Mass Murder Meme
Another dreadful mass-shooting, with an alienated man murdering nine strangers then killing himself. This time in Germany - but the world is a global village.
I can't help but think that this has become a meme; and that for a certain type of mentality, the behaviour has become normalised. So at any given time, there are probably many thousands of men - it's always men - who will be thinking 'I could do that'. Presumably, their lives are full of sufficient inner torment and self-hatred to provide the impetus for such terrible crimes.
The Nice truck-murderer told an acquaintance 'you wait, soon everyone will know about me'.
And then, when they occur, they trigger world-wide media coverage, and inspire (if that is the right word) the next hideous example.
It's a pity society doesn't believe in hell any more. As it is, these people believe, among other things, that as they will take themselves out with their final, despicable act, they will never have to suffer the consequences. So I can't see any way to prevent these acts from regularly occuring from now on. I think it is an extreme manifestation of the attitude that nothing matters, and that everything is simply a spectacle - a complete disassociation from reality.
I can't help but think that this has become a meme; and that for a certain type of mentality, the behaviour has become normalised. So at any given time, there are probably many thousands of men - it's always men - who will be thinking 'I could do that'. Presumably, their lives are full of sufficient inner torment and self-hatred to provide the impetus for such terrible crimes.
The Nice truck-murderer told an acquaintance 'you wait, soon everyone will know about me'.
And then, when they occur, they trigger world-wide media coverage, and inspire (if that is the right word) the next hideous example.
It's a pity society doesn't believe in hell any more. As it is, these people believe, among other things, that as they will take themselves out with their final, despicable act, they will never have to suffer the consequences. So I can't see any way to prevent these acts from regularly occuring from now on. I think it is an extreme manifestation of the attitude that nothing matters, and that everything is simply a spectacle - a complete disassociation from reality.
Comments (106)
It's a surreal perspective, which makes me want to invest (if I had any money) in such visionary ideas such as those proposed by Elon Musk and his company, Tesla of moving away from Earth, to Mars.
Maybe the loonies won't get the same amount of kick if their wickedness won't have an effect on everyone in the world.
The parents of one of the hostages were in the court, and were extremely offended by this analogy, which I understand. These aren't games, they end in actual death. Not like the computer-generated versions of the same, although we do wonder whether the proliferation of the latter contributes to the former.
And yet it does resemble the wave of anarchist terrorism in the late 19th century. There were real conspiracies who committed atrocities and killings; and there were also loners like McKinley's assassin, who were 'inspired' by other events to create an event of their own. It doesn't take many men to take this path, for fear and panic, understandably, to grip populations. Two Conrad novels powerfully evoke the times, albeit from a conservative perspective, 'Under western eyes' and 'The secret agent'.
I don't see the link with the idea of hell. Did hell really put people off committing foul murders? Some Islamists believe in heaven, and it is the corollary of hell that justifies their act: that they themselves will go to heaven, having left the earth behind as a better place. Belief in divine imaginary places beyond our human span seems to help fuel such things, rather than deter them.
The question is how do we limit such news events without interfering with freedom of the press.
I don't think a belief in hell deters criminal acts in the absence of a valued peer group that promotes such a belief. Anyone who is pushing hellfire and damnation is not a part of my peer group. Not being recognized or valued, as part of a social unit, is also part of the problem.
The United States suicide belt is explained as comprising mostly 'lonely white men with access to guns'.
Quite, but it's also a pity God created anything or anyone at all, such that he also created a hell to house his disobedient creatures. A tangent, but I couldn't help but saying it.
None of this is exculpatory, but it is important to remember that Europe hasn't been all sweetness and light since the death of Hitler in 1945.
The aside about 'hell' is that in the case, at least, of ideologically-motivated jihadis - and this latest atrocity was not one of them - they often claim to be 'going to paradise' as a consequence of martyrdom. So if the sheiks and mullahs really managed to convince them that, no, they're actually going to hell instead, then I don't see why, for people with those belief systems, that ought not to be a disincentive. (Obviously, for those who don't believe in hell it's an empty threat. And I don't believe that religion causes more evil than good, that is another meme I haven't bought into.)
Anyway, my point here is more about the fact that some acts of mass murder are not motivated by political ideology, but carried out by crazed individuals who are copying what they've seen in the media. The behaviour is becoming normalised; it's like a 'life choice' for a particular kind of disturbed mentality, simply because it is happening so often. A truly vicious cycle.
I think you are right: Some mass murderers are not motivated by any ideology at all, but are the result of rationally disordered thinking. The murder of children at Sandy Hook Elementary falls into this category. Various other violent outbreaks were of similar origin. (It seems like these are more common in the US. I suspect this is owning to Americans being less ideological, not crazier. Europeans are at least as crazy as everybody else.
Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City) however, seems to have been an ideologically motivated bomber.
As to whether mass killing is becoming normalized, no. An aberration in behavior that appears more often than we would like is still abnormal. The action of a disordered mind isn't "normalized".
