Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

It's still a sad thing, but people "randomly going nuts" and doing these horrible things is inevitable in every society.

Actually, I think there have been societies where murder is
virtually non-existent. Usually these sort of societies have had a very strong social cohesion and a strict set of shared moralities though, with little room for nonconformism. I would assume there's a lot of variation between different countries of the world in the frequency of murder sprees though. It's inevitable in any society that people will go nuts, but the choices of what you do when you go nuts seem to be at least partially influenced by your surrounding culture. And in most Western societies a shooting spree seems to have become one of the "viable" alternatives for action, sadly. In the first school shooting spree in Finland, for example, it was later found out that the killer had some strong fascist/social Darwinist ideas and that he idolized the Columbine shooters.

Actually, I think there have been societies where murder is virtually non-existent

wanna come up with some examples, cause I don't buy this at all / have never heard of such societies outside of the lyrics to 'cortez the killer'. "strong social cohesion" isn't gonna overpower certain mental/psychological disorders that some people are simply born with.

(sorry)

wanna come up with some examples, cause I don't buy this at all / have never heard of such societies outside of the lyrics to 'cortez the killer'. "strong social cohesion" isn't gonna overpower certain mental/psychological disorders that some people are simply born with.

I remember reading in some sociology textbook that certain Buddhist communities in Asia have had virtually no violent crime at all, but I can't find any information on that online right now. I probably shoudln't have used the word "society", since what I was talking about was small, geographically limited communities. Anyway, I don't really think there are any psychological disorders that people are born with, certainly not ones that automatically lead to a murder spree. Or can you name any?

There was also a story today about some 17 year old guy who has stabbed one sister and then cut the other (5 years old!) one's head off, in front of a 3rd sister... he was still hacking at the 5 year olds head when the cops got there.

Just... what.

― one art, please (Trayce), Monday, 30 March 2009 03:46 (8 hours ago) Bookmark

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090330/twl-man-murders-his-sisters-at-birthday-3fd0ae9.html

The policeman broke into the house and witnessed Revelus decapitating five-year-old Bianca, whose birthday cake was on the kitchen table.

Thanks for highlighting that.

really belongs on one of those "what the fuck is wrong with people/nuclear holocaust in 3 seconds" threads :-/

doesn't get much more fucked-up than that

Why do I even look at these threads?

I still can't believe that story. (Sadly, I can believe it happened in the Boston area.)

I really wish I hadn't even looked at this thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/nyregion/04hostage.html?hp

now with extra xenophobia. Yay, America.

^^ Huge conclusion-jump in that post -- see other thread for context

P.S. Re: the above thing about mental illness and society, I'm pretty sure most everything we know indicates that lots of deep mental illness has a big biological component, but the behavior that illness actually results in is heavily shaped by culture and environment.* But a lot of this is environment/culture in the kind of deep-down way that you can't exactly just decide to change one day.

* E.g., there are minor neuroses (like weird phobias) that are common and specific to certain cultures

Countries with stricter gun control like Britain and Japan (I think) have fewer shooting sprees and drive bys than we do in America. I think there are countries where cops don't even regularly carry guns.

and yet Japan has highest suicide rate in the world

also they grope womens on the train

and work way too hard and enjoy rape porn

also cartoons with school girls with penises.

Americans don't enjoy rape porn AT ALL.

Well, yes, limited access to guns is a pretty obvious physical way of keeping people from behaving certain ways with them

I was using that as an obvious example of behavior being shaped by culture and environment. Maybe if the Japanese had as easy access to guns as Americans do, they'd be less into rape porn and shoot each other more.

The fact that a country has a social problem doesn't imply anything about the success/failure of its gun control policies, does it?

"Country X places a high prices on tobacco products and as a result few of their citizens smoke nowadays."
"Yeah, but Country X's students score poorly on Science and Reading Comprehension."

??

Maybe we should be arming Japanese when they come to US just to see.

this is where i'm from. trying to get in touch with my mother, but she's a hospital administrator right down the road from the shooting and likely is very busy atm. she left me a voicemail earlier saying everything was ok, so im hoping for the best, but i'm really freaking out right now

Here's hoping she and staff are working well and helping people

Best wishes to you and yr ma, k3vin.

Japan has had several mass killings in recent years, but thankfully the death tolls have been smaller. The attackers have used knives. Gun violence is very unusual in Japan and usually involves organized crime hits.

xpost

Aum Shuriya bitchez

Shinrikyo even

god I can't type today

yeah when i first saw the headline all it said was new york state (i.e., not nyc) so i kind of gasped but i am not from that part, glad yr mom is ok k3vin

talked to my mom, everyone we know is ok. my stepfather performed surgery on one of the '5 taken to a hospital' and he is going to live. it's a pretty small city with shitty internal communication, so my mom said they thought there were going to be around 40 deaths earlier, but now it appears there will be under 20.

i have a feeling we'll be seeing more and more of these.

> ^^ Huge conclusion-jump in that post -- see other thread for context

It's my specialty. I'm not just going to give it up.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/03/state/n092921D51.DTL&tsp=1

Killer Santa used coke before rampage.

i have a feeling we'll be seeing more and more of these.

