Even so, Castillo wanted to be known as more than a father killer. Near the end of his final video segment, he announced: “It’s time to teach history a lesson.” That is where the school shooting came in. Castillo wanted to be remembered as a shooter in the tradition of Harris and Klebold. Just before the teenager was taken away from the school grounds in a police car, he yelled out to the cameras, “Columbine! Remember Columbine! Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold!”
For their part, Harris and Klebold seemed to have had more sinister motivations, with fantasies of malevolent grandeur that Katz categorizes as “primordial evil.” In their diaries, published in July 2006, they painted themselves as gods who wished to be feared, not loved. One year before the killings, Klebold wrote in his school yearbook, “My wrath ... will be godlike.” As gods, Klebold and Harris felt they stood above society and were beyond its control—and laws. And to demonstrate their “omnipotence,” they became masters of life and death.
Cho may have been trying to defend a similarly overwrought and distorted sense of morality. In his video Cho denounced materialism and hedonism, and in a note police found in his room he condemned “rich kids,” perhaps suggesting that his murders were an attempt to get back at privileged people. In another video, he hinted that he would become a martyr akin to Jesus Christ, musings that echo the grander fantasies of Klebold and Harris.
Cries for Help
Although adolescents may at first hide their destructive fantasies out of fear of rejection, over time they may increasingly feel a need to express them. Bosse, for example, created drawings and poems and dropped hints of his plans in conversations. Like some other emotionally disturbed youth, Bosse cried for help. In an online forum two years before his shooting spree he wrote: “I am gorging on my entire rage, and one of these days I’m going to let it out and get revenge on all the assholes who made my life miserable.... For those of you who haven’t gotten it yet: yes, I’m going to go on a rampage! I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I don’t know what to do, please help me.”
A few hours before his rampage, Bosse e-mailed a scanned copy of his diary to several schoolmates and wrote in a suicide note: “Because I know that the fascist police won’t publish my videos, notebooks, or diaries or anything else, I’ve taken care of that myself.”
In some cases, a youth may alert the media to his plans. At Virginia Tech, Cho unleashed two shooting sprees separated by two and a half hours. During that intermission, the young killer mailed a package of homemade videos, photographs and writings to NBC News. Castillo sent a video to a local newspaper in which he vented his rage and hinted that he was planning a massacre at his former school.
Such communications should not be ignored. School personnel, parents and peers alike need to be alert for verbal, written and other signs that an adolescent is becoming engulfed in a destructive fantasy world.
We are training teachers, principals and school psychologists to differentiate signs of serious trouble from ordinary adolescent rebellion. In addition to disclosing aggressive intentions, a student who is extremely interested in obtaining guns, collects movies and posters of shooters, regularly visits fan Web sites for school shooters or is a social loner is likely to be in dire need of professional help.
Symptoms of depression in a young person are another warning sign. In December 2005 a physician examined Cho and found him mentally ill, noting that he had a flat affect and depressed mood.
Access to weapons is yet a further cause for alarm, indicating that the youth has the means to turn fantasy into reality. Robert Steinhauser, a 19-year-old expelled student who executed 16 people in a school in eastern Germany in 2002, was a gun club marksman who had access to enough ammunition to kill hundreds of people.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this330 million Americans. According to some studies...3 million psychopaths. Perhaps 10 million males who were troubled youths.
So one in several thousand of these kills someone. One in a million does something really horriffic. What is 'the variable'? Looking for social variable or 'signs' is rather fruitless because the exact same variables apply to the hundreds of thousands who never pick up a gun and start randomly shooting people.
the best prevention? Stop acting as if rare, random cases of violence are a reflection of anything in society or some reflection of a lack of resources. If anything, such false analysis plants the seeds in some kids head.
This is insightful and of course, once again timely. The work of Kip Williams at Purdue on ostracism and its effects - especially the effects of chronic social rejection - dovetail with this. His review of the literature on ostracism is another must read. http://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/uajyxyJzQPS2eEMAMBW5/full/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085641?spnCategory=525&spnDomain=17&spnContent=23&spnContent=28&spnID=30147&&
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the most responsible pieces of journalism I've seen following the spate of recent tragedies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile we'll never be able to prevent all tragedies, if we get to the root causes and find real solutions, maybe, just maybe, we can avert some of them.
