Story of Cruz
Story of Cruz
346 comments
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Anon learns about Material Conditions.
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How come none of these nutcases ever go shoot a billionaire or two instead of random Innocents?
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Update: someone has. Billionaire in question was Brian Thompson, the UHC CEO
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"Guy with shit circumstances decides to buy a gun and decides to go somewhere with the gun and decides to shoot undeserving people with the gun, it's society's fault"
Way to blame the victim anon. No, this was his decision. I know folks who have life shitting all over them and it doesn't make them want to kill children and families.
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It's both. Even terrible people with something to lose are less likely to throw it all away.
If this guy makes $35k a year at dollar general, he probably doesn't go on a murder spree.
But you could also just not be an asshole. Why go after random people instead of someone who actually helps cause the bullshit?
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Both apply. Yes, he ultimately chose to do it. However society shaped and funneled him into that position. It's not a binary decision between individual and systematic, both can apply. In this case, social systems failed and put a large number of people in a bad situation with an apparent easy way out. Almost all then chose not to go on a killing spree. Unfortunately, "almost all" is "all". Some will make the bad choice, when put in that position.
As a society, we can't change individual choices. What we can do however is change the framework those choices are made in. If we aim to put fewer people in that position, then fewer will make the wrong choice, and we will all be safer for it.
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society isnt you or i society is the general way things are and yes society is the cause of shootings. mental health is a direct measure of society.
society fights tooth and nail to have guns be super easy to get.
society also fights tooth and nail to keep (mental) healthcare behind an impossible wall.
so now we are generating mentally ill people that have easy access to guns. multiply that by the internal bias and bigotry you were raised with and many millions of potential offenders. boom you have a shooting every freaking day.
yes the shooter is shitty and should be killed or in jail but society is at fault for the shooting even ever coming close to occuring.
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You only said that some people have a lower threshold.
You guys are groomed in social=bad.
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I agree with UBI fully, but we ain't got nothing on Mansa Musa
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Mali only had an estimated 400 billion in treasury and it was a hereditary kingdom where only Mansa himself would have benefited directly. The United States treasury distributes 3 trillion across all federal agencies (some SUPPOSED to benefit citizens but y'know).
As for Ubi, there needs to be incentive to tie it to at least having a job or being on qualified unemployment or education. Know too many 18 year olds that would start cashing that just to stay at home and do nothing useful.
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Dont glamourize mass murderers.Dont even publish their names, publish the names of the victims.
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We can't have gun control - guns aren't the problem - people are.
Oh good - you support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?
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You support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?
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…with ready access to guns.
So much commentary here focusing on societal ills, but even in other countries with lots of poverty and shit social services they don’t have individuals committing random mass murders like us because they don’t have a collection of high capacity personal arms. There’s plenty of people in other countries that have commonality with his life, yet they don’t commit mass murder. Yeah, shootings do happen elsewhere…but not like in the US, and the difference is access to firearms.
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I hate the argument people make sometimes, "Anything can be a weapon, I could go around stabbing people with a pencil if I really wanted to. Even if you banned guns, it wouldn't matter." Yeah, except you can't kill dozens of people within a few minutes with a pencil. We've got huge problems with economic disparity, a quiet epidemic of mental health disorders with little means to help the people that need it, coupled with ridiculously easy access to high-powered firearms in our country. There will never be enough "good people with guns" to protect the world. We need to reduce access to gun ownership to prevent mentally unbalanced people from having such powerful weapons at their disposal for when they eventually snap (since they'll never have access to treatment), but that's just a pipe dream at this point in time in America.
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I had believed in the good guy with a gun idea until a citizen trying to stop a shooter by shooting back got himself shot by the police. Then I imagined myself in the position of the police in that scenario. It's not neat and tidy. It gets worse as I imagine more people getting involved with their own firearms.
In a small space where everyone can see everyone, the aggressor is clear. I think of the guy who tried to rob a gun store. Everyone there hears what he said and sees how he's acting. As soon as someone walks in without seeing the situation unfold, it becomes messy really fast.
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In the UK knife crime is a big issue for those in poverty or those in struggling cities. Having access to weapons of course increases risks of people dying ot those weapons, but removing guns isn't going to just convince everyone trying to lash out to just lie down and suffer in silence.
I don't live in a contry with civilan access to guns, and I don't live in a situation where I feel the need to protect myself with weapons, so I'm not gonna stake a claim in the gun control debate. But if you ban every weapon ever conceivable, without addressing why people are becoming violent to begin with, people will just result to using their own hands (or perhaps more realistically, going above the legal means. Like with Shinzo Abe's assassination).
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At least with a knife, you can't mow down a room full of people. Here in the U.S. dozens of people can be killed in a short time by a single person due to guns. We give them out like candy.
Both access to guns (force multiplier) and the underlying issue (poverty, lack of social mobility, etc) need to be addressed.
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If you want to ban guns you need to ban metals and CNCs, will buying a CNC require a gun license and a clear criminal record?
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But muh well regulated militia!
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the child who is not embraced by its village will burn it down just to feel its warmth
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And then you say tots and pears, and ignore the root cause.
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Let's not talk about the past.
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Had me nodding in agreement until that last line.