A better example of normalization would be politically oriented bombing such as the IRA conducted in Great Britain. Bombs weren't the only weapons the IRA used, but they used then a lot for 30 years. Bombs have the advantage of separating the bomber safely from the explosion (if all goes according to plan) and even of warning the occupants of a bomb about to blow up. Gunman can't shoot and not be present, and so far as I know at least, no gunman has warned a city that 10 to 100 people will be shot later that day, or in 15 minutes. Surprise is a critical component
Of course, people can mix disordered thinking and ideology. Sometimes that seems like a given.
Obama he lamented at a press conference after a mass shooting, the fact of how routine it was for him to be addressing the media about yet another atrocity, about how it had become almost 'business as usual'.
I think the moral is: one has to be careful what thoughts are entertained or 'played host to'.
I think this signals to us that it's not mass killing that is meme-like. It's our endless fascination with such stuff. A question in keeping with Dawkins' adaptationist leanings would be: how is this fascination with death serving us? What's it doing for us?
House of Cards is also another, where a brutal Machiavellian agent is lauded in someway as an an immoral antihero. By virtue of being free of moral constraints, accepting whatever the consequence may be, such elite figures move forward, conquer and reshape the world via cunning acts of murder.
"History is a bath of blood." William James
Some of us harbor re-sentiment against the performative power of knowing as it is expressed via elite figures here. It's comparable to the performative power of being rich, or having functioning kidneys.
If that resentment is akin to a flame and it happens to exist next to a powder keg, then an explosion may occur.
Events of mass killings as reported through the news remind us of our own resentment, however irrational, absurd or unfounded that resentment might be.
Hmm. So a more vague sense (if there is one).
I think the kinds of acts I'm referring to aren't Machivellian, because they don't serve any end. They're surely an expression of id, in the Freudian sense - purely destructive expressions of hatred, rage and frustration. Frank Underwood is evil but in a different way - to achieve his ends, in the search of power.
Again, politically-motivated terrorism is not quite the same, although ISIS comes close - I recall it said that Al Queda split from ISIS because it thought they were too violent! (and that's saying something.)
Overall, I think the media has to moderate its coverage of these atrocities. Of course they have to be reported but I think their coverage ought to be more quotidian and less sensationalist.
The media won't do much. Have you ever considered that instilling fear in a population makes the ruling of them all that much easier. Fear is a powerful weapon.
Fortunately, not the entire world shares the US' view of governance.
The fact that we're shocked and appalled by it is excellent news. It means we aren't in the Soviet Union during the 1950's. Historians tell us that during that period everybody in Russia must have known somebody who had disappeared to a death/labor camp. We enjoy a fabulous naivete.
or gun ownership.
Didn't seem very nice to me.
I don't fully understand this comment. We are seeing terrorist acts in the US where there are limited gun restrictions and in Germany where there is significant gun restriction.
Is Pokemon Go a meme, a fad, a commercially successful game, a conspiracy, or an illusion? I don't know. Haven't played it. But if it were to be identified as a meme, what could you do about it?
Would one want TNT to be made available OTC? I mean TNT is inherently not violent...
I didn't really pose it as a theory, except for to point out that there is definitely an element of imitation involved in many of these events. The Munich killer, for instance, was obsessed with violent video games, and also with the Anders Brehvik killings. So it wasn't difficult for him to act out those fantasies, I would think, because he had been rehearsing them for a long while, and even practising online.
What can you do about it? It's very difficult. I think it's a symptom of a degenerate phase in human history. You can guard your own mind and try and educate your own children as far as possible, but there are many violent images, games, means of violence, and so on, and its extremely hard to tackle that problem at the root, I would think.
Being violent doesn't make TNT and guns/ammo bad things; it just means they are violent, and not neutral objects. If you carve a small gun shape out of a bar of ivory soap -- that's not a violent object. It's a carved bar of soap.
Products are messages. Handing out condoms in a bar conveys several messages to a patron: you are a sexual person; you might have sex tonight (or soon); you should use condoms. Handing out guns before a riot would convey a much different message: people threaten you; you need to defend yourself (or you need to go on the offensive); guns are effective methods of defense or attack (whether they are or not...). Shoot, shoot to kill. Condoms and guns, as objects, convey very specific messages. Most products carry some sort of message.
We buy stuff because, among other reasons, the objects carry messages about us, the buyers, that we wish to associate ourselves with. A very small gun that fits nicely in a woman's purse carries a different message than a double barreled shotgun. An expensive electronic gadget (instead of an economical model) usually says something about how we value ourselves. "Oh, no; I really need the function and pizzazz of a really fine mobile phone. Pulling out a cheap phone at a conference just doesn't cut it."
But, I would have to agree that guns don't kill people, people do. So, if people are the problem then remove the tools that would enhance their killing capacity (if they're in such a state of mind). Obviously, we're talking about a perfect world; but, not impossible.
