Another Wacko gets his headlines

[HiTemp]

Another dysfunctional delusional idiot shows up in yet another gun-free zone to play final fantasy. The Oregon community college shooting. The prez was drawn like a magnet to the podium to call for stricter controls of access to firearms. Hey, that works SO well in Chicago and DC!

Wouldn't it be great if the media would take the same stance as the local Sheriff as regards the ID of the shooter? He refused to say his name. Wouldn't it be great if when CNN/FOX/all the rest go live to these tragedies they scrolled a message on the Kyron that they don't give a damn who the shooter is and won't be covering that aspect of the story now or in the future. No publishing manifestos or warped philosophies describing the twisted world view of the murderer, instead we'll be covering the event and focusing on the victims.

That would do more for reducing these final 15 minutes of fame events than any new gun law would ever do, given the perpetrators don't follow the law to begin with.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

I think it is important for the pubic to know who it is and why he did it myself, but his name and picture doesn't need flashed on every half hour news break. Oregon law supposedly prevents gun free zones from what I have read, and even though the campus bans them, the law gives permission to do it anyway, but this event is certainly no reason to want to institute them again in any case, only a true idiot would see it as a way to stop someone like this.

[HiTemp]

From what I gathered in the last few days about Oregon law, it's pretty much as you've stated. It's legal for someone to carry according to statute, but the colleges have the right to use their policies to discourage it. Meaning, if you're a student, they have no force of law to cause your arrest or detention, but they DO have the right to throw the full weight of the college at you under the auspices of violating school policies. So you wouldn't be arrested for a crime but you could be suspended as a student, losing all monies paid for tuition and fees as well as have a bad rep from that school. I have no idea how that plays given it's just a community college. I think it's the threat of what the college can hold over them that keeps the students from carrying a firearm. Bet a few of them are rethinking that right now in light of what happened. Better to be alive to face suspension from a college and be out a few hundred bucks then then be pushing up daisies along with bringing grief and thousands in funeral expenses to your family.

I agree with you we have a right to know who it was, but I also don't think his picture needs to be on the front page four days in a row. CNN interviewed his father who immediately asked "Why does anyone feel they need a gun?" I think one good answer would be "to protect themselves from your twisted little monster of a son. How's that for a reason?" I haven't seen anything from the mom yet but if she's anything like the dad it's little wonder the darling little boy had issues. I also saw that when CNN got wind that this shooter might be a supporter of a white supremacy group, they photoshopped his picture to bleach him out white as the driven snow. His mom is black, and he is very dark skinned in all previous photos. I thought it was funny that a news agency would stoop to a trick like that in an attempt to sell an idea they only knew at the time was a rumor.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Yeah, gotta love the blame everything but my baby thing going on. I can understand, but not excuse. Maybe its a good case lesson of it being best for families to just shut up and grieve when the emotion is ruling their thoughts and mouth. I really can't appreciate it when they question someone elses choice and excercise of right when they have never even tried it by their own admission. Why does anyone need to live in a fancier house than me? Why does anyone do things I don't like or would do? As if they all should be outlawed. You have it exactly right, we need guns to protect us from people like you and your family buddy. You apparently want to disarm me, while your boy wants to kill me, gee, why wouldn't I agree with that?

And then there was the rush to link it to something, in the 1st few hours antigunners jumped on the 'conservative republican' gun owner aspect. The antijihadists were trying every way they could to make this an Islamic militant. Both the black lives matter and anti black lives matter people tried to make it look like from his social media posts he was part of those movements and blaming racism for it.

So far as I have seen that has been confirmed he was just a grade A made in the USA nutbag.

That he singled out Christians with no overt agenda against until now is pretty puzzling, especially these days. Maybe more info will come to light to explain that.

[HiTemp]

I think the anti-christian thing is very easy to explain. The guy was a loner; he complained of having no girlfriend; he had few if any actual friends; he lived at home in the basement of his mom's house.

Loners tend to remain apart from things like organized activities and tend to find faults with them in order to justify their own separation. They won't go to the company picnic because so-and-so is a butt head and they don't want to be at the same venue with them. They won't go play a pick-up game of softball with the fellas because it's a dumb game. They won't meet up with the boys on the weekend to watch a football game because of too many ads in the broadcast or (if it's a Patriot's game) too little air in the ball. Always something, and it's a something that they cling to in order to justify the separation rather than admit they're a bit of a misfit in social settings.

Being twenty and having no girlfriend could mean he's in between girlfriends or he's spending all his time in mom's basement farting away on the internet and doesn't feel like polishing his social skills to go meet one. There is little to justify here and it's only going to compound his inadequacy when in any social setting especially where women are present.

With few if any friends he limits his exposure to settings where people might ask about where he lives, who he's dating, what he stands for, etc. so he kind of likes it that way. It fits with his own discomfort about who he is and he's glad he doesn't have to account for himself or be compared to friends who aren't like him.