Cruz's Crime is not "100% society's fault." Cruz literally and figuratively pulled that trigger. At best maybe a 50:50, but to completely absolve Cruz of any wrongdoing is asinine.
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I don't think that the blame assigned is in the literal sense I think it is in the philosophical sense.
Meaning the chain of events that led here had many MANY interruption points where society could have prevented this from escalating. There is no 1 person to blame for this entire thing, it's a shared societal burden.
It's essentially the Swiss Cheese Model for society and social outbursts.
Edit: I'm not saying what happened wasn't wrong, I'm saying is that we can prevent this shit, and we keep failing over and over.
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What I find weird about this is how unbalanced people assign blame. A white young male mass shooter: absolutely society's fault.
When anybody else does something bad, the internet is much less forgiving.
Take an incredibly tame example as comparison: Amber Heard. The internet hates that person, although her life was shit and she isn't even a murderer. I've never ever seen someone say it's society's fault that she acted like a douche.
Or take another mass shooter: Andrew Bing, who was a young black man and killed 6. You don't have people on communities like 4chan, Lemmy and Reddit falling all over themselves blaming society and discussing his tragic life.
It does come off a lot as if the average person online, has a much easier time to sympathise with some people. And in consequence they give these people much more leeway than others.
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I completely agree. However, if we're talking about solutions, blaming someone like this doesn't get us anywhere, and it certainly won't prevent another similar tragedy.
The people interested in actually solving this problem aren't wasting their time on the motives of the shooters. They are all aberrations, but when the number of aberrations starts rising, that tells you there's a problem in the system, and treating the symptoms won't make it go away.
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I mean yeah society has a role to play in this but there are millions of.people who are in or have gone through this same situation without murdering a bunch of people
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If 1 in a million people will go on a killing spree, when driven to rock bottom, then you would expect to have a few, if you drive millions of people to that position.
Victorian England introduced various social safety nets not primarily out of goodness, but out of cost. It was actually cheaper to just feed the starving, rather than stopping them stealing for food, and punishing them afterwards. The fact it improved the lives of the downtrodden was just a convenient positive.
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I think this post intends to convey that society has done those people dirty too and that we shouldn't wait until those "millions of people who are in...this same situation" turn into shooters before doing something.
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Assigning blame does nothing. It'd be great if potential murders would stop and think "hey maybe murder is wrong. Maybe other people have solver similar problems without murdering anyone!" But that's not going to happen.
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And yet those ppl are now dead. So advocating for any position other than the one which removes the possibility of people making the choice to kill others is to support those deaths. Which is to say to support the status quo in the USA is to support the deaths of these people.
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No. You've just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia. Most of us don't mass murder with machine guns.
That only happens in America because you've chosen to elect people who make sure crazy people can exercise your Constitutional right to carry machine guns and stand your ground when King Charles comes on your property or you carry your emotional support machine guns to a protest. That's not "society's" fault. It's every single Republican MAGA protect the second amendment voter.
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You've just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
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most people on Earth outside of American suburbia
Inside. You mean inside of American suburbia, the depressing, isolating, boring American suburbia. People in the first world outside of America have social nets and help from the society if they're on the downswing. People in first world go to therapist when they feel bad about circumstances of their lives, not into sporting shop to buy a gun.
But you're completely right, the situation when people can go to a random shop and buy a gun is fucking insane. -
Damn, life looking pretty grim homes. King Charles?!
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you can't acquire an automatic weapon, or "machine gun", in the US without either an FFL, or buying an expensive as fuck and extremely rare automatic gun from pre-1986. You might see firearms with fire rates similar to automatic weapons as a result of illegal modifications, like that of the bump stock, but there are also less reversible modifications someone might end up doing. Anyways that's more like a theoretical, really stupid correction for me to make, because it's kind of up in the air as to whether or not automatic weapons would even be more effective if you wanted to kill a lot of people, as military doctrine generally employs them (full auto) as suppression or cover fire, making active zones of danger which enemies can't pass through or fire from, rather than for the use of killing people. Though, the military doesn't really tend to kill large unarmed groups of people, or, they prefer to do that with drone strikes, anyways. You don't really care about any of that, though, probably.
I would also like to posit that probably america has a unique combination of factors which spurn on violence. Insane amounts of wealth disparity, probably only comparable to some places in the middle east, if that, but also a sense of entitlement towards middle class living, aka the "american dream", which creates a kind of scorn and spite in the american mind when that middle class ideal is denied, or revealed as false. The way that these ideologies work is that they say that X is entitled to middle class living, that they deserve it, but that Y minority or Y oppressed group is in the way.
Also, these mass shootings, mass shootings of this specific type, tend to be relatively rare. Or at least, not as big of a problem as the media would have you believe, relative to: the vast majority of firearm violence, which primarily happens with handguns, and is related to gang violence (this category includes shootings by the police). Which is quite obviously related to poverty, and the protection of drugs as a high-value good that obviously can't be protected by the actual government. So you see a local monopoly of force evolve taking advantage of the poor in order to bring themselves to a more economically workable position, yadda yadda, I'm sure you've heard that story before. And then on top of that you have handgun suicide comprising somewhere between half and a third of all gun deaths (I can't quite remember).