My point only was that you can't blame the rash of terrorist violence we're now seeing on the lenient gun control laws in the US, considering Munich isn't in the US.
I wonder if there's any point in trying to 'make sense' of these actions. How do you rationalise something inherently irrational?
I wonder if it is something like a form of 'demonic possession' - a person becomes seized by an idea or a complex of ideas, so powerful it drives them to commit ghastly, unimaginably awful and irrational acts, and kill themselves after doing it. It really is as if a malevolent demon has possessed the body of an otherwise normal human. (Recall that sub-processes in UNIX computer systems used to be called 'daemons'.) It may not be remotely possible to ascertain whether that actually happened - but it sure seems like it.
Although I suppose the more mundane explanation is simply that the 'mass murder meme' has now become a template for a certain form of behaviour, and there will continue to be those in whom this idea hatches, and who will then carry it out. The saddening thing is, there is no practicable way to prevent these from continuing to occur in modern America; the world's most powerful and advanced political economy has somehow created a culture which is powerless to stop them occurring.
3k were killed on 9-11, by people who believed the act would plant them in heaven.
Well, ISIS has claimed the attack actually, there's just no independent evidence linking him to ISIS yet.
However, the fact that he was a very wealthy old man (64 years old) with a girlfriend from the Philippines to whom he was sending many 10,000s of dollars makes it inherently suspect. I highly doubt that his girlfriend wasn't aware of what he was up to, regardless of what she says. She was probably out of the country on purpose.
In addition, you don't know what was going through his mind. He had a lot of guns acquired, so clearly I think there was something wrong with him psychologically... you don't acquire so much weaponry for no reason.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't find it inherently irrational. I mean I can imagine someone who feels they are approaching the end of their life and are motivated by a dangerous evil ideology to engage in such crimes.
Alternatively, I can also imagine someone who just loses their capacity to feel empathy, care or love for any other people combined with approaching death and a feeling of inherent meaninglessness and total rejection of Truth which just drives them to do such a thing. I'd say they are so "numb" by that point that nothing short of doing something like this can make them feel anything.
What I find most horrifying is the idea that such evil can exist in someone's heart. It is almost a Satanic action.
Quoting Wayfarer
An interesting hypothesis. But there certainly have to be some factors which make one susceptible to such demonic possession no? I mean could it just happen to anyone? Could me, or you, suddenly turn into mass killers?
There's also the fact that "psychotic episodes" and the like cannot explain such actions because they are clearly premeditated and take long-term planning. There was a case in my country of a police student in training who was just learning to shoot a gun, who suddenly turned around and shot his instructor and then killed himself. Such things can be interpreted as the person having a psychotic attack of some sorts and doing something terrible almost without realizing, and then once they realize what they've done they feel great fear and horror and kill themselves. But this clearly wasn't the case here.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but why would they do that? I mean what's the chain of thoughts that leads someone to do such a thing?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I agree that it is in large aspects a cultural issue, and not only about gun laws. Somehow this form of mental illness propagates itself, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't understand it very well.
Empty minds, rootless minds, minds that have lost any intrinsic connection to reality, to other people, to meaning. 'Demons' can't act save for through the bodies of others.
I know of myself that I will never be a killer, but on a much more mundane scale, I also know in myself that I am still vulnerable to degenerate ideas. Not so different, in principle.
Quoting praxis
Have a read of this - Terror in the God-Shaped Hole - A Buddhist Perspective on Modernity's Identity Crisis. Long read, but well worth the effort in my opinion.
Yes, I think this is on the right track. But how does it happen that someone loses their intrinsic connection to reality?
I think understanding this is of fundamental importance in preventing or stopping such attacks from occurring. I mean if we always say they're irrational that's basically like throwing our hands up in the air and saying there's nothing we can do to stop them. But there surely is if we can understand what brings them about and what puts people in such frames of mind.
He might as well have been on some powerful adulterants like drugs, sex, and money. I don't know if places like Las Vegas brings out the best or worst in people; but, being in such an environment could encourage the said behavior. I mean, people do act irrationally by gambling, despite knowing how little chance they have at beating the house.
Did anyone watch The Hangover? There's already a third installment of the film, in the works.
Reality ain't what it used to be ;-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goleta_postal_facility_shootings
What do you believe the difference is between irrational and evil?
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Agustino -- what makes you think he lost his connection to reality?
I don't know. I could not care less whether he was in touch with reality or not, whether he was a relatively normal seeming guy (as a relative reported), or what motive he might have had.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Oklahoma City federal courthouse in April of 1995. 168 people were killed and several hundred injured. What motivated this act? They were angry about Federal actions at Ruby Ridge, Idaho--the August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his Idaho cabin, in which Weaver’s wife and son were killed, and the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, in which 75 members of a Branch Davidian religious sect were burnt to death in their compound (which may or may not have been caused by federal agents).
