Mass shooting: what motivates them

[idquest]

Bill Maher explains the real reason on what motivates mass shooters (starts at 2:30). Bill is quite on it, IMO:

 

 

 

[thelerner]

I was listening to an author who did a long investigation of the Columbine shooting.  His conclusion was there are no easy answers.  No singular motivations or easy categorizations.   In Columbine, the personalities and motives were different for the two kids involved. 

[gendao]

Yup, no surprise here.  The teen angst of marginalized and  "sexually-rejected" beta Yin males can be very depressing, or even suicidal in the extreme...  Especially when their plight is continually denied or ridiculed by ultra-feminist Boomer America.

[Jetsun]

I think it is a reaction against all the alpha beta crap which is so prevalent in American culture. A symptom of a dysfunctional society.

[Jetsun]

There are young males the world over who can't get laid, in most countries they don't go and try kill everyone though. So it is probably something to do with the value of sexuality in American culture, so if you can't get laid you are considered to be worthless and inferior by society.

[Miffymog]

Sorry to add this  - but one of the contributing factors to mass shootings is a society that has easy access to guns

Edited October 17, 2015 by Miffymog

[Ell]

I like Bill Maher a lot, but I'm not quite ready to get on board with this wholesale. Much the same as the often stated argument that antidepressants have something to do with it all, it opens up a chicken-and-the-egg type deal:

 

Do killers kill because they're on meds? Or are killers more likely to be being treated at any given time because they are obviously very sick?

 

Do killers kill because they can't get laid? Or can they not get laid because they have the personality of killers?

 

As several of the others have mentioned, many, many others who don't have the average sexual experience go through life perfectly healthily, just as many who take meds are greatly helped.

 

I've also never bought the whole manhood/tough guy thing being put on a pedestal in our country as a chief factor. It always makes me think, "as opposed to what time in human history? The Aztecs? The Romans?"

 

Now, all that being said, can any of these contribute to the cocktail? Yes, sure (though I would argue that psyche meds are never these crazy pills that put homicidal ideas into people's heads....I think it's far more likely that the stress and stigma around the actual taking of the pill trigger something already there)

 

I've said this in other posts: America had a rough start. A collective PTSD lingers. In so many pockets, the country has a predominantly imperial/racist attitude intermingled with a absolutely sexual fetish for guns. Really think about that: there's a couple of good 'ol boy dads in every white neighborhood who are teeming to kill a "bad guy." Or at list think they are.

 

Not the easiest environment to grow up in if you're a sick kid, never been exposed to anything, and with an undeveloped brain. They almost don't stand a chance.  

[Astral Monk]

More likely easy access to abundant pyschiatric medications.

 

'Loner, kept to himself, mental illness, marginalization' etc.

 

Guns dont help, but most gun-owning people dont commit mass murder. Prevalence of guns is not the cause and were there no guns these issues would manifest in some other equally disturbing way.

 

8)

[soaring crane]

As in other western countries where people have the same stress related problems, the same medications, the same society for the most part and yet... Not much mass murder going on.

[Ell]

More likely easy access to abundant pyschiatric medications.

 

'Loner, kept to himself, mental illness, marginalization' etc.

 

Guns dont help, but most gun-owning people dont commit mass murder. Prevalence of guns is not the cause and were there no guns these issues would manifest in some other equally disturbing way.

 

8)

 

I'm pretty sure a higher percentage of violent tragedies stem from guns being around than of people being on medications. And I've got to disagree with you on the "equally disturbing way" comment, too. It's a facet of gun defender's argument that has always baffled me - the "they'd just find another way to commit the acts." Yes, maybe some would, and certainly some have, but putting it like that too easily glances over the fact that pressure cookers have a use other than killing things. Guns don't. 

 

The lot of people who tout the dangers of psyche meds and I would probably find common ground on several things: over-prescribed? Yes. Needs to be dealt with carefully, considerately, and often isn't? Yes. But the reason I make a point to speak up when it's brought up is because a) regardless of our opinions on them, they are used in modern psychiatry; that's just a fact. b)thus I believe to make too sweeping a generalization of them could discourage people from getting any help at all and that certainly does nothing for the problem. 

Edited October 18, 2015 by Ell

[soaring crane]

The flaw in the medications argument is that there's no way to calculate the number of mass killings there would be without them.

 

The nra et al argument is that there would be fewer but the reality is that would be far more.

[Taoist Texts]

While ignorance about true global poverty, life expectancy, and family planning are no doubt a source of some of these wrong-headed comparisons, one doesn’t need to be the world’s biggest cynic to recognize that the US is only compared to a selective list of countries because doing so offers a biased view of the United States that makes it looks like an especially crime-ridden place.

 

But, we are never allowed to compare the US to middle income countries like Uruguay, Russia, or Mexico because that would show that the US is actually a remarkably safe place in global terms on top of having many more legally owned guns than those countries.

 

Nevertheless, we’ve all heard it too many times to count: gun laws in the United States are “insane” because countries like Sweden and Luxembourg have far more restrictive gun laws and are much safer because of it. The US has the highest murder rate in the “developed world” — presumably because of its lax guns laws —we are told again and again.

Few people who repeat this mantra have any standard in their heads of what exactly is the “developed” world. They just repeat the phrase because they have learned to do so.

 

They never acknowledge that when factors beyond per capita GDP are considered, it makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina.  Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense.

 

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we’re honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

 

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

 

[Golden Dragon Shining]

Medication, MTV, MK ULTRA, Psy-Ops, actors being paid etc political, economic and other agendas

With the Alpha Beta thing, are there no Beta females? or are all females Alpha 10s?

Edited October 18, 2015 by Sionnach