All that considered, in combination with a lack of political will to get rid of guns, for somewhere around half the population, I'd probably make the prescription that you would see a better drop in violence from the legalization, or decriminalization, of drugs, universal mental healthcare, rectifying economic inequality, and of course, "common sense" gun laws, which would probably mostly apply to screenings for mental illness, primarily depression, but also conspiratorial thinking. The latter there, "common sense" gun laws, I think is agreeable to the majority of the population.
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There are also millions of people with intellectual challenges and horrid childhoods who do NOT go out and murder people.
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People react differently to being abused by people and society for years and years, until they have every last ounce of hope drained from them.
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100% this is such a bad strawman.
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Okay, let me try this.
- Mother smoked and did drugs when pregnant with me
- Born with autism, mild cerebral palsy, medical issues
- Mom heavily neglected and abused me
- Lived in many foster, adoptive homes, boarding schools, went to many schools and extreme right-wing churches
- In all of them, was either physically, emotionally, or sexually abused
- Abandoned as adult
- Joined USAF, medical discharge out of tech school when they realized their mistake
- Lived in homeless shelters and then adult foster care
- My name online is usually some form of the word "orphan"
So what am I doing? Well, I'm poor and on disability and I've struggled to manage my emotions, and I've had to grow like anybody. But I'm an ex-Christian theist, empathetic liberal, and have never done any crime. I spent a lot of years in social programs and with social workers. I live in an apartment now with two best friends. I'm writing a science fantasy novel I hope to change the world with, sharing a lot of what I experienced and what I learned. I wrote a symphonic rock and power ballad soundtrack for it.
"The Solemn Dream" Blurb:
After a very unhappy childhood, “Solemn” dies at 25 and wakes up in the space-age afterlife of Heleia, where everyone’s home planet is chosen by the seraphs— demigod social workers and keepers of the peace— based on that person’s emotional and ethical maturity. Here, Solemn chooses to become a young child again, hoping to heal and to finally find a loving family.
Jessi Vargas is a forever-19 bully who lives on Nemesis, the planet for those who don’t care that they’re harmful. Sick of being surrounded by terrible people, she prepares to leave the planet— even though she may not be worthy.
Lu Montsely is a kind and patient humanitarian who hides a terrible past. After a century of effort, she is almost ready to ascend to the utopian world of Themis to join her loving husband. Lu mentors Solemn and Jessi as her final test, and— along with their wise and humorous helper android Iota— they form a small family on Eleos.
But many do not believe that criminals deserve second chances. When the seraphs discover mass-produced weapons, they need the aid of Solemn’s new family to investigate. Solemn soon finds themselves the recipient of powerful abilities that give them a unique role in the growing conflict. And before long, Solemn and family are not only fighting to become happier, kinder, and greater— but also for the fate of the entire Helian afterlife.
...I don't think that having lived through shit means you need to be a shit person. Sure, some misfortunate people are going to have personalities that push them towards being shit people, but... those people were likely going to be shit people anyway, unless people guided them a little more carefully.
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That's all nice but not everybody is you and I don't think we can reasonably expect every single person to be you. This is actually pretty close to the "homeless people just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps" mentality.
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The people dismissing this somewhat miss the bigger picture, that statistically this had to happen because there are so many like him there.
Though I'm not sure why this guy calls the act 'fantastic', I doubt even the shooter thought what he did was fantastic, unless I'm out of the loop...
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Notorious (as a subgroup of famous) would have been a better word choice. They got the point across reasonably well otherwise, however.
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I think by fantastic the 4channer meant "newsworthy", or "that really affects people's lives". The chances of someone with that kind of background doing something fantastic in a good sense is really small
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In this context I read fantastic in a morally indifferent sense, as in it set him apart from others and allowed him to leave an impression on the world, albeit a hugely harmful one.
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Fantastic could mean unusual or extraordinary.
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Or following through on a fantasy.
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Problematic is that some people try to frame it as if his problems were the cause and reason for his actions. While obviously the point where people turn into mass shooters is when they decide to hate and blame (a specific group of) other people for it.
There is far from enough help for people who are struggling, but to prevent mass shootings the media probably shouldn't talk about them this much and we need to look at people much closer who turn their hatred outwards.
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Fantastic has the word fantasy as its root, but the meaning has shifted and that usage has fallen out of favor a bit. The same happened to terrific, which is an even greater oddity, terror being the root. The act was both fantastic and terrific but not in the most common contemporary usage of those words.
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Mixed feelings on this.
Yes, I think he was dealt a very bad hand and that undoubtedly played a factor in why he but what he did but At the end of the day Cruz still choose to do what he did. That's why I don't like the "100% society's fault" no, a person still made a choice. We can recognise what kind of dysfunctional people society can create while also not absolving them either.
Just adding cause I know someone will misinterprete my comment if I don't. Yes I think gun laws in the US are in dire need of being reformed and that the US desperately needs to improve its safety nets but at the end of the day we need to acknowledge personal agency in these situations as well.
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There are too many shootings to keep track. Which shooting was this? A few days ago or a month ago or a year ago.
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Few years ago. Marjory Stoneman Douglas / parkland school shootings.