Nichols and McVeigh viewed the Federal government as Public Enemy #1. Blowing up a courthouse seemed like a reasonable way to even the score.
Were McVeigh and Nichols demented? No. Within their frame of reference, they were fighting a guerrilla war. Within that frame of reference, their actions were rational. Please note: I'm not searching for an excuse for what they did, just assessing their sanity. They were evil, but not crazy.
Was Stephen Paddock fighting some sort of war? I would not be surprised if evidence turned up that suggested he was. Again, he was totally evil whatever the reasoning, but he probably was not insane. (Many people reach for insanity as an explanation in lieu of evil. One doesn't have to be a conservative theist to identify evil.)
We have waaaay too many guns--300 million and adding more all the time. Actually, the owners of all these guns have shown a remarkable degree of restraint, in that less than 1000 people have been killed in mass shootings since 1966, when Charles Whitman, a former Marine, killed his mother and wife and then climbed to the top of a tower and killed 15 and injured 31 more with a rifle.
The Atlantic
Why can't we just be honest?
We don't really know why these mass murders are happening.
Every explanation I have heard amounts to speculation.
One thing is for sure: they are highly politicized.
Haven't we always had epidemic levels of violence in the U.S.? In the Old West it was...well, you know. I'll never forget a photograph I saw in Guthrie, OK: people standing around and looking at a bullet-ridden body in a store window. I guess film and TV have replaced the store window. Then there was the violence of the Prohibition era; the violence of the '60's; Kent State (the mass murder that nobody ever seems to bring up); the War On Drugs; and all of the gang violence in inner cities.
I do not believe that what I am about to say is speculation. I understand this to be sociological fact: the violence always afflicted low-income urban areas and was mostly ignored, but now that it has leached into affluent suburbs suddenly it is considered a cultural and moral crisis.
It now appears in strange, unpredictable patterns. It now inspires ideological passion about public health vs. the Second Amendment. It now has FOX News, CNN and MSNBC to milk every ounce of political capital and TV/radio ratings they can from it. But it has been there all along.
I don't think the question we should be asking is what philosophical, religious, political, psychological and sociological variables it can be reduced to. I think the question we should be asking is who we want to be, and how.
If we want to be people who tolerate senseless, preventable violence, there is probably not much any academic, legislator, clergy, social activist, etc. can do to stop the mass murders.
There is a complete 'disconnect' between guns and consequences. I'm not talking about squirrel, duck, and deer hunters.
"Disturbed"? You think?
"Mystery"? What mystery?
"Secret life"? What secret life?.
The pile of guns and ammunition that Paddock had in his hotel room were legally obtained, presumably, on the open gun market. It's all for sale--semi-automatic guns and 'bump stock' devices to enable the automatics to overcome the deficiency of being merely 'semi' automatics. The only "disturbed" Paddock (instead of the stark raving mad Paddock) had further equipped his rifles with enhanced sites that enabled him to target individuals from a distance of 1200 feet. In addition he had enough ammunition to fire away for what, 9 minutes?
The deployment of his arsenal in Las Vegas follows the logic of the legally sold product: A large share of the 300 millions guns in private hands are designed to kill people--mostly one, two, or three at a time, but more complicated and entirely legal guns are on sale that are designed to kill dozens, and injure a few hundred in just a few minutes more.
At this very moment, Thursday, 12:30, p.m., central time zone, potential killers are browsing the legal, public, socially accepted displays of guns, ammunition, and accessories and are opening their wallets to buy.
Are to suppose that Stephen Paddock is the last person who will follow the logic of the product and that no one else will ever fulfill the purpose for which the (in effect) machine guns are designed--killing lots of people? No.
What scientific evidence is there that supports your thesis?
I would take a close look at any reliable scientific evidence--any research paper, journal article, etc.-- you know of.
History tells us that the National Rifle Association has, since 1977, sought to normalize guns in public and private settings, by seeking to have laws that limit the use of guns struck down or repealed. They have been really very successful. The NRA has been spending up to $100,000,000 per year on selected conservative candidates (they don't bother supporting democrats). This has had concrete results in national and state legislation. weakening -- or eliminating -- controls on gun usage.
There are, according to informed reports a range of 1 gun for every American to 1 gun for every two Americans. Neither all, nor 1/2 of Americans hunt game. Most of these guns are for target practice, collections, or for defensive or offensive purposes. This is a matter of extensive public record. So also is the rate of death from gun violence. There isn't a strict correlation of 1.0 between guns and gun deaths, but there is some correlation. And we know that if one doesn't have a gun in one's hand, one can not shoot somebody with it.
My thesis -- that the number of guns in circulation, and the slight control on who buys all kinds of guns and accessories contributes to gun violence is supported by public health researchers. Naturally, there are other factors besides the guns themselves. There is the price of guns and ammunition; there are the social factors of lax law enforcement in ghettos which allows multiple-killers to get away with their crimes; there is the history of social deprivation and abuse.
