Mass shootings - Interesting read

#1

By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
2 hours, 28 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Mass public shootings have become such a part of American life in recent decades that the most dramatic of them can be evoked from the nation's collective memory in a word or two: Luby's. Jonesboro. Columbine.

And now, Virginia Tech.

Since Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off, at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees.

And all through those years, the same questions have been asked: What is it about modern-day America that provokes such random violence? Is it the decline of traditional morals? The depiction of violence in entertainment? The ready availability of lethal firepower?

Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox blames guns, at least in part. He notes that seven of the eight deadliest mass public shootings have occurred in the past 25 years.

"I know that there were high-powered guns before," he said. "But this weaponry is just so much more pervasive than it was."

Australia had a spate of mass public shooting in the 1980s and '90s, culminating in 1996, when Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people.

Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since.

Yet Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections, said the availability of guns was not a factor in his exhaustive statistical study of mass murder during the 20th century.

Duwe found that the prevalence of mass murders, defined as the killing of four or more people in a 24-hour period, tends to mirror that of homicide generally. The increase in mass killings during the 1960s was accompanied by a doubling in the overall murder rate after the relatively peaceful 1940s and '50s.

In fact, Duwe found that mass murder was just as common during the 1920s and early 1930s as it is today. The difference is that then, mass murderers tended to be failed farmers who killed their families because they could no longer provide for them, then killed themselves. Their crimes embodied the despair and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the sense that they and their families would be better off in the hereafter than in the here and now.

On Dec. 29, 1929, a 56-year-old tenant farmer from Vernon, Texas, named J.H. Haggard shot his five children, aged 6 to 18, in their beds as they slept. Then he killed himself. He left a note that said only, "All died. I had ruther be ded. Look in zellar."

Despondent men still kill their families today. But public shooters like Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho are different. They are angrier and tend to blame society for their failures, sometimes singling out members of particular ethnic or socio-economic groups.

"It's society's fault ... Society disgusts me," Kimveer Gill wrote in his blog the day before he shot six people to death and injured 19 in Montreal last year.

In the videos and essays he left behind, Cho ranted about privileged students and their debauched behavior.

He also mentioned the Columbine killings, referring to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as "martyrs." Imitation undoubtedly plays a role in mass shootings as well, said Daniel A. Cohen, a historian at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

"Certain types of crimes gain cultural resonance in certain periods," Cohen said.

So many post office employees gunned down their co-workers during the 1980s and early '90s that they spawned a neologism. To "go postal," according to the Webster's New World College Dictionary, is "to become deranged or go berserk."

The most recent postal shooting was in January 2006 when Jennifer San Marco, a former employee who had been fired a few years earlier because of her worsening mental state, walked into a letter sorting facility in Goleta, Calif., and killed six people with a handgun.

Criminologist Fox speculates that the increasing popularity of workplace killings, and public shootings generally, may be partly due to decreasing economic security and increasing inequality. America increasingly rewards its winners with a disproportionate share of wealth and adoration, while treating its losers to a heaping helping of public shame.

"We ridicule them. We vote them off the island. We laugh at them on `American Idol,'" Fox said.

But there has also been an erosion of community in America over the past half-century, and many scholars believe it has contributed to the rise in mass shootings.

"One would think that there's some new component to alienation or isolation," said Jeffrey S. Adler, a professor of history and criminology at the University of Florida.

People used to live in closer proximity to their families and be more involved with civic and religious institutions. They were less likely to move from one part of the country to another, finding themselves strangers in an unfamiliar environment.

Even so, the small-town America of yesteryear wasn't completely immune. On March 6, 1915, businessman Monroe Phillips, who had lived in Brunswick, Ga., for 12 years, killed six people and wounded 32 before being shot dead by a local attorney. Phillips' weapon: an automatic shotgun.

Remarkably, violence in today's media seems to have little to do with mass public shootings. Only a handful of them have ever cited violent video games or movies as inspiration for their crimes. Often they are so isolated and socially awkward that they are indifferent to popular culture.

