Shootings at UCSB

[nkarma]

This one hit home for me more so than the many many other random mass shootings mostly because it was at a UC (of which I am an alum) and I currently reside outside of the US.

I may regret bringing another gun topic up here, let's keep this polite.

What can be done??? Nothing?

If it's the mental health system which a lot argue, what are solutions? Subsidized mental health care for all? Decreasing patient rights to privacy and commitment?

I understand from previous threads on here that owning a gun makes gun owners feel very safe and secure. They think they can defend themselves if need be. I am not sure if this is a chicken and egg effect. If gun violence was significantly less, would you still need that gun to feel safe?

I have lived in the UK for the last year and my sense of safety and security has increased dramatically. Are there mentally ill people, violent video games, violent movies, unhealthy food, etc.... consumed at same rate as the US. Is the culture pretty similar? Are incomes/cost of living the same? Are there gangs? Is a significant portion of the population immigrants? Absolutely!!! But according to wikipedia, gun deaths account for 0.25 of every 100,000 people in the UK while the US is FORTY TIMES as much at 10.3 of every 100,000. There is a significant difference in gun laws though.

The one thing I do know is I was raised in a country where I was taught people came for a better life. I am now considering never returning to that country so that my family can have a life mostly free of violent crime. Every single American I know has some story of where they or their loved ones have been affected by gun violence. It really doesn't have to be this way. This isn't normal and is both psychologically and physically unhealthy. How did we get to a point where we just think of the constant threat of being shot became the status quo?

 

[Sky56]

It's hard to come up with an easy answer. Here is my rambling short take on it. In the name of personal freedom (and budget cuts) long-term commitments to mental hospitals are a thing of the past. There are too many people walking amongst us who are time bombs.

I took the time and read his entire manifesto. Obviously, he had severe mental problems and had misplaced obsessions about sex, friendships, money, and more. I did find it ironic that he had hatred for women, yet he had many positive things to say about his mother, grandmothers, most of his female teachers, nannies, etc.

He had a combination of low self-esteem and an extreme sense of entitlement with grandiousity, sexual frustration, jealousy, and other extreme emotions, also his parents' divorce caused a lot of angst. Actually, I experienced a lot of the things he did, except for parents divorcing...I was angry and lonely also, but I didn't turn into a raving loony homicidal maniac. I don't feel sympathy for him in the least, but understand the process of his decline from reading his manifesto. I grieve for the people he killed and wounded.

He was so angry about being a virgin, and it drove his pathos. A mentally healthy person would realize that there is nothing wrong with being an "older virgin" and that eventually the right person would come along.

 

[Sky56]

I'm afraid of violence, but I know nobody personally who has been affected by gun violence. There is too much of it in the US, but I've never encountered it personally. It may be partly because I've lived in quiet, relatively safe areas after escaping big city life long ago.

 

[arkieb1]

Australia is many times safer than the US - we got rid of the right to carry arms and people were asked to hand in their guns under gun amnesties. People who need guns like farmers or professions where you need them still have them but it is very strictly regulated. I know people in the US love their guns but from someone looking in from the outside the answer seems pretty obvious..... stricter gun control and tighter gun laws do decrease the incidence of gun related crime - it IS that simple. We still have violent crimes and we also have rare massacres however, they happen less frequently here because we have less guns on the streets.

 

[AGBF]

nkarma-

There is already another thread about this topic. I do not know if you were aware of it. I am certainly not trying to silence you. I just wanted to be sure that you were also aware of the other thread about the shootings.

The Other Thread About Shootings in Santa Barbara...[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/real-or-fake-video-left-by-mass-murderer.202314/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/real-or-fake-video-left-by-mass-murderer.202314/[/URL]

Deb

 

[ksinger]

It's hard to come up with an easy answer. Here is my rambling short take on it. In the name of personal freedom (and budget cuts) long-term commitments to mental hospitals are a thing of the past. There are too many people walking amongst us who are time bombs.

I took the time and read his entire manifesto. Obviously, he had severe mental problems and had misplaced obsessions about sex, friendships, money, and more. I did find it ironic that he had hatred for women, yet he had many positive things to say about his mother, grandmothers, most of his female teachers, nannies, etc.

He had a combination of low self-esteem and an extreme sense of entitlement with grandiousity, sexual frustration, jealousy, and other extreme emotions, also his parents' divorce caused a lot of angst. Actually, I experienced a lot of the things he did, except for parents divorcing...I was angry and lonely also, but I didn't turn into a raving loony homicidal maniac. I don't feel sympathy for him in the least, but understand the process of his decline from reading his manifesto. I grieve for the people he killed and wounded.

