Elephants and Jackasses...

I can't decide if the purpose of the discussion is to decide if the shooter could have killed more people if they only knew what you guys knew about guns.

I think it needs to be said that people who grow up in shitty situations, who are continually failed by the system, suffer from a lot of mental health breakdowns that some of these shooters have. If a white person who went on a shooting rampage had the same experience a black person did growing up in a Chicago project, right-wing media would use it as a talking point about the lack of mental health options in this country. As it is, black people shooting each other is just "Chicago being Chicago".

In the case of the El Paso shooting, I think mental health should probably take a backseat in the discussion to white supremacy. He drove something like 9 hours to a place with a ton of Latinos, then posted his manifesto 20 minutes before he opened fire. Someone who is mentally ill does not methodically plan 9 hours ahead. They barely plan 9 seconds ahead. He knew exactly what he was doing. Using mental illness as a scapegoat not only excuses his behavior, but continues to stigmatize the people who actually have mental health issues. That stigma prevents people from getting the help they need. Those affected people may actually harm themselves and others so that some people can call stone cold killers crazy and hold onto their guns. It's fucked up and needs to be addressed.

 

You ever met any mentally ill people?
I've had the displeasure of being locked up with plenty of them, and some of them can be savant- like in their methodicality.

Not all mentally ill are wearing Napoleon hats and playing with their own shit.

 

Anyone who drives nine hours to kill numerous people of a specific race, and writes a manifesto comparing the immigration of said race to the genocide of the Native Americans, is not mentally sound. I don't know how that's even up for debate.

 

To be fair, that is how we deal with racism.

 

First off, I feel like I should point out that I'm neuroatypical myself. I know what it's like to be on and off medication and how that medication affects my brain function. I also have a family member who is bipolar and am well aware how they behave during manic episodes. Based on my interactions with this person, I shouldn't have used hyperbole to describe those with a mental illness.

However, in the case of the El Paso shooting, I don't believe the perpetrator was mentally ill. I would go so far as to say that a majority of these mass murderers aren't mentally ill, for these two reasons:

• Being influenced by shit you read on the internet and feeling an emotion about it is not a mental illness.
• Shooting people does not necessarily mean you are mentally ill. If that were the case, every police force and military in the world would be full on Looney Tunes.

If someone were to drive 9 hours to watch a baseball game, then write a blog post comparing the starting pitcher's spin rate on his four seam fastball to other pitchers in differing organizations, would that person be considered mentally unsound or extremely driven? Society celebrates those that have a superhuman drive, like Michael Jordan's competitiveness. This kind of drive isn't just relegated to sports. Do you really think Mark Zuckerberg doesn't spend every waking minute trying to make Facebook the only social media platform that matters? For Jordan and Zuckerberg, this drive is internal. For others, they may be driven by something external. Malala became the world's youngest Nobel laureate because the bullet from a Taliban gun made her the foremost activist on women's education.

If someone who has been living in an echo chamber of white nationalism gets angry enough and driven enough to kill, is that really a mental illness? I don't think it is. Automatically labeling someone who knows exactly what they are doing and knows the consequences as mentally ill, does a massive disservice to those who are actually sick. The fucked up part is that the only reason mental illness is mentioned at all is because people don't want their guns taken away.

 

I wasn't talking about Ohio. I was talking about El Paso. That I even have to differentiate between recent mass shootings is fucked up on a level I can barely comprehend.

I never said that mentally ill people aren't susceptible to influence. It can be both things, dude.

I think we are all smart enough to recognize that there is a difference between crazy and mentally ill. I think someone who has gone through physical or emotional trauma, or has some kind of chemical imbalance or other brain issue since birth is mentally ill. Someone who has views that run counter to what most of society ascribes to is crazy, like anti-vaxxers or white supremacists.

The shooter at El Paso was fucking crazy. He was not mentally ill.

 

The issue is that Dayton and El Paso are very different shootings presenting as very similar shootings due to their temporal proximity. El Paso has more in common with Oklahoma City, and Dayton with Sandy Hook, than either has in common with each other. El Paso very much is not about mental health, while it's possible that Dayton very much is, and it's hard to say anything meaningful about either without first splitting them apart.

 

I see where the wires got crossed up. Nowhere did I say that mentally ill people were incapable of causing harm. I said that mentally ill people did not plan ahead. This assertion was wrong of me to make.

 

I don't get this absolutist thinking. If some guy firebombed a KKK rally or NAMBLA convention, he'd likely be lauded as a hero at best, and vigilante at worst. I sincerely doubt his mental health would be called into question.

Anyway, my whole thing is that I think it's bullshit that a guy I think in full control of his faculties gets to be called crazy so people can use it as an excuse to avoid doing literally anything about mass shootings.

 

Am I the only one facepalming at Trump trying to blame these shootings on "violent video games?"

What is this, 1992?

 

It's like he took a bunch of platitudes, wrote them on pieces of paper and tossed them into a hat then started picking them out at random.

Anything to avoid looking at his own violent rhetoric as one (of many) potential reasons why all these extremist murdering pieces of shit keep targeting the very groups he publicly criticizes.

 

So it turns out the Dayton shooter was a far left nut job. Loved Antifa, old people need to die, ICE agents are monsters... the usual dumb shit. However, unlike the El Paso shooter this hasn't been directly tied to his motive. One of the creepier parts though is how he went around liking tweets about the El Paso (gun control tweets!) shooting shortly before he went out and started his own shooting.

I don't know if his political beliefs caused the shooting, but if they did and people still end up shouting and blaming each other's hateful rhetoric, while being utterly unaware of their own, it will be the most undiluted, purest form of idiocy, like ever. Of course, this is exactly what people will do.

Regardless of all that, there was some glaring, and I mean GLARING clues that the Dayton shooter was going to do something like this. Check the video in the article.

 

And video games.