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Nooooo! We can't help people who are in a shit situation in life, that's communism ...because rightwingers said so! And that's baaaad ...b-because it just is okay?
Tax money should only go towards private corporations that don't make our lifes better! This person was a bad person, and I can't stomach thinking my tax money could have gone towards getting them the help they needed and completely averting the horrible things they did! My tax is much better going to the military industrial complex so we can help bomb kids even better!
I for one think it's billaint that western societies are set up to regularlly leave people behind with no way to escape their situation! And when these poeple act up instead of just sitting around to die a slow painful, but conveniently quiet death, we should act like their motivations are completely incompressible! Because we all know hte alternative is to change a society that we have thrived in, and then we might not thrive as much!
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can we accept people are going to react to their shitty lives differently, and just because it doesn't make you go on a murderous spree, it doesn't mean that it is the case for everybody. the real solution isn't to make these dumb arguments against shooters etc. which might be as correct as you want them to but it's to make lives fucking dignifying in a situation where one may not be thinking rationally. if one doesn't have the strength to not make a certain choice, calling them pathetic doesn't fix shit. every single one of us is delusional.
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It's important though that people get more aware when they notice in themselves that they start to become hateful against groups of people or people in general. That's the one big difference between people with problems and people with problems who start to commit atrocities.
Instead of focusing on the "woe is me" aspect there should be more investment into understanding why some people turn against others.
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We always had lots of guns, why are mass shootings a modern phenomenon?
I think we should regulate them the way we do cars. But also there’s clearly some underlying issue. Maybe cultural where people see guns as a way to escape or see them as part of their personality.
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I do agree that guns should be regulated like cars with mass shootings by social outcasts from my understanding are trying to get back at society and even if you straight up ban guns what's stopping the outcast from doing a mas stabbing instead gun regulation is just a nesesary speed bump for people that want to hunt people same thing with gun bans as they are used by militarys and illegal sales and manufacturing will just skyrocket
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UK acid throwers enter the chat.
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I fail to see the relevance of this post and it comes off as if people want to victim blame. A lot of people have problems. A lot of people get bullied. Just think about the thousands of women who get raped and sexually abused throughout their lifes.
Mass shooter fit a profile, sure. They obviously aren't happy people. But the reason why they do this is not what has happened to them in their lifes. Otherwise we would have a lot more mass shooters.
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I think you're missing the point in that we already have a lot of mass shooters because society has failed them.
This is a symptom of our society.
Trying to absolve society of its involvement is essentially just turning a blind eye to the problem and hoping it goes away. Which is exactly the problem that we have.
This is simply taking an actual nuanced thought on the situation instead of letting your emotions regulate your thoughts and turning everything into a false dichotomy.
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It is not society which is failing when people turn to murder it's the people who turn to murder who are failing.
The focus should be on why a few people decide it's okay to hate other groups of people so much, that they murder them.
To believe it's society's fault people are turning into murderes and now it's society's responsibility to dissolve each and every problem anyone could have ever is completely unrealistic.
People will always have problems. And there will always be people who believe other lives are worth less. It's much more likely to be able to do something against the latter than doing something against people having problems.
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instead of letting your emotions regulate your thoughts and turning everything into a false dichotomy.
Well said.
Also, seems like a lot of people here on Lemmy fall for that, unfortunately.
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A lot more mass shooters? You mean like we've got? The number is going up, is that not a good indicator at an external factor?
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Yeah, there would be orders of magnitude more mass shooters if everyone with a garbage childhood and an intellectual challenge followed this path. It is the tiny minority of such people who take the terrorist path.
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But the reason why they do this is not what has happened to them in their lifes.
What other fuckin' reason is there? Everyone is precisely how they are because of the sum total of their life experiences and the results of their genetic lottery.
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Because a lot of people have struggles and only few are becoming murderers or hurt people in other ways. Murderes, at some point in their lifes, decided it is okay to hurt others. That is the deciding factor.
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Ted Cruz looks like he's in a rough spot
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do something fantastic in their life
Wut now?
Maybe 4chan self-propagandizing mass shootings as "something fantastic" should be one of those environmental factors being considered in what led up to the end result?
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Have people considered NOT murdering other people? Ohh wait, most of them have. That's why most of them don't. Ahh silly me.
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That's not how statistics works. "Not all drunk drivers kill people" is a bad argument because drunk drivers are way more likely to kill people. Same thing with crime. If you're arguing that his shitty situation isn't the main reason why he resorted to a killing spree, then you kinda have to argue the same thing for all crime, and there's research that disproves that logic for various forms of crime.
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"fail ASVAB" aside, this is true
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Here are the names and pictures of the victims. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-shooting-victims-school/index.html
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There people who are literally bordering death by hunger and drinking dirty water probably from the moment their embryo began to form. Malnutrition is proven to led to low IQ. But they all don't go on killings spree, otherwise there would be no-one suffering from hunger anymore.
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They don't all do it, they're just statistically more likely to. Being born with everything you need to be happy, healthy, educated and wealthy just makes a person less likely to do something like this, but of course there are exceptions to both sides. The overall point is still that funding programs for peope in need would likely reduce some of these events.