He was so angry about being a virgin, and it drove his pathos. A mentally healthy person would realize that there is nothing wrong with being an "older virgin" and that eventually the right person would come along.

Of course you didn't. Because a critical missing ingredient was you being socialized to think of men as your just reward for simply being female. Or due some "success" (at whatever) since you were female. And white. The air you moved through taught different lessons, whispered different things.

These guys may be mentally ill, but so are many women one would assume. And they really just don't do the gun-amped kill-all-strangers rampage thing. There is some factor that makes white male mental illness more likely to express in a rampage that is designed to prove his masculinity to the world - by taking out as many of whoever as he can before offing himself in a spectacular manner that will "make a point".

Surely I can't be the only one right now, who is reading endless #YesAllWomen hashtags and analyses of misogyny and white male privilege? I tried to bring it up back when we had the thread on the Pgh stabbings, but got summarily brushed off as "been discussed enough in the media", which I certainly did not agree with, but did not pursue further in that thread. And the initial reaction was pretty much the same this time in the social/media: yet another mental illness case without context. But then something quickly changed. It seems we really are finally getting around to a serious discussion of the unbearable whiteness and maleness of these mass murder/suicide crimes, whether by knife, car, or gun, whether against work, school, or women. Anyone care to revisit? Because this time, unlike last time, the discussion really IS finally EVERYWHERE.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/27/not_all_men_how_discussing_women_s_issues_gets_derailed.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/27/white_guy_killer_syndrome_elliot_rodgers_deadly_privileged_rage/

excerpted from the third piece linked above:

"I am saying that we cannot understand Elliot Rodger’s clear mental health issues and view of himself as the supremely forsaken victim here outside a context of racism, white supremacy and patriarchy. I’m also saying that white male privilege might be considered a mental health issue, because it allows these dudes to move through the world believing that their happiness, pleasure and well-being matters more than the death and suffering of others.

This is madness.

But it is neither singular, nor anomalous. (emphasis mine) Every few years, the American public has to watch in horror as some white kid goes on a rampage, killing everything from babies to old people. Yet, neither the press nor the law will understand such perpetrators as monsters or terrorists. Few will have a conversation about white male pathology and the ways that systems of whiteness and patriarchy continue to produce white men who think like this."

 

[nkarma]

nkarma-

There is already another thread about this topic. I do not know if you were aware of it. I am certainly not trying to silence you. I just wanted to be sure that you were also aware of the other thread about the shootings.

The Other Thread About Shootings in Santa Barbara...[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/real-or-fake-video-left-by-mass-murderer.202314/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/real-or-fake-video-left-by-mass-murderer.202314/[/URL]

Deb

Thanks for the link Deb. I hadn't seen it.

I maybe should have titled the thread differently. It seems every time there is a mass shooting, not many like to look at the big picture but the individuals that did this. IMO, it isn't a single factor (male, mentally ill, rich/poor, politcial views, religion, divorce, etc..) that leads to someone deciding to kill others and themselves. I actually not only want to discuss mass shootings, but single gun homicides, and suicides as well. Gun deaths.

More to my point people that are all of the above that reside in other countries yet they rarely shoot other people. Why is that?

I think it's an endless circle. I need a gun to protect myself from the crazies that have guns. Which means Americans are living in a constant state of fear for their safety.

 

[minousbijoux]

I guess what I've been puzzling over, being another that read his manifesto, is which came first - the sense of entitlement, or the mental illness? I would like to think that his entitlement, sense of white male supremacy and misogyny stemmed from his mental illness and not the other way around...it certainly does not sound like his parents taught him that.

 

[JulieN]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this,36131/

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

NEWS IN BRIEF • Guns • Violence • News • ISSUE 50•21 • May 27, 2014

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

 

[JulieN]

I guess what I've been puzzling over, being another that read his manifesto, is which came first - the sense of entitlement, or the mental illness?

He had been seeing mental health specialists since 8 or 9, and I assume he had shown signs of disturbance before then that the parents tried to manage on their own.

 

[chemgirl]

I'm with you nkarma.

I'm Canadian and my husband is British. We currently live in Canada and travel to the states fairly often. We were in Chicago last weekend and it really startled us to see a "no guns" sign on the door at Starbucks. Whenever we see someone who is obviously drunk or agitated all I can think is "that guy could have a gun right now". We tend to be on edge the entire time.

That said, there is still violent crime in the UK and Canada. I just feel that a crazy with a gun can probably do a lot more damage than someone with a knife.

Unrelated, but I would move to the UK for the music alone. Tired of the repetitive garbage on Hits One that work insists on streaming into everyone's office. Bring over the BBC!