Living at home isn't unusual for someone that age, especially today, but living in a basement is certainly a choice in favor of further isolationism. Nothing unusual with people making a bedroom out of usable space in a basement but usually it's not used if there is one upstairs unless it's by people who want to be left alone. I suspect that was him.

What do we think of when we imagine a typical Christian? First, they are the antithesis of "alone," because Christianity is by nature a community of believers. Christians tend to have some set of doctrines to which they adhere, leaving little room for personal manipulation in order to tailor it in order to justify one's own behavior. Christians generally have some sense of purpose in their lives, often finding strength in their beliefs especially when life gets difficult (like you have no girlfriend, limited friends period, and you're living in mom's basement stewing about being a loser). Christians have a sense of joy that loners never seem to have, and a sense of peace I think has to do with recognizing they are a small piece of something greater than themselves whereas loners lack that same peace. Loners seek it though; you ever notice how these loners who go over the deep end all seem to find some attraction in the occult or vampires or something else at least semi-supernatural? They're looking for that sense of communion, that sense of purpose, of peace, of inner joy - but they can't ever seem to find it because of looking in all the wrong places.

That's why he picked on Christians. It wasn't really about a specific religion. If he was a Muslim out to ISIS a few infidel college kids, he could have asked them to recite the morning prayer or complete a quote from the Qu'ran. He didn't though, he only asked them if they were Christian or not. In other cases of people who murdered Christians randomly, a common thread among them is they tended to be loners and held a deep belief that no God could possibly accept them. This guy posted that he hoped to meet Satan and be welcomed with open arms - which I think is a tacit admission that he felt God could not possibly love him, therefore his only hope lies in the opposite side.

They say you can fool anyone except yourself and maybe that's what happens in these cases. They know deep inside they are the one deviating from the norm, they believe that's their "normal" and it can't or won't ever change, so they can never be happy like those damn Christians always seem to be. Therefore, since he's committing suicide anyway, a few of those Christians gotta go too!

It's nothing new, it's the same behavior that goes back millennia. The cross that symbolizes Christianity is the very symbol of this. Early Christians began using it as a taunt to Roman authorities that they didn't fear them or their power, and Romans ruled by fear. Take away that fear and you've got their full attention because they no longer have a hold over you. Thus the cross symbolizing the Christian willingness to give up their lives to Roman authorities before giving up their faith and a promise of an eternal life where there was no fear and no suffering.

I don't think this shooter was really there over an issue of faith or lack of it. He wasn't there on some crazy kind of atheist promotional cause trying to dwindle the number of believers because he didn't offer any reward for rejection of faith, in fact he shot anyone who didn't believe or didn't answer in the legs. That tells me it wasn't about faith at all. I think it was just a simple case of that kid felt himself a loser and unplugged from the mainstream of life and simply resented those who seemed plugged into it. He could have asked "who here is happily married and hopes to start a family?" but he instead chose Christianity as his measuring stick.

This is why IMHO no amount of "mental screening" is ever going to predict the acts of people like that. We have no way to know what one thing will break the camel's back and start them on their final destructive path. We have no way to know any individual's capacity for loneliness or how long they can think themselves defective while observing the rest of the world go by them seemingly happy. It might be that the day he is screened is the same day he got his new iPhone or his ammo shipment arrived that day and he'd be in a great mood for the interview, seemingly not too close to the edge.

Basically, this case boils down to a loner who viewed himself a loser committing suicide and having really nothing to offer in a suicide note. So his crime becomes his suicide note, the act confirming what he himself could not communicate - he's a loser and sees no way back to rejoin normal society. Very typical of teenage suicides.


The only person I know who owned a Ferrari had a gear in the axle actually break into pieces. Even the finest engineering and design and manufacturing processes can't guarantee that an occasional defect with pop up in a car that cost north of a half million smackers. In cases of human beings, we have infinitely more factors to consider than a car, and it isn't surprising that a few go wrong due to various reasons.

Do you think this guy would have done something like that if his parents were close to him, talking to him every day, asking about his life, his dreams, his goals, and encouraging him to be something? I don't.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Maybe, maybe not. Parents don't talk to their kids everyday when they get to a certain age, most kids distance themselves, so I don't know if that really would have changed much in his case. At some point they are responsible for themselves and its up to them to decide what they are going to be, he chose poorly.

I would think Christianity must have been an influence for him in some way, or he would not have targeted them. Something went seriously wrong in him anyway you look at it.

What is really frustrating about this is we see it over and over, but the political leadership is more concerned with gaining more control and power of the federal govt than do ANY thing that would actually try and address the is problem, so they just keep happening. Although I don't think this is problem a govt can fix anyway, its a cultural problem, too much emphasis on celebrity.