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Nah you are talking about crimes out of poverty which can be robbing stores and can have deaths as side effect etc.
This case is about killing people to murder them. In term of motive It's more alongside the serial killers who enjoy their victims suffering , often have high IQ, seems totaly normal for neighbors and are otherwise living quite comfy life. While this dude was no living comfy, if he was despread with money, he could have steal it but killing randoms to make them "dead" is tottaly different thing than crime out of poverty.
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Malnutrition is proven to led to low IQ.
Malnutrition, pollution (particularly lead), chronic anxiety which often manifests as a consequence of abuse, elemental exposure which can happen during heat waves / cold snaps in homes without good insulation or AC/Heating...
It all contributes to degraded cognitive functions, particularly early in life. They also contribute to chronic pain, which can lead to substance abuse. The oxycotin-to-heroin-to-fentanyl pipeline is filled with people who lose access (or never enjoyed access) to traditional medical care, didn't have access to preventative braces and surgeries (dental being a big one), and who suffered workplace injuries they couldn't treat.
All this shit is fixable and preventable. But it requires materials, labor, and some degree of competent administration to achieve. Westerners have been indoctrinated into believing none of this is possible. Its all too expensive. It's all too difficult. There's no one available who you can trust to oversee these projects.
So the problems persist in some of the wealthiest corners of the world that dirt-poor countries like Cuba and Vietnam resolved decades ago.
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I'm not sure if you are trying to agree or disagree with my point that there are people who also are in similar bad conditions if not worse who don't go on killing sprea.
As for westerns, west is probably biggest propagator of helping poor countries and sending most humanitarian help out to these malnutritioned people of all nations around the globe. Aside from US westerners have solid social systems which is so good it attracts migrants from poor places in hundreds of thousands. So i dont see it as that bad in comparison to other parts of the world.
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Most people just accept what is happening to them -> apathy. When people stop being apathetic things start happening, for better or worse. Desperate people usually do desperate things which tends to be bad for everyone involved.
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It wouldn't be 4chan if they didn't find a way to blame a woman.
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Determinism is a helluva drug...
But seriously, we gotta look at the structural issues at play in things like this. A lot of gun control advocates want to point at things like this, and say, see, this shit doesn't happen in any other country in the world, obviously the guns are the problem, we need to take the guns! But when you look at other countries, you see that the US is one of the few that has both guns and almost no social safety nets. The proposed solution on the left is never "fix the problems that lead to crime and violence"; rather, it's "take the tools used to commit crime and violence"
You can use the facile response of saying, no, this is all on Cruz, he made a choice. And it's true, kind of, except that his choices were significantly constrained by the social conditions that were imposed on him. That's not saying that what he did was right, nor does it make it the 'fault' of the people he victimized. But things like this simply do not happen in a vacuum.
Here's another way of looking at it.
If you take a dog as a puppy, starve it, leave it outside all the time, ignore it, kick it, never give it any positive interaction, and always punish it for any 'infraction' when you've never put in any time to teach it better, are you going to be surprised when it mauls someone? Why do you expect any other animal to behave better than a dog just because it walks upright and has no fur?
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The proposed solution on the left is never "fix the problems that lead to crime and violence"; rather, it's "take the tools used to commit crime and violence"
What left are you talking about? Social issues and solving them is generally by definition leftist. If one suggests it they get called socialist/communist in the US even if they're closer to center if compared to rest of the world.
We also discuss the issue of tons of crime being caused by poverty and lack of social nets, especially when discussing police brutality and the like. Now many of the members of congress people consider/accuse of being leftists are really just centrists, or close to it, or people who want to maintain their power, get votes, not really change the status quo. I'd say they match your definition, but if you're saying leftists don't want social solutions then you either haven't been talking to leftists, or you aren't fully listening.
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As I said in response to someone else: what passes for the left says that they want this, until the rubber meets the road. Criminal justice reform/defund the police? That's great, until you have a lot of homeless people scaring the Good, Decent, Upstanding citizens. High-density, affordable housing? Oh no, not in my charming, turn-of-the-century neighborhood, that would ruin it's charm and wreck my property values! MLK Jr. said that the white liberals were the enemy, and--as a white leftist--he was right!
Republicans are honest; they want to fuck everyone over as long as they make a buck, or believe that they're doing their god's will.
Personally, I side with the anarchists that are at least trying to work within their communities to make shit better in whatever small ways they can.
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I actually question what left you're talking about lol. Outside the internet, the American left does NOT talk safety nets unless they're one of the furthest left voices. Leftists are a very small minority in the US.
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Bad faith argument. The Left is very much pro-social safety nets and pro-mental health supports. It's kind of our whole fucking thing aside from worker's having ownership of their labor.
The issue is not enough Americans understand the basic function of government, let alone how new policy becomes law, let alone how fucked they're getting by their government and not having the werewithall to understand that they've had their social safety nets eroded consistently by Republican politicians since the Nixon era or earlier. So the only answer that seems to stick in the minds of anyone is 'libruls wanna take my guns away!" well, yeah, take the guns away of the known criminals and known mental cases because we're not making much headway on the "improving social safety nets" part of the plan.
