pl
RSS- Open Thread – 11 September 2024
- SpaceX will start launching Starships to Mars in 2026, Elon Musk says
- The other side of Russia’s application of reflexive control
- Russians taking reflexive control to a new level
- A New Beginning By Walrus
- It’s Over; Pogo Was Right – By Walrus
- “What are Israel’s protests and general strike about — and how big are they?”
- “As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel”
- Tom67 on Mongolia
- “NASA Composite Booms Deploy, Mission Sets Sail in Space”
One wonders which psychotropic drug this one was prescribed/taking and which doctor did the prescribing.
All
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/06/universal-means-all.html
pl
All the Fake News on this story came from the alt-right. He was not antifa he was a Trumpling.
This young man probably needed medication, seems to have had a very difficult time recently.
“Cruz’s mother Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on Nov. 1 neighbors, friends and family members said, according to the Sun Sentinel. Cruz and her husband, who died of a heart attack several years ago, adopted Nikolas and his biological brother, Zachary, after the couple moved from Long Island in New York to Broward County.
The boys were left in the care of a family friend after their mother died”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-15/shock-anger-after-florida-teen-charged-17-counts-murder-fbi-was-warned
Here’s something that works & is part of the solution:
“In Israel armed teachers are common, and terrorist attacks at schools nonexistent. Indeed, it was only during a 1997 visit by Israeli schoolgirls to the ‘Island of Peace’ along the Jordanian border, in which the teachers had been asked to leave their weapons behind, that an Arab gunman took advantage of an easy opportunity to open fire, killing seven children and wounding another six.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB927233749927433053
Yea fuck it, why bother it’s just more blood for your tree.
Why is it that school shootings don’t occur in other industrialized countries?
He was reportedly treated for depression, but dropped out of treatment a year ago.
Another psychopath following the sick and twisted modern fashion statement (for psychos) of committing a mass killing.
All warning signs were ignored or insufficiently addressed. The mother had passed away as had the father. Some reports say under suspicious circumstances or unknown causes (did the shooter kill them somehow?). Where was the social services that must surely have been assigned to the case?
How was the shooter living with a sophomore? Where were the sophomore’s parents? What kind of weirdness is that?
The shooter was posting anti-social and otherwise threatening statements and pictures. Someone has said they called the FBI when the shooter had posted statements about wanting to be a school shooter on a Youtube site. Apparently no FBI follow-up with the shooter. Otherwise, people that knew the shooter didn’t report to law enforcement even though most felt he was dangerous, had a plan/serious ideation and had the means.
The school saw him a serious threat and wouldn’t allow the shooter onto campus with a backback. Then they expelled him. No follow-up mental health or law-enforcement check-ups. No beefed-up security at the school. Apparently, no actual restraining order. Why not? A restraining order, I believe, would have meant no firearms allowed in the shooter’s possession.
The shooter was in special education programs. Was there a diagnosis of a mental incapacity? Without a doubt.
Why was he allowed to be in possession of firearms?
Total breakdown of normal social interactions and official processes. A lack of responsible action on the part of most everyone involved.
When God dies…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43071901
This is a deviant form of the application of the individualistic principle at the heart of capitalist/ liberal/ Western society.
That’s where the Western ‘model’ ends up producing something frankly monstrous.
Truly gross.
You can inject a 6 year old girl and she could conceive – but then – what is the point?
Yet another perversion in the name of individual’s inalienable right to be free.
If I understand the story correctly, we are talking about a man ‘transitioning’ to being a woman, who has not had the surgery done yet [there is a typo in the BBC story], but has undergone hormone replacement therapy, hence has found that he (she) is able to breastfeed the baby, who is the child of his (her) female partner (and conceived with his/her sperm presumably).
Interesting.’Exciting’, even, as the British expert commented, salivating at the juicy opportunities beckoning on the horizon for specialists in this field, with demand said to sky-rocket in the coming years…
Today in Diocletia – tomorrow the whole world!
She was able to produce enough milk to be the baby’s only food source for the first six weeks, a study says.