Thank you Scientific American for proposing real solutions.
Excellent article! Real solutions to real problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFluff. Motherhood and Apple Pie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur kid's school has a nurse, guidance councillor, on call psychologist, on call sociologist. And supposedly teachers get some type of training to be teachers. Kids get councilling, get drugs, get sent home.
We don't need more professionals or understanding or research. It all sounds great but it's more babble for the sake of babble
I applaud the author for tackling this problem which every time is looked at for a second and then forgotten. I don't see much in the realm of useful answers though. Usually in the case of crime we speak of deterrence but I notice in many of these cases including this one, the perps end up killing themselves at the end. What do you use as a deterrent to someone who is not afraid of death? Obviously only the threat of incredible and long lasting pain and degradation which would presumably be outlawed by the constitution. Can't be too cruel to these poor misguided boys after all. Better that all these other people die instead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@julianpenrod, "This criticizes editorial policies by other venues, so it may be removed or not printed." sorry to put this so bluntly but you appear to be mentally ill. Every time you post you add that line to the top of your comment. Think about it. If your comment is not posted who will read it? It means nothing. If your comment is posted, the comment means nothing. You seem to be suffering from some kind of paranoid delusion. You really need to seek help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoutsidethebox: "What do you use as a deterrent to someone who is not afraid of death? Obviously only the threat of incredible and long lasting pain and degradation which would presumably be outlawed by the constitution. Can't be too cruel to these poor misguided boys after all. Better that all these other people die instead."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can identify these nut cases among millions of other nutcases then good luck. The reality is that few of these perps (if any) stand out as more likely to go off the edge than other people who are a bit 'off'. The idea that they can be stopped by 'deterrence' is absurd.
There are no solutions. We can't just go around locking up delusional nutcases (like J. Penrod above).
Well julianpenrod:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the "phantom" students moved to Connecticut from Manitoba where I come from, and she and her family is known here.
Or maybe the kids were not all in one place, so they would not have to be 'waiting' as you say. It sounds like he had walked around a few different places shooting. You are a nut case. You are part of the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a matter of fact, that grandiose, narcissistic thought process, is a textbook sign post for someone who may commit an evil act with no regard for the victims. And paranoid delusions, like the whole world is involved in some incredibly convoluted conspiracy, suggests an eminent psychotic break. One needs to be fairly removed from reality to believe that hundreds if not thousands of citizens from an American suburb are engaged in a lifelong effort to fool the world, with the assistance of the entire countries police and news organizations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI fear poor little Julian is exactly the sort of individual who needs to be disarmed and kept under close psychiatric supervision.
Easy: freedom of press.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs alleged in the article, loneliness and detachment is the ROOT CAUSE of runaway "vengeance" fantasies. therefore the solution can only be found in reducing social isolation. Sitting in front of a video game is the major factor in these "in-person shooter" cases, something that supplants team activities that we knew in past decades. It is also very easy, through video games, to become inured to the excitement of killing as a release of pent-up frustration. If you've ever gone to a shooting range, you'll find that even shooting real guns gets boring after a few hundred rounds. But, as far as isolation goes, schools simply must be required to forcibly enroll all students into various clubs, sports,projects, etc., as a requisite class. If Adam Lanza had been captain of, say, the marksmanship club at school, he never would have felt so hopeless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother factor involved here is that suffering from delusions of omnipotence stems from the doting mother who makes her son believe that he is a god. When he repeatedly fails to elicit the same attention from other members of society, he makes it his mission to force them to cower before him, just as his mother did, even at the price of his own life. Being a doting mother is not in of itself a bad thing, but a boy without a father figure to "open a can of whoop-ass" on him once in a while, can easily be led to believe that he is deserving of worship. You may have noticed that there seems to have been no problem with single father raised children, as opposed to those by single mothers. Only fathers can administer a dose of reality to the family.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets get this right, smart people suddenly start killing sheep? In the latest case a smart person killed the lambs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lamb is a sheep, no difference except as noted by smarter people than me it brings attention to it.
Im surprised you didnt include a complete psychological dissection's, so why don't you share them...
Everyone wants to know why, when the answers have been available from the very first murders...
When the next one occurs, it'll be why?....am i building a picture here!
I cant be bothered to explain why it happened, go bore another smart person.