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No, the left says that it's in favor of this shit. It never does that, even when they have total control over a state. (Specifically, what passes for the left in the US; I can't really speak for what the left is doing elsewhere in the world.) Look at California, where Dems have a supermajority; the things that they say they want, like affordable housing for everyone, walkable, high-density cities, good public transit, public education that works, police/criminal justice reform, etc., aren't getting done because everyone gets all NIMBY when it's near them, and people are losing their goddamn minds over homeless people just existing.
OTOH, they're more than fine with taking away the right to keep and bear arms.
At least Republicans are completely up-front about being awful shitbags.
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What is agreeable for social safety net(s) from the perspective of conservatives?
Single payer healthcare? Universal Basic Income? More expansive food subsidies? More expansive housing subsidies?
What is not considered "government hand out" that we can all agree on?
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Personally, IDGAF what social/fiscal regressives are okay with. We've been doing this shitty form of capitalism too long where we put profits ahead of people, and that needs to be ended.
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And what of the vast majority of shooters who don't have such shit circumstances? Lmfao.
Columbine? Las Vegas?
What about the straight up racists going on killing sprees? Aka white people who listen to too much am radio and YouTube?
Congrats, you've cherry picked one of like two well known shooters who were like this. Quit victim blaming you rotten fuck.
Edit: For more visibility. I've been to my fair share of active threat conferences, meetings, trainings, etc.
There is no single profile for a mass shooter. Your best chance at getting any one thing correct about them is that they're male. 94% chance.
According to the FBI, there is no single warning sign, checklist,or algorithm to identify a mass shooter before an attack.
How about some possible profiles?
This profile includes characteristics such as:
• A young white male who feels entitled and has been bullied
• Access to guns in the home
• An honor roll student from a good community
• Intolerant attitudes toward racial or religious minorities
• Possesses a superiority attitude
• Poor coping skills
• Exhibits distorted thinking relative to the negativity he perceives from others
PDF Warnings:
https://lhatrustfunds.com/assets/uploads/documents/FBI-Profile-Active-Shooter.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/pre-attack-behaviors-of-active-shooters-in-us-2000-2013.pdf/view
Okay, what about mental health aspects? Yes, suicidality is an incredible predictor. But guess what? It's only there in 30% of cases prior to the shooting.
Suicidality was found to be a strong predictor of perpetration of mass shootings. Of all mass shooters in the The Violence Project database, 30% were suicidal prior to the shooting. An additional 39% were suicidal during the shooting. Those numbers were significantly higher for younger shooters, with K-12 students who engaged in mass shootings found to be suicidal in 92% of instances and college/university students who engaged in mass shooting suicidal 100% of the time.
Oh no it must've been trauma then! Everyone knows someone who suffered abuse is more likely to abuse right!? No.
In terms of past trauma, 31% of persons who perpetrated mass shootings were found to have experiences of severe childhood trauma, and over 80% were in crisis
Want to know the real profile? Massive change in personality. Wants access to guns. They'll TELL someone they're thinking about hurting others. Loneliness.
NONE of which requires anything even remotely mentioned in that farce of a greentext lol.
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Let's not pretend the incredibly common pattern only consists of two people while pretending an actual outlier - Vegas - is somehow common.
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You respond as if in disagreement yet the article affirms everything I've said lol.
There is no single profile for a mass shooter. Your best chance at getting any one thing correct about them is that they're male. 94% chance.
According to the FBI, there is no single warning sign, checklist,or algorithm to identify a mass shooter before an attack.
How about some possible profiles?
This profile includes characteristics such as:
• A young white male who feels entitled and has been bullied
• Access to guns in the home
• An honor roll student from a good community
• Intolerant attitudes toward racial or religious minorities
• Possesses a superiority attitude
• Poor coping skills
• Exhibits distorted thinking relative to the negativity he perceives from others
PDF Warnings:
https://lhatrustfunds.com/assets/uploads/documents/FBI-Profile-Active-Shooter.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/pre-attack-behaviors-of-active-shooters-in-us-2000-2013.pdf/view
Okay, what about mental health aspects? Yes, suicidality is an incredible predictor. But guess what? It's only there in 30% of cases prior to the shooting.
Suicidality was found to be a strong predictor of perpetration of mass shootings. Of all mass shooters in the The Violence Project database, 30% were suicidal prior to the shooting. An additional 39% were suicidal during the shooting. Those numbers were significantly higher for younger shooters, with K-12 students who engaged in mass shootings found to be suicidal in 92% of instances and college/university students who engaged in mass shooting suicidal 100% of the time.
Oh no it must've been trauma then! Everyone knows someone who suffered abuse is more likely to abuse right!? No.
In terms of past trauma, 31% of persons who perpetrated mass shootings were found to have experiences of severe childhood trauma, and over 80% were in crisis
Want to know the real profile? Massive change in personality. Wants access to guns. They'll TELL someone they're thinking about hurting others. Loneliness.
NONE of which requires anything even remotely mentioned in that farce of a greentext lol.
