Story of Cruz

How come none of these nutcases ever go shoot a billionaire or two instead of random Innocents?

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?

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.

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.

You only said that some people have a lower threshold.

You guys are groomed in social=bad.

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.

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).

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?

But muh well regulated militia!

And then you say tots and pears, and ignore the root cause.

Let's not talk about the past.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You've just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

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.

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?!

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.

100% this is such a bad strawman.

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.

Notorious (as a subgroup of famous) would have been a better word choice. They got the point across reasonably well otherwise, however.

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

Fantastic could mean unusual or extraordinary.

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.

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.

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.

Few years ago. Marjory Stoneman Douglas / parkland school shootings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkland_high_school_shooting

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.

Because old guns took 30 seconds to reload one bullet and were inaccurate past like 3 meters

It's almost as if mass shootings increase with the number of guns in circulation

Narcissism.

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

So why do the wackos kill the rest of us? Go after the elites if they're that upset.

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.

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?

But the reason why they do this is not what has happened to them in their lifes.

We are our memories.

I think you're missing the point. The "fantastic" is from the shooter's POV.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It wouldn't be 4chan if they didn't find a way to blame a woman.

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.

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.

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?

Let's not pretend the incredibly common pattern only consists of two people while pretending an actual outlier - Vegas - is somehow common.

"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.

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"

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.

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?

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.

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.

"I'm older, so I'm right"

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.

"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

Never skip your social studies classes, kids

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.

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.

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.

For instance?

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.

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.