From the Wash Post:
“And Broward County Mayor Beam Furr told CNN that Cruz had been getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but that he had not been back to the clinic for more than a year. “It wasn’t like there wasn’t concern for him,” Furr told CNN. “We try to keep our eyes out on those kids who aren’t connected. … In this case we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”
Adopted, his dad died several years ago, his mom died last fall, he’d been getting mental health services, but his mom died too and “we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”
Pretty much what happened with Cho at Virginia Tech too, he was dropped right out of the system. WTF? Can’t anyone in the mental health community figure out how to provide services to people who clearly need them? Nonfeasance may be too kind a characterization.
pl Interesting picture. don’t see Krags much anymore.
Lefty
My first and favorite big bore rifle. pl
james
i’ll sell the government almost all my guns for 10k per piece. How’s that for an offer? pl
Are there any records of Samurai who attacked schools in Japan before 1865?
Where there attacks against schools in the United States before 1960 and its pervasive drug culture?
Are those parents who bought their kinds a small caliber rifle when their children were 9 years old creating monsters?
The difference between those kids who were given rifles for Christmas and this person is that they knew the difference between Rights and Wrong.
Too many guns are surely part of the problem, just as too many drugs are part of the opiod epidemic, but guns and drugs are really only a part of the problem. There are other societies that are just as heavily armed (e.g. Switzerland) but that don’t have regular mass shootings.
I’m afraid that there is something rotten at the heart of US society. I don’t know what it is or how to fix it, but there is clearly a problem, a grave sickness when so many people want to drug themselves into oblivion or to shoot as many of their fellow beings as possible.
Maybe the US govt could just shut down the internet and mobile phone signals and force people to talk to each other again?
New born babies have very small stomachs. That doesnt sound like much milk.
so much for the “well-regulated militia” thang.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/nikolas-cruz-trained-with-florida-white-supremacist-group-leader-says?ref=home
I don’t care much one way or another, but blowback is heck, as we know. Rational, well-intentioned hunting & shooting enthusiasts best get ahead of the issue… before they get way behind.
Eric Newhill,
(reply to comment 4 )
In what percent of these type of shooter cases is the shooter giving off sufficient or even abundant signs of disturbance and danger such that the various intervening agencies and/or people should know very well that it is time to guide and contain the pre-shooter before he or she shoots?
Lefty,
( to comment 7 ),
If keeping proper track of these disconnected people takes more people than what the system now has, and if it would take more money to pay for more people ( and their supporting technologies) to keep unbroken track and touch with these people, then are we the taxpayers willing to pay more taxes to be spent on more staff to man these systems and more and better tools for them to work with?
Guns are not the only instruments for killing what or whom you dislike. But constantly 24/7 teaching violence to our kids as a form of entertainment is more lethal. IMO, that is what America needs to understand top down.
The stable shooter was a member of the republic of Florida. The ROF has mostly young members in north and south Florida and describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate. http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-school-shooting-suspect/story?id=53092753
Is it easier to buy a gun than antibiotics in the US?
————————————————–
A detour: Terrorist act in Brussels’ airport and the allegedly fake news about the terract: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-brussels-terror-attacks-fake-videos-and-images-the-man-in-the-hat/5519591
raven
What is your solution? pl
bill Herschel
and? pl
bks
Have you ever owned a gun or done much shooting? Irony alesrt. I guess you nailed it. Deplorables are potential mass murderers. pl
Babak,
What’s the immigration rate in Japan? For how many centuries were all weapons outlawed to anyone not of the Samuri class?
If the government shuts down the Internet and forces me to talk to the morons around me, I’d probably start shooting people.
This man spent most of his life being held in contempt by society because he was not LGBTQetc. Now we hear from the usual politicians the usual call for collective punishment of law abiding gun owners.
And how exactly does this effect you?
For the record, I am one hundred percent a supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
With 80 million people owning 400 million firearms in the US – seventy times the number of firearms in the hands of the national police forces and the military – “gun control” is an oxymoron and physical impossibility – so go ahead and try.
