Why have “we” suddenly “allowed” mass murder?

Sorry about the facetious title, because “Why now?” is an excellent question.

There is nothing new about guns, or schools, or even school shootings. Yet if this article is correct, since 2010 the numbers of school shootings have in fact skyrocketed.

I am at a loss to explain the apparent acceleration of this phenomenon. It appears to be fueling itself. But how?

There have always been antisocial misfits, even angry suicidal antisocial misfits — who want to go out in a blaze of glory and take as many people with them as possible. But why have their numbers increased since 2010? What has happened? Blaming guns — or “easy availability” of guns — is the standard liberal retort. But there have been guns in this country from day one, and they used to be more easily available than they are now. Seriously; when I was a kid you could buy a gun by mail order with zero background check, and no verification of identity at all. Over the years I have seen guns become more and more difficult to obtain.

Obviously these ever more restrictive laws work, right? It’s illegal for minors to buy guns, and guns are banned in schools. And certainly, murder is illegal, right? Surely no one suggests that murdering students is allowed?

Wrong.

Our president says that the murdering of students is allowed:

“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” said the president, who was visibly frustrated as he delivered a statement on Thursday’s mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore.

I don’t care how “visibly frustrated” the man might have appeared. To say something like that is the essence of demagoguery. It ignores the simple reality of the country’s legal system to maintain that because a mass murder was committed, that it was “allowed.” Was the Manson gang “allowed” to murder their victims? Apparently the president believes that anything that happens, no matter how evil, is “allowed.” And the press goes along with this fraud, because (so they claim) the president was “frustrated.” To carry his frustrated logic a step further, let’s assume that Congress were to pass confiscatory gun control laws of the sort the president wants, and that the Supreme Court upheld them. Guns would not disappear, and shootings would continue, because just as criminals do not obey existing laws, they wouldn’t obey new laws. Yet by the president’s logic, these shootings, too, would have been “allowed.”

Blaming the increase of school shootings on guns, while silly, is a slight step more grounded in rationality than claiming that mass murders are “allowed.” But if guns “cause” school shootings, then why has there been such a dramatic increase since 2010? It has not become easier to buy guns since then; if anything regulations have grown. Blaming guns makes as much sense as the way some social conservatives are blaming the absence of God.

Guns have been present in this country for centuries, and are more restricted now than ever. Religion was not suddenly removed from the schools in 2010. If taking religion out of schools caused murder, there would not be a sudden acceleration.

What about antisocial misfits who so hate people and themselves that they are willing to become suicide killers to make a statement? Are there suddenly more of them? Why would young people (people coming of age) have become more antisocial in the recent period since 2010? Has something happened under the radar that has been missed?

What does it mean to be “antisocial” today? Has it taken on a new meaning? What is antisocial? To be anti anything, it is first necessary to define the opposed thing.

What is social? Has that changed? If anything, I would think that what most people would call “social” has been changed in a rather major way by what is called “social media.” Stuff like Facebook, which dates back to 2004. I like Facebook because it has enabled me to connect to long lost friends, as well as immediately make connections with new friends.

Friends. That word.

Friends are friends, right? Um, not necessarily. Friends these days may be people you have never met and might not like, although I hasten to add that I have never met some of my best friends, and I am serious! This kind of stuff is confusing (and bear in mind that I did not grow up using social media). But surely social media could not be causing mass murder. Why would it? I mean, if you have decided you hate everyone so much that you are willing to commit mass murder against total strangers, what could social media have to do with that?

So I am puzzled. It would be as irrational to blame social media as it would to blame the absence of God or the presence of guns.

Still, a lingering question in my mind is whether that growing group of people I just verbosely called “antisocial misfits who so hate people and themselves that they are willing to become suicide killers to make a statement” might not be seeing or reacting to social media in quite the same way I and most other people do.

Might this relate to what psychologists call a decline in empathy?

If in fact empathy is declining, wouldn’t that fuel both sides? If a person can’t get and does not expect empathy (even from “friends”), then it might follow that he would have no empathy for them either.

Like I say, I am at a loss. Obviously, 99.99% of social media users, no matter how angry or antisocial they might become, never commit murder. I’m just wondering out loud what might have caused that tiny percentage of antisocial misfits willing to commit murder to recently increase.

Any ideas?

MORE: While it can be debated how much of a threat school shooters are, the president certainly thinks they are. So let’s suppose we take Obama’s rhetoric at its face value and assume that the United States is now “allowing” a dire new threat. Who are the attackers? Young suicidal maniacs motivated by personal grudges like virginity?

Why on earth would this country disarm itself in the face of such an attack?

And why on earth would we disarm ourselves when the attackers are dysfunctional man-children who have arisen from within our own country?

The president’s argument makes no sense at all.


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13 responses to “Why have “we” suddenly “allowed” mass murder?”

