Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

I'm not sure "Romantic" is the word I'd use and I have a lot of trouble putting myself in the mindstate of anyone who would commit this kind of horrific act, but something keeps motivating people to do this and, as treeship points out, they have all become so remarkably similar that it does feel like a script is being followed. Something is drawing troubled people to this outcome. Since we can't count on our government to due a fucking thing about gun control, maybe we'd do better figuring out that something so we can attempt, well, fucking anything.

I was in 7th grade when Columbine happened and one thing I kinda remember from the coverage - which was absolutely endless - was that the whole idea of a school shooting was some unimaginable thing. everyone was so horrified. it just never occured to anyone that someone would just do that. and I'm sure the type of person who'd actually carry out such a thing hadn't really thought of it either.

From the source I linked above: There have been 89 school shootings "defined as anytime a gun is discharged on school property" in the U.S. so far in 2023, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman.

“Romantic” in the sense that a lot of these people are narcissists with persecution complexes and think they are martyrs who will be appreciated by others in their position. This is especially true of the ideologically driven mass shooters — the misogynist killers, the racist killers — but also for the ones who just think they’ve been bullied and isolated or whatever.

I think they get the idea that others will appreciate their massacres from 4chan and places like that.

People in America are angry. Often nonsensically so, but it's a prevailing feeling. Few go to therapy or deal with that anger, often because of patriarchal norms, or no means to do so. And many of these folks have access to deadly weapons.

Schools are a popular place to shoot because they're predictable. It's not like the mall where you might show up and there's only five people there, and all moving, and coming from all directions . People at school are sitting ducks, gathered in place in large numbers for 8-10 hours in tight quarters. For someone who is angry enough to want to take lives, they can do so fairly easily, no matter how many times you ran the drill.

Copycatting plays into it too but schools and packed nightclubs are an easy way for a bloodthirsty person to live out violent fantasies.

I think schools are popular because they represent something to the shooter.

There is just something deeply fucked up about how predictable this is. People feel alienated — get their revenge by murdering innocents — people gnash their teeth and wring their hands but don’t do anything that might stop the patter, repeat. Hundreds of times per year this happens.

People Men in America are angry.

I mean women too but. . .

Well, anger is a universal part of life but usually only men think the way to deal with it is to kill.

The mystery isn’t why are people angry, it’s why does their anger take this form, over and over.

^^^

mental illness, bullying, alienation, becoming radicalized online, emptiness, lack of social structures, and then the all easy access

it's not some grand mystery--men in this country are fucked up and raised to not talk about their feelings

all those things are correct, but that doesn't explain the why of this same scenario at schools. i mean, i know it absolutely does happen elsewhere (malls, grocery stores, workplaces, etc etc) but it seems odd that it is so heavily weighted towards schools when there are so many other potential venues for your average gun-toting American man to snap.

Idk imho it's not that odd--bullying and alienation happens a lot at schools--
the online radicalization. . . people are taught not to trust schools b/c teacher are just gonna groom your kids etc
I get why people ask questions like that like why school but to me it's like asking the question "why did this person kill themselves"-->I get why people are asking the question but looking for an answer that solves the "why" something like this happens, to me, is never going to be satisfying

xxpost I remember just about every therapist I've ever had, I felt like I could never fully be open with them. I'd be sugar-coating some details here and there, omitting a detail here and there, retelling a story that made me look more favorable, fighting my emotions and not wanting to sho weakness, and wondering "why in the FUCK are you doing that in the one place where you don't have to?". It's ingrained.

but we should also not oversell the point that millions that want and need that kind of care can't get or afford it, either, and probably significantly less have access to it than they did 30-40 years ago.

Why “snap” and massacre strangers? This was not always a frequent occurence.

Profound unhappiness, extreme anger, bitterness, these are all part of our common experience as human beings. But the trend here — which I think is totally a mimetic or copycat phenomenon — is about directing one’s anger toward random victims, toward the crowd, and sometimes toward the most innocent among us, children. Like what the fuck.

How is this an everyday thing? What kind of country an I raising my son in?

There is something very bizarre happening here

1) many school shootings happen from aggrieved students/ex-students/ex-faculty, so there's often a "revenge" connection (though obv not always)
2) if you used to go to the school, you know the layout very well, and what actions will probably be taken
3) it's a thing other people have done, so it's an idea that comes to mind quickly
4) People are in all different rooms/buildings so it takes a while for everybody to realize what's going on, where other more open public places people all run at the sound of a bang.

there was a drill once at the local high school here that got mistaken for real active shooters because of how quickly misinformation spread (it was the school's fault). much more opportunity for chaos.

I mean, fuck. (assuming this is genuine that is)

THIS is last year's Christmas card from Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican who represents the district that Covenant School is in in Nashville. #tnleg pic.twitter.com/IpkLzZs5m5

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 27, 2023

not to distract from the larger convo, but fwiw I just saw this shooter likely attended the school at some point

xxxxpost when you can't kill the person or thing that is actively making you miserable, you often look for a stand-in.

the infamy. There were studies that suggested that if shooters didn't get news coverage, couldn't expect to, it's less likely to happen. And the only solution to that is to not cover it as much, or to cover it and not give the shooters name or tell their story. There was a bunch of articles about that some years ago. Obv not going to happen.