Even if you succeed, you will have left guns in the hands of criminals and started a huge new black market for firearms for everyone else.
An interesting article from last year:
Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/
Where did you get your crazy misinformation? He did not murder 17 children because he was held in contempt by society for not being LGBTQ. He murdered them because he had mental problems, was a monster and it is easy to buy assault rifles.
Anna,
Do you really think there’s a federal background check required for getting antibiotics and that convicted felons are forbidden to own antibiotics? Or do you mean I can get my insurance company to reimburse me for my monthly ammunition usage and Obamacare will let me get a replacement rifle at a discount?
I put the blame on the educational/medical systems, too many drug cures for minor problems that in the past were worked out by “kids being kids”. Now the Army is saying that the current crop of recruits feels “too entitled”, is undisciplined, and unable to even throw a hand grenade (so, the dropped that requirement). If every kid is a “winner” then they can also all be “losers”.
different clue,
I suspect that most, if not all, presented signs that anyone with common sense and some sense of responsibility would recognize – anyone with “common sense” and “responsibility” being the operative keys.
Adam Lanza? He should have never been anywhere near a firearm. The Colorado shooters (all of them) showed signs. The guy who shot up the church congregation last year should have never been near a weapon based on his behavior while in the service. The jihadist that shot up the night club should have been disarmed.
My son came home from Afghanistan 100% disability (officially) due to a head injury. He was talking crazy and acting crazy. At one point he purchased a civilian copy of a military sniper rifle. I took it from him. he tried to have me arrested for “stealing” the rifle. I told the sheriff (who I know) the circumstances and that the rifle was safely hidden and that he could charge me and put me in jail if he wanted to, but my son was not going to have a firearm if I could stop it. Charges were filed at my son’s request and then promptly dismissed in court based on my son’s VA records. The Sheriff kept the rifle. My son and I don’t talk anymore (over that and some other things). But at least no one got killed on my watch. I’m no hero. Just a regular guy doing what regular guys used to do before society became the screwed-up mess that it is.
I refuse to turn in my weapons and abdicate my second amendment rights because society promotes government dependency, stupidity, laziness, cowardice and irresponsibility. In fact, those conditions make me feel the need to maximize those rights.
“Guns preserve freedom and prevent autocracy”:
So this ship has already sailed.
1. The U.S. Dept. Defense is the largest, wealthiest, militarily strongest entity on the planet, with 3.2M employed (vs. 2.3M PLA China Army, 2.1M Walmart) and a yearly budget of $716B.
2. The last serious US battle between a civilian militia and the U.S. Gov’t was the Waco siege. Although armed with 305 guns, including automatic weapons and two .50 guns, more than 100 Wackos were flicked off with little sweat by 10 M3 Bradleys, 2 tanks, and a couple helicopters. This was before the days of combat robots and drones.
3. The most relevant modern Nazi-government-takeover scenario comes from Eastern Ukraine, in which Right Sektor orcs were given National Guard artillery and turned loose to decimate towns. From long range. Again, assault rifles could not prevent millions of refugees being rendered homeless.
4. America has had concentration camps before, with the Japanese-American Internment. Arming each Japanese-American with an assault rifle would not have prevented America’s concentration camps.
5. If a SWAT team comes against someone seriously, they’re going to set up a sniper from half a mile away. How can you defend against that?
6. Tianamen Square was tanks.
So assault rifles, like crossbows or kung fu, are useful in certain limited situations, but are no longer effective solutions for modern challenge situations against state-sponsored equipment. Instead, these battles are played out in the courtrooms and in the media.
Conclusion: The guns no longer work, as a balance against fascism, for the purposes intended.
However, guns are prime tools for demonic destruction. US Death by gun is about 12 per 100K people per year. Including suicide by gun US rate is 6.7 per 100K. Half of women killed are by their husbands or lovers, and half of those are killed using a gun.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/
When there is an implement of immediate death in the house, either spouse who wakes up enraged could take the other one out; this leads to paranoia and worsened quality of life, which spirals.