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Cruzeiro lê snipper mein kampfyre
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This guy Cruz had a horrible life, there's no doubt. But that doesn't excuse his going out and committing mass murder. The people he killed did not make his life the misery that is was, and killing them only brings even more misery and murder into the world. There is no "fantastic" outcome. No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
The guy who shot up all those black people at the Tops Market in Buffalo - did he really think killing random black people, would stop black people from existing? Or prevent people from supporting black people? Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
And how despicable to say that kids should be armed. No "Good kid" would ever murder another kid, whether that kid is good or bad. The minute you kill someone you've become a corrupt monster without redemption. GUNS ARE THE PROBLEM, they are NEVER the solution.
But it takes intelligence and maturity to see that. I am 65 years old. If you aren't, I don't expect you to understand and get why guns are so bad. So don't bother to reply if you're not old enough to get what I'm saying, it's a waste of your time and mine also.
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"Excuse" isn't what matters, only address, prevent, protect.
People make the same mistake without say child abuse. Doubling down on punishments without addressing the real harms of over punishing.
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if it "excused" it, we'd say "oh, okay, on that case that's fair. no further action needed"
what this does is explain it. and with the insight offered by this explanation, we can say, "oh, yes, I can see how this could have come about. now I know what to look for/do to prevent similar tragedies in future"
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I think you missed the point here. This shooter had no opportunities prested to him. He wasn't smart enough or connected enough to ever be comfortable, let alone actually do something noteworthy. Being on the news for a day or two is the only "fantasy" he could possibly achieve. It not about causing a sea-change, it's just about getting noticed.
He wasn't born a monster, but violence was the only obvious route to having any impact on his surroundings.
American society loves guns and hates helping poor people, this is what we get.
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Maybe he was just angry, too. Maybe he just wanted to express that anger and be heard for once.
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So don't bother to reply if you're not old enough to get what I'm saying, it's a waste of your time and mine also.
Wasting time is what I'm here for. Did you expect that gatekeeping responses to your own post would work?
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Sounds like thinking is not something that he's interested in doing.
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No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
The exception that proves the rule being Martin Bryant at Port Arthur.
My fellow Americans just don’t give a shit about the death toll.
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It's not positive or what the shooters intended but I think Columbine had a significant cultural impact.
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The guy who shot up all those black people at the Tops Market in Buffalo - did he really think killing random black people, would stop black people from existing?
No, he probably didn't think it would stop black people from existing. Instead, he probably thought that he had no feasible options to do so, and if he were able to do anything as an individual, then it would be carrying out a mass shooting and trying to "make an impact." These "manifesto" shooters are typically immersed in some kind of online group that promises to applaud and echo the violent behavior. Regardless, the outcome is awful.
EDIT: From an excerpt on the Buffalo shooter's manifesto:
The author also expressed support for [other] far-right mass shooters
As much as 57% of the text-based ideological sections were plagiarized
It's about being isolated from the real world, whether physically, mentally, or both, and then being sucked into a private group that idolizes bigotry/racism, violence, and other mass murderers.
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"I'm older, so I'm right"
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No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
History is full of examples of people who murdered hundreds or thousands of people and not only got away with it, but became heroes for it.
Even recently, the killer of Shinzo Abe seems to have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Violence is wrong, of course, but let's not pretend that it never works.
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"Hey man, you wanna be a star/take this, and show them who you are/make them pay in, blood for every scar/there's no saving you, from the monster you are" - Bulletproof by From Ashes to New
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Never skip your social studies classes, kids
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There is no "fantastic" outcome.
Fantastic != Good
No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit ... Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
And what results are those? I can't speak for any spree killers, but I've never gotten the impression that they believed their killings would actually change anything. They typically seem to be acting purely out of revenge, albeit misplaced.
And how despicable to say that kids should be armed.
Who said that? The OP on 4 Chan didn't. I haven't seen anyone in these comments say that.
GUNS ARE THE PROBLEM, they are NEVER the solution.
Gun control would be an effective way to reduce gun violence, and on its own that's a credible argument. But guns literally are not the problem. The problem is the fact that people want to lash out at society and the societal/governmental forces that push them there. I'm not saying guns are good or not to control them, just don't forget you're treating a symptom rather than the root problem. If we were to only pass gun control these problems will continue to fester. Again, I'm not saying don't do it.
I am 65 years old. If you aren't, I don't expect you to understand
Most of the people in power and in the electorate who have been stonewalling gun control as well as any kind of social welfare programs that could prevent mass killings are older than 65. It is old indifference, or even contempt, that's holding us back, not young ignorance.
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True, also make any lethal weapon illegal in usa
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Or, you know, we could just reallocate these egregiously huge military/police funds to healthcare + infrastructure. There are innumerable reasons people in this country are driven to violence but the number one is the violence it inflicts on us.
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Pretty fucked to watch people blame doctors for mass shootings, because the pro-gun crowd doesn't want anyone blaming guns.
The Maine shooter received urgent, emergency mental healthcare. 2 weeks in a psychiatric ward, being given daily treatment and observation by doctors, who did everything they could to stabilise him.
What did you want them to do? There's no instant, perfect cure. There's no pill or surgery to fix "I want to kill as many people as I can with my legal firearms".
Or does the group constantly bleating about "freedom" want to indefinitely hold people against their will in a psychiatric ward, for the crime of "not being healthy enough to sell guns to"?