A good article in the ongoing conversation about the
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispossible genesis of rampage killings like Newtown, Columbine
and Aurora. It does seem that surviving documents of such
killers refer to real or imagined bullying or persecution, particularly in K-12 schools. When I grew up in the 1950s,
I experienced some ostracism first hand and witnessed it
happening to others. The damage sustained will of course
vary with the circumstances, the rate of occurrence and one's
own personal and family backgrounds, and presence or lack
of support. Including the presence of a good sympathetic
ear or two.
I get the sense however that there has been a significant
ramp up in bullying, targeting and ostracism in recent
decades. The sources of this are not clear, though it's
worth noting that today's high-schoolers and college
students are experiencing record levels of pressure and
stress. It's not hard to predict that with a larger
population of kids who experience such hostilities, there
will be greater chances that some small portion of more
isolated individuals could be driven (and drive themselves)
into ultimate 'revenge' violence. That this is likely,
seems obvious to me. Yet, in the weeks just after the
Columbine massacre, a theater-director acquaintance had
to refrain from stating exactly that, in fear for his
own safety, when in the presence of a crowd of men who
were busy being enraged by the event and insisting that
the two young killers had been utterly insane and thus
were utterly beyond any human understanding, and utterly
beyond the pale.
As to the tendency to dismiss these horrific massacres
as merely aberrant, random and ultimately inexplicable,
notice that most of them occur at schools, places normally
considered safe places for the young and innocent. Places
that should be welcoming, peaceful and nurturing for young
minds and hearts, but which very often are not. Note that
police stations are not targeted; nor are military
installations or the bastions of big business.
"You can't go around locking up delusional nutcases". Of course when I was younger they did. But liberals felt we were interfering with their "rights" and the Republicans didn't want to spend the money to take care of them. So we get these "situations" instead. Yeah, this is so much better. Plus as an added bonus you get to go downtown and watch the mentally ill homeless stumble around. This is certainly a better system than before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm saddened to read of so many stigmatizing names attached to people who suffer from any type of mental illness. Generalize much?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can fix the problem of untreated illness of all types today if we have the will to accept everyone into our communities, provide the right kind of available and effective supports to bolster the vulnerable among us, and become the friends and neighbors we would like others to be to us.
Hurling insults at people as outgroup others is a defense mechanism to help us feel immune to that happening to us. But it's only an illusion, and it leaves harm in its wake.
Everyone can help anywhere along the problem - from being civically engaged to volunteering to simply being welcoming and friendly to someone who isn't lovely and beautiful on the outside.
The way to stop social isolation is to reach out to those who are largely invisible.
julianpenrod,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I understand what you're saying and support you in having your own opinions. Voicing an opinion like that is hardly going to get you attention you actually seek. I personally wish others would respond more constructive to your ideas although it hasn't been too bad in this forums that I read. If you need someone to constructively vent that theory to, I'm more than willing to listen to it. Those that criticize you I think have forgotten how people that do these kinds of acts are created.
In my opinion cyber-bulling is the largest cause of most of the more recent ones. In earlier years there was a class bully and he could be disciplined if he got out of hand. You can't discipline the internet. I think also that in a largely connected world you can seem more disconnected as well.
-Joshua B
Ohio
OBagle wrote, "If you've ever gone to a shooting range, you'll find that even shooting real guns gets boring after a few hundred rounds."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, for you and I, we become bored. I don't think this is true for gun enthusiasts. Gun shooting provides an adrenaline rush. Some people become addicted to this rush. And the bigger the weapon, the bigger the rush. Same thing for people that go to Nascar or Indy car races. You also see (and have) this rush when watching Mythbusters as they blow things up. I observed a space shuttle launch in 2002. Wow! That was a rush! However, to me, these rushes are very shallow -- I move on.
I don't believe the primary motive for gun right advocates is self defense or the right to form an armed militia to fight the government. I believe they are addicted to the rush from shooting and the power they feel when carrying a gun. How much gun shooting practice do you need to be able to shoot an intruder to your home? Shooting is like riding a bike. I ask that gun enthusiasts should attempt to stop shooting, stop thinking about your guns, and then observe your withdrawal symptoms. You can still keep your loaded handgun on your nightstand (isn't that where is should be if you are concerned about home intruders?), but just try a new hobby for a bit.