Guns also tend to shut down discussions, especially difficult ones. Thus, less negotiated solutions and more dictated ones.
Gun usage is cultural. People think in stories. If Americans were not bombarded with stories such as the Deadpool garbage where killing is a solution and executing surrendered opponents is glorified, teenagers with weak minds would not get the idea that this is the heroic way to live. If the Government were not bombarded with stories such as Iraq and Syria, the Government would be more trustworthy and would not turn to violence as the first and only solution. Japan has an 0.31 / 100K intentional homicide rate, compare US at 4.9, because killing people is rude and not nice.
Neither the people nor the US Government are to be trusted. But the Government has won the heavy arms war. So, yes, beef up the National Guards as a sane counterweight to the Feds. Require stricter registration for guns. Educate families how to negotiate and use their mouths instead of their bodies. And push the ACLU to fight for free speech and Constitutional rights.
America is following militarized Israel as a model for oppression, total 1984-style surveillance, and heavy weapons for police. This battle will be fought and won in the courtrooms, not in the streets.
In my opinion, looking back to my time as a teenager there were times of mental stress when I contemplated taking revenge on my tormentors, be they fellow students or teachers to the point of contemplating their deaths. I believe this is normal existence for hormonally challenged pubescent teenagers who can be extremely cruel to each other.
However I was attending an absolute premiere school, I had a loving family, I had opportunities to sublimate my frustrations by playing sports and other pastimes.
Fast forward fifty years to the American experience; industrial sized sausage machine high schools; rigid campus rules backed up by force that effectively criminalizes parts of normal teenage behaviour. “one size fits all” attitudes.
“Mental health” issues? How does anyone get treatment and support in America without money?
To borrow the punchline from that wonderful story “Interview with a lemming”, I’m surprised that there aren’t lots more school shootings by disgruntled students.
Mine too, nice action, and the carbine handles well too.
I think we need to look very long and hard at our society. We have definitely forgotten/ignored the “promote the general welfare” part of our Constitutional preamble. Children with mental health issues who slip through the cracks in our social welfare/public health system do so because our systems are incredibly weak. Other industrialized societies have stronger “social safety nets”…that name, by the way, refers to how strong access to health care/mental health treatment and a less disparate economic system creates a “safer society.” Of course, it makes each person in that society healthier and more supported…but the goal is not to help the individual, it is to secure a safe society by promoting the general welfare.
We have forgotten those bonds at our considerable peril.
DJK @ #18
One of these rotten things is the obsession on the centrality of the “individual” and their “autonomy.” It used to be that people that were severely mentally ill were locked up; institutionalized in an insane asylum.
Then, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, legislation was passed giving them a bunch of “rights” and most of the mentally ill were released to the streets.
To-day, these people constitute much of the homeless population we see on the streets of our cities. Unable to take basic care of themselves, they end up on the street. Some of them are more than unable to take care of themselves, but are outright dangerous.
From what I have read about these incidents, 50 years ago the shooters would have been locked up. I suspect that a large part of the reason you don’t see this kind of stuff in other industrialized countries is that they still institutionalize the demented.
Yet suggest doing this here and the result will be bleat from “progressive” quarters of “What gives us the right to institutionalize or treat people against their will?” How can we take their autonomy away?”
They fail to realize that someone who can’t take basic care of themselves or who lashes out violently doesn’t have any autonomy, they either never had it or lost it some time previous to their behavior bringing them to public attention.
Antoinetta III
That is really troubling. As is this article I ran across that details more interference in our public discourse by bots. https://www.wired.com/story/pro-gun-russian-bots-flood-twitter-after-parkland-shooting/
Why not let insurance companies make a few bucks off of premiums on guns? And I bet they would do a better job running the NICS background checks than the feds? Seems to me they would do a 1000% better job if big payoffs are at stake.
What bothers me is that the catchphrase after these massacres is always “mental health.”