Doctors need months to stabilise a patient and potentially years for full remission. Since America is fucked, they also need someone to cover the tens of thousands of dollars since for-profit insurance companies and for-profit politicians will do everything they can ensure it isn't them.
But the gun manufacturers only need a couple of days and a few hundred bucks for everything they need to kill everyone in sight. The far-right politicians, media companies, sock puppets and suckers have already been working on them for years, making sure they know exactly who their targets should be when they snap.
It took the gun lobby 25 years to find their perfect excuse -- "It's a mental health problem". A tidy little catch phrase that sounds right if you don't think about it, that demands we jump a hurdle that will cost tens of billions of dollars and take 50 more years of medical research.
But it's no more bullshit than "violent video games" or "not enough prayer" or "too many doors" was.
If America has 20 social problems causing people to use their legal firearms to kill as many people as possible, then America has 20 reasons why the current gun laws are hopelessly insufficient for the society they're supposed to serve and the pro-gun crowd has 20 things they need to fix if they want to indiscriminately sell that society guns.
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We can make it harder to get a gun. But there are so many already in the US its difficult to rein that back in.
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Just have the same beuracroracy you have for vehicles. Yearly registration. And same licensing as liquor. Only licensed sellers.
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What a stupid take. Other than a few far right idiots, nobody is going to risk their life over a gun. And those oh so tough gravy seals are going to roll over at the first sign of serious pushback. That just leaves the real nutcases that definitely shouldn't have guns in the first place. And the police being unwilling to do their job is an argument for police reform not for inaction.
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There are also loads of guns that are old enough that there is no way we could know who owns them. I legally possess a firearm that I'm the 4th person it's been handed down to, and it didn't even start in my family. There is no way it could be tracked by a law enforcement agency looking to get all the guns. I used to live in Illinois, and the law there says the gun seller has to maintain the sale record for 10 years. So, after 10 years, it becomes super hard to track. It would be a logistics nightmare to try and confiscate them all.
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Yeah slap more bandaids on the issue. That'll fix it.
"Any lethal weapon" lmao dumbass. Just because you're not allowed to touch the kitchen knives doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
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And what have you and your fuckfaced, pro-gun friends fixed in 25 years of insisting you alone have the solutions? Which have your bullshit promises have come true?
You've enthusiastically pushed America the closest to authoritarianism out of any wealthy country. Property crime is no rarer than anywhere else, it's just got a layer of gun violence on top. You've enabled domestic terrorisism at frequency and lethality that makes Middle Eastern extremists blush. Minorities are executed on the street by police that go unpunished and thrown into for-profit prisons to be used as slave labor. The families you all insisted you were going to keep safe with your guns are scraping their children's brains from the ceiling at an unprecedented rate.
It wasn't violent video games. It wasn't Marilyn Manson. It wasn't Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn't too many doors.
It was self absorbed dogshit like you and it has been the entire time.
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An everyday hammer can be turned into a lethal weapon, should I not be allowed to have finger nails just because I could scratch someone to death?
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Negative.
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A Regular Day In The Life Of The American
You wake up in the morning to the sound of your padded alarm clock going off. You remove your one thin sheet, after all, it could suffocate someone if air couldnt pass through it. You think about when it used to be legal to use pillows, those were good days.
As you start to get ready for school, you begin to tape your pants together, as is tradition since belts got banned. You pull your shirt on and the fibers get stuck in your beard that you havent been able to shave in years.
You walk the several miles to school, and think to yourself that the air smells a lot better since all vehicles were banned. Your teacher starts to tell you to take out your pencils, until she remembers. She must not've gotten enough sleep last night. You shrug, it has been cold this winter.
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"cruz" could have done many other things than work as a retail slave. many jobs dont require anything but muscles and a desire to learn.
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I have worked with people suffering from FAS before. Their impulse control problems made many jobs untenable. A desire to learn cannot overcome some disabilities.
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even just holding a sign during road construction is going to pay more than standing behind a counter. basic carpentry isnt difficult and you dont need a lot of intelligence to do it (had a roommate once who did framing, guy was dumber than a box of dirt but he made a really nice wage).
there are a lot of jobs one could do. perhaps cruzie's fault was that he had no ambition.
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Please tell me where these "things" are, cause I've been unemployed and trying to find one of them for the past 4 months to no avail.
The only companies responding to my applications are for shitty fast food, retail, and call center jobs. I'm middle-aged and I'm so sick and tired of those gigs. I want something different that allows me to actually pay my bills on time for once.
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For instance?
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Dude, wait that's not right! We have to blame the guns, obviously, not society. With enough "thoughts and prayers" and some extra helpings of gun control laws, no one will be desperate or depressed or rageful enough to hurt people! Don't bring your logic or nuance into the conversation or someone could get confused!
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Yeah all we need is a good guy with a gun. Maybe a guy from the navy. No one from the military ever goes on a shooting rampage...
Maybe if we can remove...idk...the method ppl use to kill large amounts of people. No no we cant do that someone might accuse you of blaming guns.
I got it. Let's blame "society" and mental health so we can sidestep the whole icky shooting people subject and continue to do nothing about guns or mental health or society.
Great answer. Way to put a flag somewhere.
As if the 2a movement gives a fuck about nuance...lmfao
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346 comments