[HiTemp]

Oct 6, 2015 15:05:21 GMT -7 Grug - American Neanderthal said:

Although I don't think this is problem a govt can fix anyway, its a cultural problem, too much emphasis on celebrity.

And therein lies the crux of the matter... a matter of influence in our lives.

We've always had school shootings, in fact I remember reading an article that cited examples going back to the 30s or 40s in which some lone nitwit with his own cause shot someone or multiple victims. Most often it had to do with settling some score; another dude stole his girlfriend, a group of jocks picked on the bookworm, or simply a wish to end their own life in some way that might draw more attention than simply offing themselves out in the woods. They mostly are the kind of thing where figuring out a motive wasn't too hard and often was explained in notes written before the crime.

The difference lies in how these used to be treated mostly as just ghastly suicides where people just accepted that one individual became mentally deranged enough to end his own life and happened to take some innocent victims along with him. It was never viewed as a trend or some kind of national "problem that needed solving." Why? Because you really can't stop someone intent on harming themselves unless you are lucky enough to have them drop hints it's coming up soon AND the person hearing the hints recognizes the danger. Otherwise it's a private action no one can stop.

Today, each of these is bounced against the collection of all others since and including Columbine. What used to happen in the days of Columbine is most (unfamiliar) people saw the grab for guns as ONE way to help curb the problem. In the world of instant information with no logic or thought or weighing of information required, the simple math appears to make sense. Fewer guns = fewer shootings, so those on the fence were easily persuaded. Same sense of this seemed apparent in the "Joker" shooting in the movie theater. But when Sandy Hook came about, in CT with very restrictive laws already in place regarding the particular weapons used, then I think the fence-sitters began seeing the futility of trying to solve a problem with laws. If a person is out to commit suicide, exactly which laws are they going to obey out of fear?

It used to be that the influence in our lives came from our own family, our neighbors, and our circle of friends. Yes there was radio and TV, but everyone recognized those as entertainment and not really real. No one really had a father like Ward Cleaver or Fred MacMurray, but we saw in them the best of our own parents. Good and evil were always portrayed in theatrical ways, where even the appearance of characters allowed you to form an instant opinion of good vs. evil.

Compare that with today's music videos, where evil is portrayed as good. You don't need to work hard, just "play" hard and all the girls and riches one could imagine are theirs simply by adopting an attitude, breaking the law, and through violence. What they never portray is how truly undervalued those things are. They don't put disclaimers at the end like medicine commercials, to say that Hollywood starlets with supreme beauty don't tend to stick around relationships if the grass appears greener at some other mansion; that even billionaires have tragedy in their lives like Bill Cosby losing a son and now his reputation, hedge fund managers jumping out of skyscrapers, schemers and murderers doing life in a SuperMax. The list is long.

It's little wonder these loners latch onto the internet and adapt personas that don't reflect any of their personal lacking. As other perhaps bolder internet trolls call them out, they see the charade is over and choose to end their own suffering in such a spectacular way as to leave the trolls with their mouths agape, never considering that it was their push who helped the loner over the ledge.

I don't talk to my kids every single day, but I did when they lived here and I continue to talk to them at least weekly when possible. It's not a magic talisman but it does give me a sense of when they are happy or troubled, and that leads to other conversations. Sometimes just having an ear is enough to keep stuff from building up to an explosive level. I don't think this Oregon shooter kid had an ear, save for his forum pals that egged him on with advice on weapons and tactics.

It's sad, really sad, but it won't be fixed by any kind of legal restriction or prohibition, only by concern of people close to the people most inclined to fall into this hole.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

When my daughter lived here we talked every day as well. But when I was 20 I moved back home after finishing tech school, and there would be days strung together I would not see my folks just because of schedule differences. You get old enough, that even living at home you are autonomous to some extent. The other thing is this guy was 26, he was not a child by any stretch.

[HiTemp]

True. Had those days myself when even the wife's schedule and my own didn't mesh and it seemed like even though we were physically present we didn't really get a chance to talk beyond "have a good day." I also think by the time kids leave the nest the parents either have or have not instilled in them some kind of sense. Not that they won't make stupid mistakes, I know I sure did, but when it comes to the really important things they stop and think. Gee, should I go for this insurance sales job interview in a warehouse down by the docks at 8pm? Ahhh, no, probably a bad idea. Same with allowing life to squeeze them so hard they think about checking out. They know if their chips are down you aren't there to kick them in the ribs but rather to grab an arm and pull them back upright. I'm not so sure any of these suicidal people feel that way. I've never seen or heard of one.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

I don't know, after reading a few of these cases and of suicides of people I knew, I quit trying to reason why they do things attempting to understand. They were not reasoning, and most of the time they were violently resisting any attempt at reasoning with them. Some people will just not stop and listen, if we are lucky we can force then to stop, but we are not always lucky. Not saying we shouldn't try, but there is only so much that can be done by the time they get to that point.