The author is missing a crucial and important area to focus on with these kind of violent crimes and potential perpetrators. The root emotion behind virtually all mass killings and violent attacks such as these is intolerable shame and humiliation felt by the individual that lashes out. Numerous psychologists and criminologists have written about the long-standing devaluation of the self and the shame and feelings of inadequacy that precede these violent episodes which are an attempt to exact both revenge...and a feeling of taking back the power in their own lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe people most responsible in causing these feelings of shame and desperate devaluation in these young men are the parents. Overly controlling, selfish mothers, detached, dismissive or disinterested fathers...these are what start the child down this path of feeling shame and emptiness inside. This lack of any self worth and feeling of defectiveness then translates into a child that can't make adequate friendships and connections with other kids and creates further isolation and lack of a support system both in school and at home. Mental health professionals need to educate parents...because it is the parents who are both the primary cause that starts the shame process in motion in their children and they are also the people best able to talk to and understand what their own kids are really feeling.
But that is exactly the problem. The parents of these kids...that end up being violent adults...are often so dysfunctional themselves and have such selfishness and unselfawareness issues...that they are the problem and not the answer. Teachers and school psychologists need to develop ways of reaching those kids that are showing the signs of shame disorders. Each and every one of these violent shootings in schools and elsewhere is always perpetrated by a person that feels they are inadequate and defective and hopeless beyond help. At a certain point something happens that pushes them over the edge and they act out in frustration, revenge and a 'take back' of their own powerlessness by taking others lives.
It is actually each and every one of us that has a moral obligation to reach out and connect with others that might seem withdrawn, scared to connect, feeling inadequate or shamed. No one psychologist in a school or even a course for teachers is going to solve the problem.
Actually, in the 50s when I was a kid, the class bully didn't get disciplined unless he was dumb enough to start a fist fight. It was believed that it was best to let us work it out. I was 4.5 ft. tall and 30 lbs. ugly as sin and packing a heavy out of state accent, when I started school. I got beat up alot and nobody seemed to think that was wrong, my teachers, my Catechism instructor and my family all felt I needed to toughen up and learn to stick up for myself. So I did, I won a decisive fist fight with a boy twice my size and 2 years my senior. I also decided I wasn't gonna put up with my less able friends being picked on either, so they weren't. I was small but crazy and I wouldn't back down, as we all got older the boys who were actually tough would tend to lean on the type of wannabes that would go after me, end of problem. In the 50s school yards were self policing, we just tended to have been taught right from wrong, so when the inevitable bully popped up he would eventually meet resistance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI cannot help but see the link between these types of incidents and what our governments do. When we decided Saddam Hussein was a bully, we went in with guns and bombs and did a lot of killing - what does that teach our children to do when they have a problem with someone or a group? The president has a "kill list", which shows every child the way to deal with problem people is assassinate them. American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed without trial by the government, and the list goes on. Kids learn by copying - monkey see monkey do, and until we change our official ways, this will continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisinteresting article...i've read most of the comments without noticing anyone mention the obvious, if no doubt unpopular (in the U.S.), solution: ban private ownership of all guns and ammo...done and done...that won't end all murder and there will still be occasional random attacks, but the death toll will be much reduced...but of course you have to care more about preventing murder than about owning guns...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe threw the baby out with the bathwater back in the 1950's in the deinstitutionalization movement. Just because some institutions for the mentally handicapped were bad does not invalidate the idea of having a non-law enforcement alternative to protective custody.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that for most americans families protective custody of a family member must start with a call to the police. Few will take this step in time due to the connotation implied by having the police involved. Further, police officers feel inadequately prepared for dealing with these situations consequently when called they are unwilling to take action unless it is clear laws were broken,the prevention of which being the reason they were called in the first place.
We need a system where friends and families can refer troubled loved ones for evaluation and custody of needed. While fears of wrongful detainment are justified, certainly we have come far enough in the last 50 years to address this risk.
Julian P.: You state that evidence is accumulating, but I find nothing in your comment that convinces me of anything at all. If there is a lack of evidence, you seem willing to see that as caused by 'a number of [unnamed] venues' hiding the facts. Weird.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith such an outrageous claim the burden of proof is on you, Julian, not for anyone else to disprove.
And yes, indeed, you CAN change preloaded clips in just a few seconds.