Maybe some of these people were born psychopaths, but the shift in American culture described in Mark Ames’s book “Going Postal” is a more acute diagnosis. Alienation from other people, combined with massively increased stress in the workplace due to productivity demands, stagnating wages, increasing cost of living, you can combine that with anything you like, violent videogames, Babak’s theory that all societal ills are caused by drug users, easy access to six shooters, whatever, but I think Ames got to the core of it.
It’s a book more about workplace massacres of the old post office type, but I find it still rings true.
(to comment 24)
“If keeping proper track of these disconnected people takes more people than what the system now has, and if it would take more money to pay for more people ( and their supporting technologies) to keep unbroken track and touch with these people”
Those are big IFs, and not a lot of evidence that they are the case. The quality and competence of public mental health services varies hugely across the country.
In Virginia Cho was under court order for services from the local Community Services Board (CSB) but they ignored him until he showed up at Tech. It was not lack of resources, it was incompetence that bordered on malfeasance. Same with State Senator Deeds son. The local CSB made a desultory check for a mental health hospital bed, missing one at the nearby University of Virginia and others, then sent him home to attack his father and shoot himself.
In Virginia services vary profoundly by locality. For example, Fredericksburg is variable (sometimes pretty good), Hanover is horrible (it commonly kills clients), Henrico is good, and Richmond has all the problems the city government exhibits.
The school system, probably the courts, and the mental health system in Broward County all knew this kid. They knew he was troubled, cared for by a surviving parent. Yet after his mother died as the mayor put it “we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.” Like I said above, WTF? From the follow up stories in the post the kid did everything he could to attract their attention short of putting a flashing beacon on his head. But, “we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”
Mental health services are hard, generally do not have enough funding, and will never serve everyone who needs them. But there is no excuse for failing to stay engaged with and to serve people with severe and public mental health issues. None.
If you please, consider this link:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/14/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting-suspect/index.html
Scroll down to the picture of the suspect staring face on straight into a camera.
That is a picture of a medium to semi-high achieving “special needs” person, more or less. No longer referred to as “challenged” or “mentally retarded or defective.” Developmental disorder. Axis IV or something like that in the DSM version whatever number it is up to by now.
So it is not depression, nor lack of or error in medicine. Or his deceased parents. Or psychopathy. Or drugs.
If that’s the perpetrator, yes, those are all things to consider, but not in this case.
So it’s not precisely a “gun-control” issue, sad to say, for reasons illuminated so well in Colonel Lang’s post of mid 2016, cited above. It’s something else universal to human experience. Of course he should never have been allowed anywhere near any firearm, much less an AR-15.
And yes, I’m sure he managed to get through ninth grade to speak euphemistically. And learn how to drive. And use social messaging software.
It’s another of those things that will never be fully remedied.
It is not necessary to inject. Endocrine disruptors have been producing h hermaphroditic bass in the upper reaches of the Potomac River for years. Just drink the water. Endocrine disruptors are everywhere. We’re just making new species by helping evolution a little.
Once upon a time in America it was possible to involuntary commit people that were mentally ill before they did harm. Both Republicans and Democrats worked to destroy institutions for the mentally ill, Republicans turned it into a for profit industry, and Democrats thought it was kinder not to label and commit.
Now it is very tough to involuntarily commit someone that is clearly a danger and the streets and prisons are full of mentally ill that are not being cared for.
Google around and you can find a lot of cases where parents/family knew a person was dangerous and couldn’t get any help or action.
Is the violence shown in videogames, television and movies a forbidden topic due to advertising revenue? I keep these away from my sons so they don’t get any ideas of violence being normal and that pointing a weapon at a person is a big deal.
Why does the US incarcerate 8-10 times the people than other industrialized country?
Why is the US the only industrialized country not to have universal health care?
Why does the US allow quick and easy purchase of semi-automatic guns?
Could these facts produce stress in the society?
Solution: 1. Require federal arms licenses to purchase semi-auto weapons, similar to the automatic weapons licensing, and have a buyback program for the semi-aoutos out there.
2.Work on removing the stresses mentioned above.
Ante
Do not post comments twice. pl
imagine
Are you Canadian? pl
All
I have cut off comments until the next mass shooting. pl