― Beatrix Kiddo, den 3 april 2009 20:10 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

feels like we are already?

3 police officers killed in Pittsburgh. The carnage continues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/us/05pittsburgh.html?hp

now with extra xenophobia. Yay, America.

― Zero Transfats Waller (Oilyrags

or not, since the shooter was an immigrant. small relief, for some reason.

strange as it sounds, it is possible for immigrants to be xenophobic.

rolling 2008 disgruntled shootings thread

dr phil in behind the times shocker

And so it continues :(

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/04/5-children-father-found-d_n_183207.html

guh guys killing their entire family and then themselves is like a fucked up category all its own. and in everyone of these stories there's a neighbor or someone saying "eh, he seemed like a nice guy"

yep, bottling up all that depression and rage away from the neighbors is key to the formula

i am calm in the knowledge that every neighbour i've had thinks i'm a surly asshole

Actually, I think there have been societies where murder is virtually non-existent

wanna come up with some examples, cause I don't buy this at all / have never heard of such societies outside of the lyrics to 'cortez the killer'. "strong social cohesion" isn't gonna overpower certain mental/psychological disorders that some people are simply born with.

― iatee, Monday, March 30, 2009 3:13 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bambuti pygmies

guh guys killing their entire family and then themselves is like a fucked up category all its own.

This is about ownership -- or, even more creepily, a deep-seated belief that your wife and kids are really just extensions of you, and your failure is their failure. Cannot emphasize this enough.

Sure it's a tragedy for all parties but forgive me if I can't find any sympathy for men who emotionally, deep down, believe that kind of thing. "Since I can't care for this thing I created, it is mine to take out of the world when I go."

or, indeed, women.

Sure. But that's a different phenomenon.

i think it's the same dynamic, whether it's fuelled by power (in the cases by father) or despair (as the few high profiles cases involving mothers in ireland have maybe been), though- "you can't go on without me".

now with extra xenophobia. Yay, America.

lol

Happy to inform everyone here, you're only one degree of separation away from my cats

There have been three deadly shootings this year so far on my street. I feel that all I can do is avoid complacency and prepare for the possibility of being shot, because if it happened without my anticipating it I'd feel even more foolish. This reminds me I'm even worried about Tuffy the cat sitting at the window.

Not helpful mookie

― H.P

it's not and it is? like it's not constructive criticism at all, it's snark, it's being unwilling or unable to engage seriously with what i'm saying, but it's meaningful and valuable for all that

absolutely fundamentally my posts here are about me, i just found out yesterday that a (not close) friend was rooming with a neo-nazi who did a mass shooting while they were roommates. that's kinda fucked up and i think i got a right to talk about that experience in a thread about spree shootings. learning that information hit me really hard emotionally. i had nightmares all last night about it.

because the thing is i have so much close contact with so much fucked up shit and i barely talk about any of it. i don't think i'm... i don't think my problems are extraordinary, really, but a lot of people around me, the stuff they have to deal with _does_ seem extraordinary. and if i try to talk about any of this shit, this shit that's kind of a regular part of my everyday life, sometimes someone will come up and say that i'm making everything all about me.

see it's valuable in context, in context as part of the thread. a lot of folks here do, i think, get where i'm coming from, get what i'm talking about, and are able to, like, at least engage to some extent with those experiences. the frustrating thing is sometimes trying to talk to people who don't see the same fucked up shit on a regular basis, sometimes our perspectives seem mutually incomprehensible to the extent that i have a hard time understanding what they're even talking about. that scares me. all this shooting, all this violence, the ways it affects those of us in its proximity, and as much of it as there is, a lot of times it doesn't seem possible to talk about it because i'm not doing it in the _right way_ or whatever. i don't want to be dogpiled, but if it's one person, if it's one person who's gonna speak up and be sarcastic and shitty about it and not engage in good faith, in a weird way i think that is helpful, because that is a perspective a lot of people do have, still. it helps me personally to be reminded of that.

i guess it's not a healthy thought exercise for everyone but it has been for me. anyway i'm pretty much done talking about it, it was something i needed to talk about it and i did and i wanna thank all of you who were able to hold space for that. sorry i don't have cat pics. :(

The true solution to all the world's problems
🖼

I probably shouldn't weigh in, but for what it's worth, Kate, I went back and read your first post about this and it's not clear to me that you were responding to something so emotional. I think in particular the first paragraph comes across as flippant rather than a response to pain. To be clear, I fully believe that you were strongly affected -- it makes sense that you would be -- and it makes sense, in retrospect, that the seeming flippancy might in actuality be a screen for deeper and darker feelings. But I don't think it's entirely fair to "go off" on mookieproof for responding negatively to the "mass shooter number" framing.

fwiw i got no hard feelings and lots of gratitude towards/for everyone here. really appreciate having had this space to say some stuff i needed to say. if anyone has any negative feelings or judgements towards me as a result of my posts here, fair enough. :)

fwiw i don't dislike kate (and very much enjoy her music posts, particularly those about how pink floyd does or does not rule; would totally read a book)

and i can understand that transitioning would become one's most important topic

but her personal posts have become increasingly solipsistic -- which is fine in certain circumstances -- but i think rather less so in a thread discussing mass shootings. that's all