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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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This question was posted with a Wikipedia link. I didn't read it, but let's assume it didn't answer the poster's question.
Now I see in the comments a people saying "we know a lot" (but not Wikipedia I guess) or "it's just what Americans do" or "we got some good laws out of it". It just sounds like "move along, move along" to me.
Nobody answered the question. I don't know the answer, but to say that a person who has never killed anyone before then planned and executed the biggest mass shooting in American history (and that's saying something!) and we shouldn't CARE about motive is just weird.
What makes someone arm themselves and go to a movie theater or an elementary school or a concert should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens. It's SO EASY to say "evil" and put it in the past, especially when the perpetrator is dead. It's much harder to think about how to prevent the next one. Sure, they use guns. But then it's knives. Or hammers. Slower you say? Well then how about sarin gas? Mail bombs? Potassium cyanide in Tylenol? Letters containing ricin?
We need to know more about the psychology of the mass killer. We act like saying "evil" is good enough. Are we all religious now? There's devils out there? Or are they people, people with problems that never got recognized, until it was too late?
"What makes someone arm themselves and go to a movie theater or an elementary school or a concert should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens."
For whatever reason, these people feel scorned, and rejected. They're full of rage, and they decide to take it out on everyone around them. There's usually a shitload of narcissism involved. Narcissists don't take rejection well.
I personally know one of these people. He spends every night alone, because no one wants to be around him, filling his head with hate and fear from Fox and YouTube right wing grifters. He goes out of his way to provoke everyone around him with Nazi and Klan jokes, and sticks his phone with Nazi and Klan memes in everyone's face, like an overgrown 15 year old edgelord. He's 53. But he's not the asshole, everyone else is. Everyone is fucking with him, not vice versa. He has a house full of guns, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he went on a shooting spree if someone provoked him into narcissistic rage.
I'm seriously considering reporting him.
You should report him. Everyone who knows someone with the motive and the means should. You can have guns, or your head filled with caustic bile, but not both.
I think I am, thanks. If he were to do something, I don't want that on my conscience.
Be as detailed as possible in your report, and focus especially on any specific threats against individuals or groups that he has mentioned.
People did answer the question. Re-read the top two comments, sorted by Top. The question was "Why don't we hear more about...?".
It is emotionally difficult to accept, but it is the reality that we live in. The richer people have bodyguards and send their kids to better-protected schools, maybe bring in private tutors that are each more expensive than a cheap college education. They deal with this shit in their own way, leaving everyone else to the "freedom" to do as they please - subject to the whims of other lords who e.g. buy up all the media outlets, or buy up all the houses, etc. People do not wish to understand that this is what "absolute freedom" looks like, aka anarchy.
And quite frankly, random gun violence isn't even the top threat in America, bc climate change seems much more likely to kill us all, or else an actual civil war, or perhaps Russia or China will shut down our entire power grid, if our own home-grown terrorist extremists don't beat them to it.
iirc, most people here die of heart disease and cancer, and other things that mere exercise may provide a partial solution for. So we don't care about the deaths of kids or strangers for the sake reason we continue to eat burgers every single day: bc they are tasty and we DGAF about anything else.
I did what you said, sorting by "top," and I think you're doing a lot of projecting because I do not read anything there that could be an answer to the question
Second, I read your response, and I'm confused. Are you proposing redistribution of wealth and veganism as a solution to mass killings? If not, I guess I didn't understand your answer.
I genuinely don't get why people are confused about someone who feels like they have nothing to live for taking their frustrations out on society.
Like, what is so confusing about that? Why is it so difficult for you to understand?
So, that kinda makes sense to you? Like, you can "get it," why someone would load up and kill a bunch of people indiscriminately?
Because I can't. I could go vengeance on someone who hurt my family. I'm sure I could kill in self-defense, or to protect my family.
But to just go somewhere prepared to kill a bunch of people I don't know? Who never had any contact with me or my life?
"Take out their frustrations on society?" I really hope you are just hyped up or talking out your ass or something. I'm any case, please talk to someone competent about this, preferably a licensed therapist.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
"I don't understand your point of view, so I think you need therapy" is a very condescending point of view.
The comment above you is making the point of
Angry at society -> Take out anger on society
The shooter doesn't give a shit about the victims as individuals; to him they're just components of the society, or actors within the society that he thinks wronged him somehow. They're part of the problem to him.
I think you're assuming that the shooter was seeing and experiencing the world and interpreting it the same way you do. THEY DO NOT, they are mentally ill, and have different thought patterns to people who are neurotypical. They have managed to convince themselves that they don't have a problem, that society is the problem.
It's a lot simpler that that. I mean not the cause of mass killings. That's never a single factor but a range of mental health issues, a combination of things leading to the act. Impossible to predict.
The main issue is the shocking lack of mental health care. The inability for most to speak to someone at an early stage. There is no (coordinated) safety net.
I don't know about the lack of mental health care being the "main issue." A healthy society wouldn't be in dire need of such extreme amounts of mental health care. These mass shootings are a single symptom (among many) of a very complicated and interwoven set of factors that have brought us to this place. There is no single solution that will fix the problem, and the only way out of this mess will take significant investment and likely generations to break the cycle. But humans are greedy, and particularly in the USA, we only look for simple simgle-issue solutions that can have a measurable outcome (and be economically viable) within the next couple or fiscal quarters or an election term, at most. The solutions we should be implementing don't work on that sort of time scale, and many will be very costly (in varying terms of both money and/or freedom)... So, we just don't do those things.
I don't think you're considering that bad things happen to good people. Everyone should have the right to easy access to healthcare.
It's toxic Christianity to believe prayer and being a good person will get you favors with God and grant some kind of immunity to bad things. Bad things happen and it's okay to feel bad, to have mental problems, to burn out, mourn, worry, etc.
It's toxic consumer ideology to believe that people are inherently greedy, as it makes you consume more. There is no reason to believe this at all. It's simply a justification for over consumption in a capitalist system that defines your worth to your wealth.
I'm not trying to make the point that mental Healthcare is some kind of panacea. Mass killings happen everywhere. But I do strongly believe that the rate at which it happens will be drastically reduced by a good system of care.
People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it's hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?
Motive isn't as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He's not unique in that respect. What's unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn't find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?
Again, it's all speculation. And it's also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?
What people are looking for is the manifesto or the “ah-ha!” moment. Columbine had plenty of this, as have many other spree killings. Even the tower shooter in Texas was discovered to have a brain tumor.
What people are looking for is a reason that separates him from the rest of us. The box they can check to safely file him away as being a schizo, abuser, or something worse and then snapping.
What they won’t get is the reason. The Vegas shooter was deep in his own mind and seems to have not shared these things with anyone. His life on paper seems kind of grim, but nothing in the way of committing a massive shooting.
Yeah .. but also Las Vegas.
That actually is a good point. This incident being in the news a lot would effect tourism in Vegas and that is big bucks. There may be people paying to suppress news on the killings.
Exactly like shouldn't we acknowledge it so we can change for the better ?
The article is right there
You didn't read it
Your point is that we should care more
That about sum things up, super chief?