Are you sure that you do not have this statement backward? What can we actually do to stop such massmurders? Do you sentence the massmurderers to death? Clearly that doesn't work. The question of why these things occur will never be answered, and therefore the cause cannot be addressed. There is really no rational option but the painfully obvious ... to tolerate.
Globally, 151,000 people die every day. That's a hard fact. It's objective. [Going back to the recent objective/subjective discussion].
Now people overlay their cultural biases on it. The overwhelming majority die of heart disease. They don't make the news. 21,000 children die of malnutrition and disease secondary to poverty. They don't make the news. Just in the US, 100 people die every day in automobile accidents, most involving alcohol. They make the local news but not the national or international news. They're just as dead and their deaths were just as unexpected and tragic and horrifying as those 59 in Las Vegas, but they don't have the same cultural resonance.
Suppose that objective facts stay the same but the cultural emphasis changes. So we ignore the 59 dead in Las Vegas because crazy gun nuts are actually a statistical anomaly. Perhaps the news focuses on the the automobile deaths. We show the 100 daily dead on the evening news, show the grieving relatives, find the bartenders and liquor store clerks who sold the perpetrators their booze. Something might be done.
The 151,000 deaths are objective. Which deaths we regard as newsworthy and culturally meaningful is purely cultural. It's an illusion. The deaths are real. The horror over this 59 and not the 21,000 dead children is cultural and political.
You want to ban butt stocks? Why? Why not ban drunk driving? First offense, 30 days in the slam. Second offense, a year in the slam. No excuses, no picking up trash on weekends, no slaps on the wrist, no suspended sentence because you play golf with the local police chief or contribute to the mayors reelection fund. Drive drunk, go to jail that night.
You'd save a Las Vegas worth of lives every single day of the year.
Why are you worked up about the 59 and not the 151,000 or the 21,000 or the hundred a day? Why are you emotionally troubled by the number 59 and not bothered in the slightest by 151,000?
It's the same phenomenon as plane crashes. A hundred people die in a plane crash and it makes the national news. That same hundred die in geographically dispersed car crashes and nobody except the friends and relatives even hear about it.
Death is objective. What makes the news is cultural and political. One is real and the other's an illusion.
Tripe. There is no 'moral equivalence' between deaths by natural causes and catastrophes, and homicides caused by deranged gunmen for no conceivable reason. It's astonishing how easily these rationalisations are wielded - perhaps it is one of the reasons that it keeps happening. 'Just an illusion, folks, nothing to see here, move along.
Sure we do, it's abundantly obvious. Very high numbers of guns in culture, frequent depictions of killings in movies and video games, and imitative behaviour on the part of alienated or psychologically unbalanced individuals. It's a problem almost unique to the USA, although it does happen in other countries, but with nowhere near the same frequency.
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The US is literally in a class of it's own. You have to extend every chart just to fit the US in when it comes to death by gun. Yet at every point will you find attempts to diffuse, deny, disperse or downplay the specificity of the problem. One will find it assimilated to 'human nature', or 'deaths in general' or 'we don't know what the problem really is'. Anything to deny that this is a problem whose scale is exclusive to the US, and is specifically to do with gun deaths which cannot be simply assimilated other other kinds of death, violent or otherwise.
http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/
Even liberal HuffPo gets it. "We Are More Afraid Than Ever of Gun Violence, But the Truth Is the Murder Rate Is at a 50-Year Low"
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/we-are-more-afraid-than-e_b_8740750.html
There's a lot of emotionalism in the air but this is a philosophy forum. Another 59 people got murdered today by drunks. Their deaths were every bit as horrifying as the deaths in Las Vegas, their loved ones just as devastated. They just didn't all die in one place, and the media aren't jerking our chains about it. Someone called that point "tripe." I call it perspective.
Oh now you care about accidents. An hour ago you couldn't be bothered. The 59 killed by drunks today are joined by another 41 who died in accidents not related to alcohol. Texting, fatigue, inattention. Another 100 tomorrow. You are making my point for me. Those 59 in Las Vegas are 59 out of 151,000 that day and another 151,000 every day since. Why do you only care about the 59? It's emotionalism whipped up by the media and the circumstances. If you can pull yourself away from your melodrama for a moment, grieve for the others as well. Please.
it's depressing, the 'business as usual' attitude toward atrocity.
In all seriousness I would like you to explain this point to me.
Pro-Gun Culture in America is really sick is all I can say, it only makes sense to those who live here.
I asked you to explain to me why the 59 have such a powerful hold on you that you downplay and dismiss the horror felt by the loved ones of the victims of car crashes. If your neighbor's spouse got killed by a drunk on the freeway would you say, "Hey no biggie, at least they didn't get shot."