 

[redwood66]

chemgirl Chicago/Illinois has the strictest gun laws of nearly any city/state and it is one of the most violent cities in the US.

 

[chemgirl]

chemgirl Chicago/Illinois has the strictest gun laws of nearly any city/state and it is one of the most violent cities in the US.

True I don't really know how the laws vary from state to state. What stops someone from buying a gun in one state and bringing it to a state with stricter gun laws?

We visit friends in Rochester fairly often and they talk about the strict gun laws in New York State. They still have handguns. No trigger locks or anything even though they have kids. It feels unsafe. If they can have them what's stopping a would be shooter?

 

[kenny]

I long for the day America amends the Constitution to prohibit all gun ownership.

The negatives just outweigh the positives.
Screw what some individuals want; this is about public safety just like forcing all cars to stop at red lights.
That infringes on your fun too, but saves lives.

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,

Let me state first off that Britain has never had a history of gun ownership. The police, (bobbies ?) never had a gun to use on criminals. They used the stick. It is recent history that allows them to use guns, and I'm sure they are using it sparingly.

In the US, we have lost control of our society, in part due to social changes, 1970's that seem to have fostered everyones "rights" that have been taken to the extreme. We have always been a society of individualism and diversity vs a homogeneous society. We were built by immigrants, not so England. Just a little history.

We speak about rights in this country so often, is it any wonder that we think our rights supercede others rights. Men are the primary perpetrators of gun violence in this country, but until we as nation can remove the guns from the criminals, the rest of us will be afraid and want the guns to protect us. I lived through the terror of living in New York in 1975, when crime was so rampant, you were just plain afraid. A mayor was elected to clean up and came down heavy, so much so that New york became livable again. But even my white friends criticized him for being too tough.

My answer may be alaming, but I believe we experience terrorism right in our own country, by our own people. I want the National Guard to come into the terrorist zones, search for guns, take them, and start the process for order in the society. Order is a good value. This is one of the functions of law enforcement. It takes drastic measures to change. If we don't start soon we are losing our society to be so much less than mediocrity. This will be a place that works for only a few, whereas it used to work for everyone.

The attitude permeates the society. Parents vs teachers vs children vs police and on and on. We are losing in the world, and if hangout is an example of how people discuss problems, I don't have much hope. "I don't mean everyone"

As packrat would probably say, "we need to kick some ass"

 

[redwood66]

The US has become a violent society no doubt. One of the things that stood out to me in my career as a prison guard in 3 Maximum Security prisons in CA (highest state on the Brady list for attaboy gun control) is that over time there has developed a complete disregard and disrespect for human life among the younger criminally inclined generation. Absolutely the breakdown in the family. I can't count how many files I read that one or more sibling, parent, grandparent were already in prison or one parent raising the kid. Most from inner cities and members of violent gangs. When talking to these inmates they knew nothing else and it was just the way of life.

This does not explain the problem of the latest mass murder but it is more common that the mass murder problem.


ETA the inmates also let me know that all the guns they had were not acquired legally so that blows gun control kinda out of the water eh?

 

[movie zombie]

........ETA the inmates also let me know that all the guns they had were not acquired legally so that blows gun control kinda out of the water eh?

yep.

 

[Laila619]

Australia is many times safer than the US - we got rid of the right to carry arms and people were asked to hand in their guns under gun amnesties. People who need guns like farmers or professions where you need them still have them but it is very strictly regulated. I know people in the US love their guns but from someone looking in from the outside the answer seems pretty obvious..... stricter gun control and tighter gun laws do decrease the incidence of gun related crime - it IS that simple. We still have violent crimes and we also have rare massacres however, they happen less frequently here because we have less guns on the streets.

I agree--it really can be that simple. But unfortunately that will not happen in the U.S. so we will have to keep hearing about more mass shootings.

 

[minousbijoux]

I guess what I've been puzzling over, being another that read his manifesto, is which came first - the sense of entitlement, or the mental illness?

He had been seeing mental health specialists since 8 or 9, and I assume he had shown signs of disturbance before then that the parents tried to manage on their own.

I saw that JulieN, which is exactly what prompted my question. Many his sense of entitlement stemmed from his mental illness. Dunno, just conjecturing...

 

[Sky56]

The US has become a violent society no doubt. One of the things that stood out to me in my career as a prison guard in 3 Maximum Security prisons in CA (highest state on the Brady list for attaboy gun control) is that over time there has developed a complete disregard and disrespect for human life among the younger criminally inclined generation. Absolutely the breakdown in the family....

