"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody."
I happen to agree with this statement. People who are either mentally unstable or suicidal, sadly, would like to go out famously, so to speak. It's on the news everywhere and so is the killer's name and his story. These shootings are happening increasingly and the quote tells you why.
The guy who just recently killed the 20 children and 7 adults (God rest their souls); He was known to have a form of autism. So it's reasonable to say that his life wasn't exactly great. He may have been picked on his entire life or just grew up in a bad household while having that disease (his parents were divorced). You have to be seriously messed up in the head to want to kill 20 innocent children.
Now I would like this thread to be discussed NOT about gun laws or anything to do with that, but your opinion on the reasoning of these cynical and unimaginably evil crimes, and why they've been happening more frequently as of late.
and why they've been happening more frequently as of late.
Well first off, this. Have they really? I don't think that they've been happening statistically more often in recent years than previous ones. I don't want to look up the figures right now though...
People who are either mentally unstable or suicidal, sadly, would like to go out famously, so to speak.
Not necessarily. If someone is suicidal, they probably are going to just try to kill themselves, not anyone else. The ones who want to involve others likely have issues in their past in addition to mental problems. I would like to point out though that simply having a mental illness is not the likely cause behind many of these events, even if it is often a factor.
It's on the news everywhere and so is the killer's name and his story.
There is this point. People copy ideas. The people who carry out these shootings gain infamy and will be remembered due to the nature of their actions. Not having to deal with the consequences of their actions because they kill themselves at the end is also an added bonus for them.
The media in general focuses on morbid events. Natural disasters, political troubles, crimes, accidents, etc. Not that people should hear about these things, but they shouldn't be what we expect to see on the news.
I'm pretty sure there's been an upward trend over the last hundred years, but the frequency of reporting and media exposure have also greatly increased. A hundred years ago (even 20 years ago), 2 people shot in a store would have been a very local story, and likely wouldn't have made the first 3 pages in the paper. The media trend has started focusing more on the negatives, because they create a bigger reaction. If "everything's running smoothly", people keep doing what they're doing. If "HOLY CRAP! BAD HAPPENED!" people stop and reach out emotionally and feel like they've been doing something wrong, so they attempt to change.
To pinpoint it on one single reason would be an insult to the family of the dead. I'm no psychologist, but I don't think we can easily pin the tail on the donkey for each and every shooter.
Somebody tell me when any kind of expert psychiatric/forensic opinion on motive in the Conneticut shooting (or any other shooting for that matter) is publicly released. Until this point there's a lot of groundless speculation. That's what irritates me the most about public (and I almost said plebian) commentary on these events: they tend to make a lot of unreasonable assumptions without realising it, and this perpetuates common misconceptions as well as counter-productive reactions.
Nonetheless there's some credit due to the copycat theory (at least as a contributing factor), seeing as it's already an established forensic phenomenon.
Availability is another matter. It just so happens that guns are more freely available in the US than in frequently compared nations. However that isn't to say that a similar phenomenon in a different form isn't happening elsewhere. Take Australia for example: anecdotally speaking I could say that the rise in media-reported US mass shootings is paralleled by what seems to be a spike in reported youth-perpetrated blunt trauma/stabbings in Australia. To make matters worse it's been suggested (I can't remember by who) that police crime and assault figures have been doctored so I can't really tell how much of what is bias, but the point remains that youth carrying concealed blades became a talking (and legislative) point, youth and alcohol and violence, and generally youth and violence became hot topics.
A lot of hot air later, and I'm not sure I'm any better informed of what the issue actually is, and how concerned I ought to be.
but your opinion on the reasoning of these cynical and unimaginably evil crimes, and why they've been happening more frequently as of late.
Something that didn't occur to me until recently is the lack of a national health service in the US. I'm assuming the same conditions apply for mental health as it does for, er, normal health? If someone was showing symptoms of odd behaviour at school in the UK, in a lot of cases they would be earmarked and referred to social services for counselling. Granted the quality of care might not be top notch and there will always be some individuals who slip through the net, but seeing as the perpetrators are clearly deranged, I can't help but think that this is a significant contributing factor. On the other hand people without money in the States have never had access to treatment, so as to why there seems to be a spike in these kinds of massacres recently, I'm none the wiser.
I did not know either of those names. However, I do agree with that completely and without question. If you are fixed on dying; why not get attention by doing so? I think if the media didn't cover it so much and treat them like they did something terrible. I do think however, they have cought on to that. The news (at least what I have watched) has only mentioned the shooters name when they had to and really just focused on the deaths of the people and actually skipped over him in the amount of people dead.
I don't agree with people saying that they treat them like celebrities but, they do give them a lot of attention and that is something they may not have had before. So when they get the chance to attain it, they do so.
I also think that this particular shooter had more wrong with him then just being suicidal. I think he had a load of mental illnesses and the mom should not have kept guns around when her child, at the very least, mentally unstable.