I'm asking you to explain this to me. Are you capable of pulling yourself out of the media haze and comprehending what it would be like to have a loved one die in a car wreck? 100 Americans every single day of the year. What if you stacked up all those bodies in a warehouse and brought in the media. Then you'd care, right? But if it's not on cable tv 24/7 you don't see it and you don't care about it and when challenged, you actually think the grief of the survivors would be less. And that the drunks themselves have no moral culpability. Not like if they used a gun, right?
This is precisely my point. Your thinking is clouded because you are being told what to feel by the media. You can't step back and imagine any horrors other than the ones you're told to care about.
This is EXACTLY the point I'm making, and you are demonstrating it. Dying at the hands of a drunk is an "accident." Because, you know, you can't really expect people not to drive drunk. It's an American right.
The are expected deaths (heart attack, cancer, infection, stroke, etc.) and then there are "excess deaths". The excess is death from preventable, unnatural causes--like murder, car accidents, and so forth. Mass shootings are "excess death". Death from flying debris in a tornado or hurricane are expected. That why people are evacuated before hurricanes hit -- deaths are expected.
So they'll ban butt stocks. It's like after Columbine when every school district in the country banned trench coats. Makes as much sense.
as it happens my immediate family has been profoundly affected by car accidents. But this has no bearing on the appalling incidents of mass murder in America. As I said, it's a meme, and it appears to have successfully occupied....many people, who then begin to rationalise it.
MURDERS ARE DOWN! Even freaking HuffPo admits that. You think they're up because the media want you to think that. The numbers say otherwise.
This partial list only includes mass killings of Native Americans. L A times tells me of some more incidents.
Rock Springs massacre: In 1885, a group of white men and women fatally beat and shot at least 28 Chinese immigrant laborers during a riot at a coal mine in southwestern Wyoming. Historians say the riot was sparked by growing displeasure over the mine’s practice of hiring Chinese workers and paying them a lower wage than American citizens.
Tulsa race riots: A white mob attacked black residents in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 and burned down the Greenwood neighborhood, which was then the wealthiest black business district in the United States. Modern estimates place the death toll at 50 to 300 people, many of them shot.
Elaine massacre: Black men in Elaine, a small town in eastern Arkansas, met in the fall of 1919 to discuss how to collect more money for their cotton crops. During the meeting, a white man who was deputized was shot. In the riot that followed, as many as 200 black people were shot and killed.
"Irrational" has a definition that is more widely accepted than "evil".
Irrational is defined as not logical.
Evil is often defined as profoundly immoral. But then what is immoral? - as what is immoral for one group of humans, is moral for another. So, what is moral is the way you are expected to behave within a group of humans, and any other behavior would have a degree of immorality associated with it, on up to profoundly immoral acts being labeled, "evil".
So, acts that are irrational don't necessarily mean that they are also evil. Only if the irrational act has a degree of immorality to it, or hinders an individual or the group's goals in some drastic way, is it also evil.
America was founded by the English, who began the slaughter of Indians and enslavement of Africans. Stephen Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) names the English cavalier class who established the southern colonies as the source of the southern values which resulted in high rates of violence in the south.
The British Empire, let us remember, was not an humanitarian operation. You all have been capable of quite brutal behavior. And, of course, I'm glad you have reformed your ways and became a peace-loving nation, after several hundred years of murderous, exploitative colonialism. How many people died during the Irish Famine? About a million, and then you got rid of two million more Irish through immigration.
The United States is a big country (3.8 million square miles) and 320 million people, not that size explains violence. It does, however provide the basis for significant differences around the country which have historical bases. This map shows the varying rates of violence in North America. Those parts of the country under the more benign influence of Puritans and NW Europeans (Germans and Scandinavians) have the lowest rates of violence, generally. The south has the highest rates--not just a little higher--they are a lot higher.
If you live in a northern tier state, you would probably be living in an area with murder rates only slightly higher than western Europe. Louisiana and Mississippi are a different matter.
Location, location, location. If you live in the NE part of Chicago, you will hear of very few murders in your neighborhood. If you live in the South Side of Chicago, chances are you will be related to a murder victim. So far there have been 545 homicides in Chicago (as of 8 October, 2017). There are still 83 days left to break last year's record, and if they put their minds to it, they probably will.
Quoting fishfry
Murders are down from the peaks between the 1970s and the 1990s. Our "base line" before and after the peak years is still higher than many countries'.
Hey, we're all whiteys here. I am a fucking long way from proclaiming the innocence of the British, either historically or currently. The human race is a murderous race, and the more and bigger the weapons, the more and bigger the murders. If we all had personal nuclear weapons, we would all be dead. What i am saying is that wanting to kill is not rare or incomprehensible, it's what every patriot will gladly do for his country, his race, his religion or his ego, and be admired by his fellows for.
The idea that violent video games cause violence is real life is ridiculous. I can't believe it's still being used by the media so many years after the original case, the title of the game escapes me now, the one that generated violent video game hysteria. Easy sensationalism for the media I suppose.