This says it all. There are many among us who have a complete disrespect for life. Absolutely vile, evil people who only care for themselves. They would kill you for $5. Gun control would not stop any from getting guns. (I am not a fan of guns and don't own one but actually I don't concentrate on the gun issue as much as broken morals, broken families and a loose criminal justice system that releases dangerous people such as rapists and murderers who should never be allowed to walk free.)

Rodgers should have been locked up immediately after his intentions were clear. I believe in freedom of speech, but it doesn't include well-laid out plans for mass murder.

OK, this next is for people who are not citizens of the United States and have never been here...or have only visited places such as Chicago and LA. I've lived in the US almost my entire life...and have never encountered the threats mentioned. I'm not saying it could never happen to me...just that for the most part, our huge nation is a beautiful place with many millions of good people - hard-working citizens who respect others. I've carefully chosen places to live which in comparison to others are an oasis of sanity and criminals are not running rampant, rather the opposite - it is safe, peaceful and quiet and I don't live in fear of the people around me. Long ago, I lived in some big US cities, and yes I was fearful for my safety. Take a transcontinental train ride across the US and you can see the vastness and the non-craziness of 99% of the nation.

 

[AGBF]

Take a transcontinental train ride across the US and you can see the vastness and the non-craziness of 99% of the nation.

Because in the heartland, where the land is beautiful, everything is good?

AGBF

 

[ksinger]

Take a transcontinental train ride across the US and you can see the vastness and the non-craziness of 99% of the nation.

Because in the heartland, where the land is beautiful, everything is good?

AGBF

Snort.

 

[Sky56]

lol!! Whitefish, Montana! ...and many other beautiful places. The Northern Tier that is more Western than Mid-West

 

[AGBF]

I've carefully chosen places to live which in comparison to others are an oasis of sanity and criminals are not running rampant, rather the opposite - it is safe, peaceful and quiet and I don't live in fear of the people around me. Long ago, I lived in some big US cities, and yes I was fearful for my safety. Take a transcontinental train ride across the US and you can see the vastness and the non-craziness of 99% of the nation.

Do you really think the people in Newtown, Connecticut felt they had chosen to live in a "a crazy place"? With stone walls; green fields; and white clapboard buildings, doesn't it appear as safe as anywhere else in the United States?

Then their kindergarten children were massacred in the local school house.

Deb/AGBF

 

[packrat]

Yes. The US sucks. People are killed here and no place is safe. Everyone is crazy. No one is sane or law abiding or good.

 

[Sky56]

Right, Deb, Newtown, CT is a nice place to live. It can happen anywhere, unfortunately and the Sandy Hook shootings is just about the most vile, shocking thing imaginable. People enjoy living in Santa Barbara, also...it is just that I feel the chances are better for a good life in quieter places.

 

[katharath]

I'm afraid of violence, but I know nobody personally who has been affected by gun violence. There is too much of it in the US, but I've never encountered it personally. It may be partly because I've lived in quiet, relatively safe areas after escaping big city life long ago.

I do. What's scary is that I know of three stories involving guns and people I personally know.

When I was about 12, our next door neighbor's 2 year old son shot himself in the head and died, after finding and playing with his dad's gun. It was horrifying. I had known this family most of my life, and they were lovely people.

One of my mother's best friends from high school (she was my wedding photographer) lost her teenage son when he was shot and killed in a convenience store.

And my own husband had a gun pulled on him about 9 years ago. He was robbed at gunpoint by a group of several young men, possibly gang members. Thank god they just robbed him and let him go.

My family is from Texas, and most of the men (my father, brothers, uncles, grandfather who was a policeman for 40+ years etc) own extensive gun collections. My husband and both of his parents served in the military so they're no stranger to guns. I hear a lot of progun arguments, but frankly the mentality frightens me. My husband is pretty anti gun for someone with his military background - but then perhaps that stems partly from being held up at gunpoint. We had recently had our first son then - it's terrifying when I think about what could have happened.

 

[momhappy]

I read an interesting article the other day on gun violence. Despite the national attention to the issue, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is actually lower today than it was two decades ago. Gun violence peaked around the mid-1990s and the figures are lower today (Even though the population has continued to grow over the years). Mass shootings, although horribly sad & tragic, account for a very small share of shootings overall.
I do not believe in gun control because I feel that the issue deserves so much more than that. Yes, guns are part of the problem, but a complex issue requires a complex answer. It seems to be a popular trend these days to push gun control based on a knee-jerk, purely emotional response to a recent tragedy.

 

[Laila619]

There is no safe place, whether you live in a big city or a small, quaint suburb.

 

[Sky56]

Thanks for sharing your personal experiences re: guns. I may need to take back what I said earlier as I've known several people who committed suicide with guns.