Ultimately, it is impossible to attribute the rise in mass shootings to any single cause. The crimes only account for a tiny fraction of homicides.

And a significant fraction of those who commit them, including Cho, either kill themselves or are killed by police before they can be questioned by investigators.

#2

QUOTE(gmsnctry @ Apr 22 2007, 01:32 AM) "One would think that there's some new component to alienation or isolation," said Jeffrey S. Adler, a professor of history and criminology at the University of Florida.

...People used to live in closer proximity to their families and be more involved with civic and religious institutions. They were less likely to move from one part of the country to another, finding themselves strangers in an unfamiliar environment.

...And a significant fraction of those who commit them, including Cho, either kill themselves or are killed by police before they can be questioned by investigators.
I hope he's not suggesting that "loosing his way from the righteous path" is what causes these incidents. Is that it?, he needed some Jesus in his life?.

I think being singled out and alienated would give you a different perspective on what you're worth in the eyes of others. Almost makes me believe the opposite would be perceived as true. What would a person with a fragile and flawed sense of self feel about others?. How important is human life to someone who is utterly uninportant?.

Shouldn't the questions be asked before the shootings? What is so fucking difficult about giving a little bit of acknowledgement to the isolated? instead of turning them into fucking legends after they commit mass murder?. Is that what it takes to be heard these days?

#3

I think he's talking about before mass transportatin families were born, lived and died within close proximity of each other (ie small town America) - that also kept the valuie of family, extneded family and religion close at hand.

Nowadays $80 some odd bucks (VIA Greyhound) will take you from NY to LA in a few days. Families are spread far and wide and extended family and family values are almost nonexistant in todays so called 'fastpaced lives'

Its easier now to stay in touich but be far away and feel isolated in oiur day 2 day routines. I dont think he was saying specifically loosing his way from a righteous path path was the cause. I dont see that reference only that in general terms the family values and close family and its close knit religion has been lost.

The main gist of the story at the end is we really dont have answers on why he or others like him do these Mass shootings becuase they can be interrogated because they're DEAD (either by Suicide or Policicide)

Many studies have shown the link between lack of religion, belonging, lonliness via the distance that families are separated is all.

#4

I think distance from family is a supremely important part of our psychological growth. The link to religion is a weak one. The focus should be on his obviously flawed mental state. Case in point: Andrea Yates .
Deeply religious to the point of excluding all common sense, a dangerous path for a person suffering from mental illness.

One can be left alone and even rejected and still not feel empty. Not everybody has the same threshold, and irrational sociopaths tend to have the shorter fuse. Seriously, though, who in this day and age still says some shit like "Go back to China" because he mumbled and spoke in a low tone?.

This kat was shown to have some (I think as yet unspecified) disorder and he was sent off, maybe diagnosing him for further treatment would take precious time from a doctor's lunch hour?. Most importantly, his record was unavailable to those that would have use for it, the gun retailers. Crazy, stomped-on mufukkas should be given beach balls and plush toys, not semi-automatics.

I'm all with the theory that he felt left out, but that's only half the issue. I'm sure Howard Stern and Bill Gates MUST have gotten their asses whipped a few times and might even still sport wedgie scars. We still hate on them for entirely different reasons.

#5

...."Remarkably, violence in today's media seems to have little to do with mass public shootings. Only a handful of them have ever cited violent video games or movies as inspiration for their crimes. Often they are so isolated and socially awkward that they are indifferent to popular culture. "

me.....What about the mental monumant the media creats to the shooter everytime one of these events takes place. Couldnt 24/7 news coverage of this be considerd violence in the media and not just games and movies. The news has become culturaliy violant media and just like all other popular media its probobly having an effect. The media made the colombine shooters champions in the minds of dysfunctional school loners. It had an effect on Cho. Of course the news media would never do much reporting on that.

#6

I blame the media in general for so much shit...Talking to the big homie today, we saw little about the victims...But the psycho, even through death and mayhem, got exactly what he wanted...His plan carried through to gruesome end just like the antagonist in the movie Seven...