Face it, you come across as a nut case. Ranting more, without facts, will only prove that assessment to be correct.
My guess is that you have had a lot of previous 'causes' and events that have got you really worked up, too.
Take your meds as prescribed.
Although the article is in depth, well thought out and well written, I fear that the lone preventable cause may once again have been over looked. I have not done a great deal of research on the subject but to my recollection, all of these shooters have been under psychiatric care and prescribed psychiatric medication. Guns, violent games, vigilance, security, teen fantasies and the like all existed at some level, if not a greater level prior to these incidents. Psychotropic drugs being prescribed to children as young as 5 has not. Real answers? I think not. Guns will never be outlawed. It will never happen as long as we still have a constitution and even if they were, any kid could purchase as many a he wanted as easily as he can buy a bag of dope. Especially after the civil war that would surely follow the ban. It seems vigilance and "looking for the signs" has not worked either, as most, if not all of these kids were under psychiatric treatment. Security didn't work in Newtown where the security measures in place were overrun in seconds. IT appears that the expert psychiatrists got us into the mess, they should be the ones to face the facts and get us out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisViolance is a form of language. Guns are like the definitive words of this language. When some people needs attention or a problem, they resort to this language. In US, society and media tolerate and even encourage this particular form of language to settle differences and solve problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the saddest things in this article is the presumption on the part of the author that "professional help is needed" in some circumstances.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell. there is not a particle of legitimate evidence to suggest such "professional help" is of the slightest use... and is more likely yet another stressor in these kid's lives.
Take someone who feels an outcast and then make sure to reinforce it with the tender ministrations of some clueless busybody whose only real function in a school is to shame kids into obedience or else be deemed "just some nut".
The smug condescending intervention of these self-congratulating "professionals" has probably done more to ensure mass shootings take place than to prevent them.
There is nothing so maddening and certain to enrage someone who feels dismissed as worthless as to have some know-it-all tell them they know the kid's mind better than does the kid.
It is never the case that they do and it just adds insult to injury to have some bureaucratic stranger threaten the kid's sense of self determination.
No... we can note that these kind of outrageous incidents have only increased with the intrusion of the talking therapists into the schools.
The manifold and confused belief system(s) of the talking therapy industry are mere pseudo-science that bear the same resemblance to the science of human psychology as the astrology bears to the science of astronomy.
@ Sciencefirstandforemost (and others)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou wrote:
"330 million Americans. According to some studies...3 million psychopaths. Perhaps 10 million males who were troubled youths."
"So one in several thousand of these kills someone. One in a million does something really horriffic. What is 'the variable'? Looking for social variable or 'signs' is rather fruitless because the exact same variables apply to the hundreds of thousands who never pick up a gun and start randomly shooting people."
Wrong. You and many others have an over-narrow view of what constitutes "mental illness" and its socioeconomic consequences. Mass homicide at anelementary school is certainly more prominent than epidemic obesity or drug addiction or Internet smut or primetime psychodrama or any number of less acute forms of mental illness, but the latter are more dreadful in aggregate by far. If doting mothers and disengaged fathers are partly, if not mainly to blame for their murderous children, what is the part of a culture that is so flagrantly tolerant and permissive of outrageous things?
Joe Biden, et al should take due notice of that sad state of affairs between now and the SOTU. Probably they will not.
string_beery the reason the author avoided gun control in the article is clear. No evidence. Your comment is unsubstantiated by any fact. Everywhere in the USA and abroad where guns have been banned gun crimes have increased substantially. That is a fact. Look it up. You can start with Chicago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's pretty simple really. If you're a violent criminal, which building would you terrorize? The one with "gun-free zone" on the door, or the one with an NRA sticker on the door?
Try banning cars. They actually kill more people daily than guns do in a decade and are the number one cause of death of children, people, even animals, worldwide. Chances are if you live somewhere that you don't use a car, you will be for outlawing them. If you live somewhere that you learned early in life how to drive a car safely and you drive one daily, you'll say it's not the cars fault, its the people driving the cars in error.
In the USA, how about bringing in some gun control laws in place of the so-called gun control laws you have at the moment, which are a sick joke. In particular allowing private citizens to buy automatic weapons is dangerous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso some sort of federal register of who owns guns might be of some help in identifying people who are at risk of committing mass murders.
