends on how you look at it.) Just by living in this culture we have to dehumanize the millions of people whose lives are sacrificed to maintain our lifestyle, and I'm not going to bleeding-heart this thread up, but it just shows you how capable everyone of us is to blowing someones head off and then drive over to starbucks to chat about the latest episode of H.O.U.S.E.
It really is a good show.

Oh, and he actually got fired do to the association. I think I remember reading that.

I sort of take that back. I just read over what I just said and realized how psychotic the statement makes me look. Basically I'm just saying that the same mechanism they probably used to justify their killing people is very active in everybody throughout their regular day. So it shouldn't be Too surprising when someone who commits atrocious acts is seemingly normal otherwise.

“. . . it shouldn't be Too surprising when someone who commits atrocious acts is seemingly normal otherwise.”

Trust me, man, it's not. If it were someone I knew personally I'd be shocked, I mean who wouldn't be, but the concept itself -- of some random man-on-the-street type “blowing someones head off and then driving over to starbucks to chat about the latest episode of H.O.U.S.E.” -- isn't so hard to believe. Sometimes I wonder how we can trust anyone when the person standing next to us in line at the bank or cheerily reporting the weather on TV could have corpses rotting in their basement. Then I remember that the alternative would be barricading myself inside a bomb shelter and never speaking to another human being again.

To me, you don't sound psychotic, at least not very; you could have bodies in your basement too, tee hee. It's reasonable to be somewhat paranoid and VERY reasonable to be as critical of society as you can be. The only problem with opinions as strong as yours and mine is that the only ones who'll listen to you are the ones who already agree . . . everyone else won't even give your words a chance to sink in before they just automatically tune you out. I could go on about the crazy racists running our country and the PC nazis who'll go so far as to bleep out the word “punch” on TV but I suddenly feel the need to bury my head in the sand, and by “sand” I mean “random Google Image searches with the safe-search turned off”. My, how these threads go off-topic.

"I could go on about the crazy racists running our country and the PC nazis who'll go so far as to bleep out the word “punch” on TV..."

It amazes me you would say this and then be concerned about going off topic. Isn't going off topic another way of being politically incorrect?

Anyway, I don't really consider it off topic, because the story is connected to the guy who runs the website 'Girls with guns' and who has admired Aeon Flux, and it left me thinking of how interesting he likes gun fantasies but when life presents him with a real-life gunman he is, and most healthy mindly so, shocked and not at all admiring.

To which I found myself thinking, yeah, why do people like to fantasize about a world of guns and violence but in reality would never do such a thing.

I suspect it's not at all about guns and violence but about freedom from life's constraints. It's an obvious conclusion but this little killer story makes it somehow much more obvious.

I don't think everyone is capable of this sort of action, either. In our public papers it has come out this guy murdered his teenage daughters beloved horse, has tortured animals and all sorts of other sick behavior.

"Isn't going off topic another way of being politically incorrect?"

Not to me -- why would you think that? Going off-topic is neither here nor there, and I wasn't saying it was a bad thing, just remarking. This forum in particular has a way of going off-topic, sometimes in very interesting ways.

"I don't think everyone is capable of this sort of action, either."

Of torture and all that really hardcore sadistic shit, you're probably right. But of just killing somebody, I think we are all capable. Besides, you're just thinking about cold-blooded murder . . . what about self-defense? Anybody could do that. It just comes down to justifying it in your mind. And then there's always killing someone by accident but that doesn't happen very often. The way I see it, if you're aware of the mechanism people use to justify murder, you can stop yourself from ever doing it, or at least have a much better chance of not going over the edge enough to do it.

". . . why do people like to fantasize about a world of guns and violence but in reality would never do such a thing."

Human beings are inherently violent, and fictional bloodbaths are just our way of dealing with that without anyone actually getting hurt. Works pretty well, too; violent crime actually began a fair drop in the mid '90s, right around the time really bloody video games started gaining popularity, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Anyway, my point is that I think Josh is right that although it'd be unlikely that any of us would just walk up to some random stranger and shoot them in the face, we are still capable in a basic sense of doing it. Nature's mentally prepared us for defending ourselves with deadly force if necessarry, and alot of people misuse that instinct to do terrible things to each other. Awful, but we humans are pretty good at perverting instincts that originally were around for a less insane reason so it's something I've almost gotten used to until I really delve into the subject.

God, typing this has made me really depressed. This is why there are so many stupid people -- sometimes it literally hurts to think.

Not to start an enormous debate, but I've seen the information they present in Freakanomics that suggests that the drop in violent crime in the 90s was caused by (or at least, extremely, heavily correlated with) the legalization of abortion. Suddenly kids that would've grown up in poor (as in, bad) circumstances and had a higher chance of turning to criminal lifestyles simply didn't exist, and therefore were unable to commit crime.

I think that makes plenty of sense.

"I've seen the information they present in Freakanomics that suggests that the drop in violent crime in the 90s was caused by (or at least, extremely, heavily correlated with) the legalization of abortion. Suddenly kids that would've grown up in poor (as in, bad) circumstances and had a higher chance of turning to criminal lifestyles simply didn't exist, and therefore were unable to commit crime."

Can't say I've read the same sources but that sounds like it might be possible. However wrong or right the relation between the crime statistics and bloody video games is, my point remains valid: humans are a violent species, and violence in fiction is a good way to get it out of our system without actually causing harm to others. You don't have to worry about starting a fight*, since it's not like my entire opinion hinged on that one piece of information. Exploding Heads in Reality = Bad. Exploding Heads in Movies/Comics/Video Games/on TV = Fun.

* Something I've learned from experience is that there are no debates on the internet. What pass for "debates" are more "flame-baiting bitch fights with no positive outcome whatsoever".

Yeah, but from my experience, when you say abortion might actually have positive end results, some people get all mean. ;)

I'm not so much worried about a flame war from all you good people as a theoretical herd of angry pro-lifers.

"I'm not so much worried about a flame war from all you good people as a theoretical herd of angry pro-lifers."

Heh, don't think that some of the "good people" on this forum are above that sort of thing; most of the posters in this thread haven't exactly been the picture of maturity during their time here, including the two of us.