This sensationlist machine has created a false sense of information, people read and listen to it, and if they do it enough, they think they know it, and can discuss it...Reading Einstein's theory of relativity doesn't make me a fucking physicist...

What we're looking at is a global problem...Addressing it as anything but that is a big mistake...

#7

uber....What we're looking at is a global problem

me....Dont a lot of countries get CNN. Reality TV for the rest of the worlds impresionable youth... 30 school shootings here and 10 spread out thogh the rest of the world to me says its a US thing.

#8

highlife, if you actually read through that list, many of those are single incidents...One person killing another one, and just so happens it happens at school...I'm not seeing the connection...How many people get their asses kicked or stomped watching the World Cup..? Yet, nobody is talking about soccer being the issue, are they..?

And like this article mentioned, mass murder or acts of desperation are not new, and certainly not more common in any one place...

"Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people."

And what was his problem..? Too much CNN..? A lack of..? How about...Fucking crazy..? Works for me...Watching TV is something millions and millions of people do everyday...I watch the most violent shit I can find...Yet, I don't want to go to Baskin Robbins and kill everyone that comes in the door...TV is not responsible for this kind of thing...

If its one thing we are guilty of, its that even with all the fear propaganda being pumped out of that massive media machine, we simply aren't afraid about the right things...In this very forum, I had a bad premonition of a school shooting, and it prompted me to write about whitman...Nobody responded...Almost 5 months to the day that I posted that article, some fucker comes along with almost the exact same classic psychopathic traits and now everyone is shocked...

Tisk, tisk, tisk...There were people that roomed with this guy for 2 years, and never heard him speak...He did shit I've never even heard of, or imagined somone doing...People that were in the class with him forumulated a plan in case that psycho came to class and snapped...He had more fucking issues than Scientific American...And nobody did anything...

To me, that is a MUCH more valid issue and question than anything...

But, again, I've already talked about it...Already posted it when I spoke on Kitty Genovese...

And nobody responded then either...

#9

Good read Uber- its the everyone else's problem syndrome- they're crazy because of some other factor (see last line)

Poeple dont go on mass shootings because of TV, Ozzy, Video Games- the pundits on TV are already jumping on that shit- I agree total BS- its just a copout

Bottomline Its 'cuz their F- ing mentally unstable (Crazy as u said) not because of their media or gaming habits, social inequity, etc.

#10

u....highlife, if you actually read through that list, many of those are single incidents...One person killing another one, and just so happens it happens at school

me........Which would make it a school shooting which is what were talking about. It doesnt have to be mass murder to be a part of the school shooting trend. Mass murder does not define a school shooting. I looked at the list again and 36 shootings where in this country. 11 were single shootings but some of those were also suicides. Evan if a couple of those were fights gone too far that leaves about 25 multi shootings.

u....And like this article mentioned, mass murder or acts of desperation are not new, and certainly not more common in any one place...

me.......No they arent but school shootings are which is what were discussing.....36 in this country means there common in the US... One or 2 school shootings in a country means your country had a really bad day and life some times sucks.... 36 means you have a trend and its time to start wondering why or what issues in your countries culture are possible adding to the problem.

u.....And what was his problem..? Too much CNN..? A lack of..? How about...Fucking crazy..? Works for me...Watching TV is something millions and millions of people do everyday...I watch the most violent shit I can find...Yet, I don't want to go to Baskin Robbins and kill everyone that comes in the door...TV is not responsible for this kind of thing...

me.......Which is why i said the media could have an effect on the "dysfunctional school loner". I could use your term " Fucking Crazy" if you like. You didnt actually think i was suggesting CNN could move a normal mind to kill did you. Are you trying to tell us your nuts. Obviously it takes a combination of things to make a kid do this. The point is this. Kids ...guns ...the fucking crazy ...people killing people and schools have been around a long time. Why only now do we have all these school shootings. Whats going on now in our culture we didnt have 20 years ago.