It's much more likely correlation than causation. I doubt causation is impossible but then neither is violent video games reducing levels of violence.
I've brought this point up a few times as well.
A lot of them outright say that's why they're doing it. I think we should go old school, and expunge their existence from the public record entirely. No graves, no nothing. Ensure that they are lost to history.
They aren't ignorant or stupid, they know the same things that Pinker knows about their motivations, but if even one media outlet is willing to reveal that juicy information, it will mean both that they will lose out on attention and revenue, and it will all have been for naught anyway. They operate on the same rationalization a lot of asshats do, and that's that if they don't do it, someone else will.
Stop wasting time and energy in uncivil discussions (see 70% of the posts in this thread if you don't know what I mean by that) over guns, violence, the NRA, "the mentally ill", the media, video games, the Second Amendment, the inferior character of the U.S. compared to "other industrialized nations", the inferior character of the state of Mississippi compared to states in the northeast, etc., etc., etc.
In many of these mass murders there were red flags well in advance of the crime and opportunities to intervene were missed. Virginia Tech is the best example that I know of.
Again, these recent (the past 20 years or so) mass murders are always highly politicized by people everywhere on the political spectrum.
We can't predict when and where they will happen. We do not know why they happen.
But I have never heard of anybody spontaneously carrying out a mass shooting. Therefore, I am probably not going out on a limb by saying that each mass shooting is the culmination of many things. Red flags are probably there well before the end a lot of the time. Every second and every unit of energy spent ideologizing and disrespecting and verbally attacking each other over statistical, historical and psychological split hairs are resources no longer available to learn to recognize the red flags and intervene before lives are lost to senseless violence.
No specific statement.
What science is there that supports your thesis that violence and murder are inherent features of firearms?
People kill other people with guns because that is what guns are made for. People kill on a massive scale with guns like assault weapons because guns like assault weapons are made for that purpose. Where is the science that specifically addresses those specific propositions?
Right! So discussing gun violence is now one of the underlying factors behind gun violence!
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Gun ownership is a political issue! It's the failure of effective legislation which is the single largest contributing factor to this. In case you missed it, earlier I reported that in 2015, there were approximately 15,000 non-suicide gun deaths in America, and 1 in Japan. How is that not a political problem?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
The fact that they are designed to kill and maim?
Forensic science.
Obviously a polar opposite, not a serious suggestion for anything that might happen stateside. But how about this? Everyone blathers on about the 'right to bear arms' but the very same paragraph states that this pertains to a 'well-organised militia' - like in Switzerland, where gun ownership is very high, but the controls very strict. (And, ok, everyone there is Swiss.) But imagine if you had to store your legally-owned weapons in an armoury and could only access them for a valid reason. I'm sure that's much nearer the intent of the Founders.
I have, and will continue to, stuck to the issue that you made the topic of this thread: public mass murders. Things like individual suicides, accidental gun deaths, etc. are a separate issue.
I would say that you are right. Legislation is needed. The state of Virginia scrutinized its policies after the Virginia Tech shooting and asked why many opportunities to intervene were missed. I do not know if the Virginia legislature responded. I do not know if they increased funding for mental health services, required educators to learn to recognize red flags, or anything? like that. I have not researched it.
But you are right, legislatures have an important role to play.
However, private organizations and private citizens also need to take some responsibility in being more aware of the behavior of others, recognizing the warning signs of a potential mass shooting, being aware of suspicious behavior, etc. and knowing how to intervene.
I have had many different employers. Right now I have two employers. The contrast in their policies and practices says a lot. One of my present employers is proactive and spends a lot of resources on training everybody in the organization about preventing the kind of violence like the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas. None of my other employers offers any such training. The difference is not because of laws. The priorities and sense of responsibility that private organizations and citizens have in their private lives are as important as the actions (or non-actions) of legislatures.
Speculation.
At least until conclusive scientific evidence of a causal relationship is presented.
And "why they are happening" refers to the underlying cause--the one variable that can be isolated.
It could be that contemporary life deprives people of sleep.
We don't know.
James Wilson. So, the dilemma is that if a right is not enumerated in the constitution, does that imply that people do not have that right, siding with the power of the government? Or that they do, siding with the power of the people?
The ninth amendment addresses this.
As for Japan, I'm just suspicious of such a perfect record. Basically no crime, and they always get their man when there is...
Well, that's a relief, although after Virginia Tech, and indeed after every mass shooting, there has indeed been a flurry of legislation, mainly aimed at easing restrictions on owning a gun.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Fact. The correlation between numbers of guns, and gun deaths, can't be equivocated.
Quoting Wosret
The article doesn't say there is no crime in Japan, but according to that story, homicide by gun is very rare.
Also, in this most recent case, law enforcement reports that there were no 'red flags' whatever in the case of the Los Vegas perpetrator. Nobody around him suspected anything, the gun shops where he bought all his guns thought he was a perfectly ordinary person, which apparently he was right up until that last minute.