  1. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    let me splain it you. since president obama has taken office in 2009 racists, sociopaths physcopath and other assorted vermin have been hearing the same crap that they believe spouted out by their betters making them think well maybe its not so crazy after all if more important people say the same things I do!

  2. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    It the drugs.
    http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/14655-prescription-for-murder

    According to his Facebook page, the Oregon killer was on medication. Many of the anti-anxiety drugs lead to suicide. Just look the terrible increase in veteran and active duty military suicides that coincides with rampant use of drugs to treat PTSd. The Oregon killer committed suicide after killing 9 others.

  3. bob sykes Avatar
    bob sykes

    According to FBI stats, the long term trend in mass killings is down.

  4. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    …since president obama has taken office in 2009 racists, sociopaths physcopath and other assorted vermin have been hearing the same crap that they believe spouted out by their betters making them think well maybe its not so crazy after all if more important people say the same things I do!

    Captain, you hit the nail on the head. When the chief law enforcement officer of the United States glorifies anti-social, murderous behavior then young, impressionable people listen:

    Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.

    I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

    If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon…

    So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

    What we have is a POTUS stirring the pot, whipping up a fervor of grievance, and pushing young people over the edge. And with this latest coward it seems as if he was the perfect vessel for Obama’s grievance mongering: Half white, hated religion, massive daddy issues, and lefty parents who coddled him and kept him from dealing with his own problems. Frustrated, he went out and shot a bunch of white Christians.

  5. Bram Avatar
    Bram

    You get your name in the headlines and your own wiki page. For a while at least, you’ll be as famous as Billy the Kid.

    Pretty tempting for a complete loser.

  6. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    road kill if mass killings had started when president obama took office you would have a point but since we have had mass killings and rioting before he took office you are wrong as usual. as for trayvon martin the black community showed restraint so as not to embarrass president obama. as for ferguson the black community told the president enough is enough. mass shooting by mentally ill people can be addressed on the mental illness side as both gun control advocates and gun rights advocates agree on this.

  7. Robert of Ottawa Avatar
    Robert of Ottawa

    Ritalin and media sensationalism. Also, in some cases, egging on via Facebook and other “social” media.

  8. […] for yet another facetious title, but I couldn’t make this stuff up if I […]

  9. Simon Avatar

    CapitalistRoader,

    Well they do have a grievance. The War On Drugs is disproportionately prosecuted against minorities. Obama has done very little to end it.

  10. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    Simon,

    Trayvon Martin’s and Michael Brown’s crimes had nothing to do with illegal drugs as far as I remember. Rather, both were guilty of assault on their fellow citizens. In the first case the citizen defended himself resulting in the death of asshole #1. In the second case the civilian called the police, asshole #2 attacked the policeman, resulting in the death of asshole #2. Answering Eric’s question: I am at a loss to explain the apparent acceleration of this phenomenon. It appears to be fueling itself. But how?My response remains: Our Criminal Behavior Enabler-in-Chief holds much of the blame for glorifying or at the very least excusing the behavior of these assholes.

  11. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    The American Interest has a timely article comparing the War on Crime to the coming War on Guns and how blacks will be disproportionately incarcerated if the Dem’s have their way:

    More than three out of four gun arrests were in urban areas. So people who empathize with the message of the Black Lives Matter movement—that young, black men in America’s cities are treated unfairly by the criminal justice system and that mass incarceration has devastated too many communities—should think further about what the draconian gun policies they pine for would actually entail.

  12. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    Herr Kapitän,

    The point wasn’t mass killings had started when president obama took office, the point was since 2010 the numbers of school shootings have in fact skyrocketed.

  13. mrmittens Avatar
    mrmittens

    mass murderers are a subset of serial killers. they span the races and ethnicities- they are not all white males although they are about 98% of them male. what they all share in common is they are sociopaths and/ or psychopaths even those who do it under the auspices of a religion. not all have been on psychiatric medication- that’s the same as blaming the guns. the lone wolf sort when not severely psychotic (besides any drugs they may have been on) are usually “grievance collectors”- fired from a job, spurned by a girl, feeling they are not getting the recognition and esteem they feel they deserve from an ungrateful world. angry losers. the top 3 mass murder incidents in US history- with the highest body counts- did not involve fire arms of any kind. 1) 9/11 (using box cutters and crashing planes), 2)Happyland disco fire ( using a match and about a dollar’s worth of gasoline), 3)Bath school incident ( fire bombs and incendiary devices)- the bath incident is still the school mass murder incident that was most deadly-45 dead and it happened in 1927. school shootings ARE NOT increasing. wall to wall, 24-7 internet coverage of what would have been local events is making everything global instantly. and the media lies to support a certain agenda. school shootings have not in fact ‘skyrocketed’ http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/06/mass-shootings-arent-on-the-rise.html#