Fossilnut - Yes, we have teachers, and psychologists in school. They serve a purpose and given better information, can do a better job of helping kids in trouble and preventing violence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have any advice other than give up and wait for the next attack?
We cannot help bout note your offering is awash in wholly unsubstantiated beliefs about the inner mind of others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot surprisingly, the superstitious beliefs you hold "just happen" to portray you as superior to others as you dismiss them with a smug waveoff.
The people who most transmit a sense of humiliation and shame are the self-same "professionals" who pretend to have the ability to resolve this problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more you invite petty bureaucrats... in the past known as "busybodies" into the life of kids the more problems you will have.
Everyone who has been to "real college" knows full well wherfe the 8th grade intellects head to gain a joke degree... education, social work, psychology.
Everyone knows these are the easy courses where people who simply will never be college level in intellect go to gain a "degree".
These smug self-satisfied know-it-alls are the very vectors of a sense of humiliation and devalued self when kids are told they are some kind of all-knowing all-seeing vendors of wisdom.
They are not.
The vectors of mental distress... sometimes induced even in otherwise healthy kids... is the talking therapy industry and its superstitious notions of what one must do in order to conform to whatever notions have caught their fancy.
If a kid who is actually intelligent is confronted by these poor performing intellects they are crushed by the mixed signals.
On the one hand.. the kid naturally wants to beleive the adults can lead and help... on the other, they can certainly sense they are in the presence of someone who surely is none too bright nor insightful and is mostly interested in "breaking" the kid.
Psyche-industrialists are forever projecting their own pet notions upon their victims... and an adolescent kid is in a poor position of his or her life to resist this intrusion.
The intrusion of this pseudo-science into the schools can be seen to track directly to every negative attribute we see in schools.
There will always be undetected, troubled individuals. This is a good article, but does not offer any definitive diagnostic, probably because there IS no way to distinguish normal adolescent angst from incipient psychopathy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what can we do? The clue comes at the bottom of page three: "Access to weapons is yet a further cause for alarm". No kidding!
Some gun-availability advocates are responsible and look for real data to move the conversation forward (try http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/crimestats), others blindly accept NRA propaganda (http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_rtcstates.html for NRA stats debunking).
Over the last week I've been checking the claims that gun proliferation reduces violent crime and find them to be unfounded; The reductions in violent crime following introduction of "right-to-carry" and other state laws to encourage gun presence are no greater (actually marginally less) than year-by-year reductions in crime that had already been occurring everywhere in the US since 1990. More guns are not correlated with less crime.
Civilization "would be a good idea" but cannot stop massacres. That can only come from limiting civilian access to weapons of extraordinary destructive power.
e_caroline,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuperstition is a belief in supernatural causality. Exactly what superstitious beliefs do I hold?
Are you trying to say that humans do not engage in sporting activities for the adrenaline rush?
I was talking about gun enthusiasts, not all gun owners. Most gun owners (even a majority of NRA members) believe there should be stricter gun laws (background checks, assault weapon bans, etc). I own a half dozen guns, but it's been at least five years since I shot one (that was at a skeet range). I have other priorities -- just as anyone who chooses their favorite hobbies or sports. Sorry I am not an adrenaline junkie.
I could have said the same thing about sky divers. But there's a difference between sky divers, nascar fans, and people that like assault weapons and blowing things up (as on Mythbusters). Where should the lines be drawn? -- what about rich people who like to shoot anti-aircraft missles (i.e. skeet on steroids)?
Yes, people can actually go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to shoot missle launchers and throw hand grenades. Maybe we should bring that to the US and even allow people to own their own military weapons (why stop at AK-47s?).
Superstition is an unfounded belief that is held to be true no matter whether reality refutes it or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn rational thinking a cause and effect are postulated and then tested or checked to see if the real world mirrors/supports that hypothesis.
In irrational thought, to whit superstition, a cause and effect are postulated and are "just accepted" if it sounds right.
Your notions of the inner mind of others is pure superstition in that it is something you "just accept" because it sounds right to you. 'Right' as in it fits your prejudices.
This is almost universally the realm of the anti-self-defense-niks who are so heavily represented in the anti 2nd amendment crowd.
They are almost universally sheltered beings who live the human equivalent of the lives of lifer indoor kitty kats.