Here in Australia, by the way, there was an appalling mass-shooting in 1996, after which the then-PM, a conservative, passed strict gun laws. There hasn't been another mass-shooting, which is not to say there is no gun crime. But the NRA had the temerity to launch an ad directed at Australia saying that we were being 'deprived of freedom' by the Government, which was infuriating. There are a few gun [s]nuts[/s] advocates in Australian politics, including one who brags about killing elephants, but fortunately their numbers and influence are small. So far.
I wasnt going off of that article just crime statistics. China, particular Hong Kong has super low crime rates as well if you believe them.
I can attest that violent crime is pretty low in China. People seem to get their aggression out by shouting, spitting, and noisily devouring bowls of noodles. There's a model for a peaceful society.
You guys are pretty naive I think... never trust the chinese...
When I wrote that first my thought was these outlets for aggressive behaviour probably helped. But really, if you look across the region you find a similar story regardless of overt "politeness" (the Japanese are apparently very polite). So, the cultural aspect is hard to pin down, and we're back to strict laws and regulations.
So you believe that a 99.7% conviction rate isnt a sign of corruption? It is established that the chinese at least release tons of fabricated clinical trails and economic data, why wouldnt they on this as well? There is a reason why they suck at science. Not to mention the epidemic of flat footedness... just saying...
No, doesn't change anything I said though.
I'm just saying that they lie is all... not because they're devious, but because their cultures differ. At no time did any of their cultures ever hold truth to be paramount. The Chinese tend to hold modesty above truth, and the Japanese public order, and politeness above truth. They've done studies on school children that show that they don't even count all forms of saying false things as "lying", like westerners, only if anti-social really.
Science, truth being paramount, even when it may be anti-social, regardless of consequences, held as paramount, is solely a Christian value. Show me a Kant in any other culture.
Hindsight is 20/20. Do you really believe that we could identify all the red flags, and then start to act on those red flags? What would those actions consist of, depriving thousands of people of their rights and freedoms because they demonstrated "red flags"?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Isn't this contrary to your red flag statement?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
This would depend on how you define "spontaneously".
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Oh, so now red flags are probably there. What would such a red flag look like, someone buying massive quantities of ammo at one time? If the act wasn't "spontaneous", then the stocking up of ammo would be over a period of time.
There is no consistency to your statements at all. The lack of spontaneity, which you have noted, is what makes the act well planned, no red flags, and unlikely to be uncovered in advance. So your "red flags" are just a red herring, and if we act on such red flags all we do is deprive many innocent people of their freedom.
Sure, and Thais tend to hold saving face above truth. They find our truthiness ugly and demeaning at times. A (real life) example: a foreign teacher catches a student cheating in an exam, removes him and reports him to his Thai boss. The shocked Thai doesn't know what to do. The foreign teacher is confused "Cheating is against the rules, isn't it?". The Thai looks at him as if he's an idiot "Of course, but why did you see him?!" Doesn't mean this always happens everywhere but that it ever does illustrates the point well enough. Anyway, interesting but off-topic.
The point was disputing the dubious statistics.
I meant I was going off topic. Anyway, sure they're dubious (to a degree).
I don't know what the natural history of a "Mass Murder Meme" (MMM) is. Gun manufacturers have some role in it's creation and perpetuation. If a product carries inherent meaning, then the meaning of high-powered rifles is different than cheap handguns. High capacity magazines are tributaries, as are devices such as the "bump stock" which enables machine-gun performance. There is a lot of cultural activity involving guns. The NRA, individual gun popularizers, political figures all have a role.
This morning (11/6/17) I heard Trump make the mandatory announcement that "guns are not the problem" -- this in response to yesterday's mass shooting in a Texas church -- 26 killed, more wounded.
Guns are the problem, even if it is very, very late in the game to gain control over the estimated 100 million guns.
Memes and the people for whom they become directives are also a problem. The meme will find the man who has reached the end of reason, is alienated. The meme will find a few of the damaged men for whom family and community have ceased to exist.
Is it "anomie"?
If Devin Patrick Kelley, mass murderer du jour, was experiencing anomie, it began years ago. He served time in a military prison for domestic abuse, and was then discharged from the service. It began earlier still.
Guns are certainly the problem in a society which sees social bonds between individual and community breaking down. There are several candidate contributors to "fragmentation of social identity" and loss of "self-regulatory values".
Anomie starts with bad parenting, and bad parenting is generational. You can readily see the difference between parents and their children who are present and engaged and parents who are not really competent, and disengaged.
Anomie continues with school, where emphasis on "mass" education leads to -- not cracks, but crevasses -- into which children fall and are therein neglected.
It often continues into adult work life, but even if work is not further alienating, damaged people don't succeed.
Mass murders are a signal (in the same way an exploding bomb is a signal) that there are regions of severe dysfunction in a society. And yes, loading up the market with guns which have no hunting or sport value is located in this region.