It’s a numbers game right? That’s part of it. I think that was part of the Port Arthur guy’s deal, he’d keep asking how many he killed that day. Or they want to unleash absolute hell. Some grand theft auto type mayhem shit. For the Vegas guy, he probably didn’t even see anyone fall really. He just saw the panic.

It’s a complex mix, a lot of it boils down to the cultural saturation of guns as instruments of justice and fantasy power playing.

A lot of media have shifted how they cover shootings, downplaying focus on the shooter, their name, their particular grievances, etc. But at the same time, I don't think we'd want them to literally not be covered. We have to know they're happening.

yeah, we've come a long way from Columbine, where Klebold/Harris were pretty much turned into "McCartney/Lennon" by the American media, esp with the endless slew of op-eds about their 'motives' and MARILYN MANSON. nowadays fewer people could even tell you the names of more recent school shooters (though sadly that's also a byproduct of how many there've been).

xxp it looks like Ogles' youngest kid is the only one who has any fucking idea what Xmas is all about

what if the shooter is at large and you have to catch them, can you tell the name then? this happened in denver last week. he was caught tho. he was dead.

notoriety certainly drives ppl to mass shoot. mass murder is also one of the most nihilistic things you can do, and unfortunately our country is one that facilitates that nihilism via access to weapons. there's also something specifically nihilistic about targeting young children, it's like pushing the line even further

i also think we've reached a new phase now where people "feel" like mass shooters (alone, angry, disaffected, depressed, hopeless) and so they decide to become them

all this is worth considering, i just think there is something more than just "guns + anger" in play with school shootings, because Americans are angry almost every fucking where and while shootings at coffee shops and fast food places do happen, you'd expect to see way more of them in locations where people are regularly showing up very pissed off.

Why people pick one target vs. another often seems to be driven by individual experiences (like, they have a particular beef with that place or someone in it). But also sometimes not, the Las Vegas shooting — which we still basically know zero about, motivation-wise — being the most horrific example.

"guns + anger"

+ toxic masculinity

xp J0rdan otm. That is the hyperreal aspect I was getting at

re: the motivations of mass killers, I found this blogpost interesting, on the youtube channel of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza where he outlined his worldview

https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-ghost-of-adam-lanza.html

the channel seems like it was only discovered a couple of years ago, kind of surprised I haven't seen more coverage/commentary about it, but maybe it's that increasing reluctance to give spree killers notoriety that people were discussing above

ppl been angry a long time. guns + alienation + anger

high/middle schools both are and represent a pretty profound mix of things: authority & discipline, constant forms of evaluation & ranking, coming-of-age and becoming "yourself," socialization / alienation & ostracism, competition, adolescence & humiliation. they can be torturous places to feel "alone, angry, disaffected, depressed, hopeless." I think there's something about the universality of the experience of them and how they are these life milestones filled with intense memories and (what feel like) turning points.

I don't really have any coherent thoughts about elementary schools though, I'm tempted to reach for metaphysical reasons too

yeah I agree with that, my toughest times emotionally were definitely in middle school and maybe the first 1-2 years of high school. for me that was certainly the time where rejection hurt the most.

reading about this Adam Lanza guy, all I can think is he sounds very much like the deathdrone dude ILX had a long thread about several years ago, another guy who was an absolutely terrible person but also intelligent and well-spoken to some degree.

this really does piss me off about the right-wing response to all this, obviously they won't do a thing about guns and will speak about how instead we need to focus on "mental health" (while voting against mental health funding every chance they get obviously), which misses the point entirely. I don't think a "mental health screening" would catch very many of these guys. I don't think they're clinically insane or the sort of people you can just shrug your shoulders at and say "what can you do, they're nuts". there are real reasons this happens and I do think America promotes a very nihilistic culture - a culture in which, for example, a profane idiot grifter like Donald Trump can become president - which, in addition to the massive amount of guns, makes this sort of thing occur. but nobody seems to really want to have that conversation.

gotta stay off twitter. Lots of ghoulish speculation going on.

the thing about the mental health canard is even if it were true (which it isn't), you'd basically have to solve mental health to stop violence like this w/ their plan. instead of, y'know, idk, not making death machines so easy to acquire.

i don't even think most people should be legally allowed to drive

Jeez this photo is heartbreaking

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/27/20/69173379-11907711-A_terrified_child_presses_her_hand_against_the_glass_of_a_school-m-99_1679945105428.jpg

No mental health screening would have caught the Vegas guy, who was by all appearances just an average maybe occasionally surly middle-aged solitary type. His motives (probably just empty inside, had a singular focus on a fantasy of killing people in this specific, vv distanced manner) weren’t ones that manifested themselves in warning signs unless you were really really analyzing him. The mass murder version of BTK, basically.

gotta stay off twitter

A good time to take the whole week off of there

oh god yeah this is gonna be a shitshow

it's already there. right-wing scumbags are already circulating the same image of a trans woman holding a gun that they've circulated in the past and claiming it's the shooter. just a fucking cesspool.

this seems to have been a female born shooter who now used he/him, so this might get very ugly indeed.