They sit on the windowsill inside of the screen and meow doubtful wisdom out to the bobcats and barncats in the yard and woods behind the house.
Somehow... these poor, sad, and ultimately silly, beings project their sheltered experience of couch-bound lives upon the entire world.
They live the lives of pets held in common by society and are simply not capable of understanding what life is like as they have yet to enter adult life.
As they have no experience of life as a free adult they expect some magical parents to care for them, including their safety in an emergency.
If you have a fire extinguisher in your home it is likely you may only need it once in your life, if that. However, if you have none, you may lose your house and life for that failing.
So too the firearm, the police are not first but second responders.. and I know this being ex-law enforcement myself. The private citizen is the first responder in nearly every emergency and the uniformed folks the second.
There simply is no time to dawdle about hoping someone might get to you only in time to document the mess that you find yourself in.
It is rare that a house burns down... and it is rare that you need a firearm for protection.. but when you need it, you need it now.
It is obscene beyond all belief for some couchbound clown to demand I lay down my life to please some pathetic aesthetic notion that has taken control of some easy-living couchdweller. who thinks guns are "oh so nasty and yucky".
That is about the depth of sophistication of the anti-self-defense crowd... they find it ever so yucky that life is not like Sesame Street and that we do not all recognize Barney The Dinosaur as The Deity.
e_caroline, I'm afraid that a gun will not protect you from the rough, dangerous world you describe. Defense counts for less than 1 in a thousand times that guns are used. For example, here are some numbers from 2010:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere were 30,470 deaths by firearm in USA in 2010
- 19,392 suicides
- 11,078 homicides, including (partial list):
>> 1,923 were instances of killing during the commission of a felony, of which
• 236 were the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen
You are 14 times more likely to use that gun to kill someone you know during an arguement than you are to use it to defend your home.
A child in your house is more likely to use that gun to kill himself or another child than you are to use it defensively.
And you are more than a hundred times more likely to use it to kill yourself during a bad moment than you are to use it against an intruder.
@ e_caroline
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou cleary try to sound thoughtful in your posts.
Sadly, you miss the basic reality that every two months, we lose more Americans to gun violence than we did in the 9/11 attacks, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Your vision is to have concealed weapons carried by everyone for use in emergency. Why this is unworkable is that if the shooter A goes crazy and B and C shoot to stop them, D and E may see B or C as a shooter and try to stop them. I haven't even mentioned F and G nor the police. Will the real shooter please stand up.
In your mind there is a clear case of when defense is needed and possible and I will conceded that may be in your home where you the owner knows what should be going on. In a crowded theater, school or other public place to have anyone armed and OK'd to shoot is beyond the height of stupidity. It is just plain flat out crazy and those advocating it should put their crack away before dying or use more soon so they die and leave the normal among us alone. Just my opinion. Feel free to have your own. People will recognize me as being more sensible and I delight in that.
waaaaait-a-minute... Could these dismal facts about Republicans killing themselves and each other explain BOTH the steady decline in gun ownership/violence AND the fact that Democrats have been mysteriously tolerant of guns?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould this be, as they say in Australia, "Nature's way"?
Interesting...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thise_caroline goes on an ad hominem rant in her comment #39.
I call it an ad hominem rant (plus a strawman) and my comment gets deleted.
The SciAm moderator needs to explain their policies.
What a sad place we've come to. I know there is no greater pain amoung humanity than that felt at the death of a child.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny advertising company would attest to the power of repeatedly showing the same image and message toward the changing of buying habits. The same principal applies to the repeated exposure to violence in our pop culture media. Most of us understand the fictions of Rambo, a Terminator, or a Willis or Crusie character. But the demented, the substance abuser, or some wacko (forgive the vernacular) having a bad day has been "desensitized" to acts of murder and as we've tragically seen, becomes his own killing machine and that without conscience. Col. Dave Grossman PHD pschology professor at West Point Military Academy has revised his "ON KILLING" and establishes the mechanism of desensitization to the act of killing as our entertainment industry that functions as an "desensitizer for killing", especially in the heads of the disturbed or pathological.
Politicians show their ignorance by attacking the gun as though it is the cause. It's not unlike pencils and keyboards being blamed for mispelllled wurds bye an inkompetant teecher.