There's a certain copycat element to all of the schoolyard shootings. The typical maladjusted shooter thinks -- knows, actually -- that he will become a larger than life, dark, sinister character whose very name inspires fear. And he wants that infamy, even if it comes at the cost of his life.
The way to discourage copycats is to report these mass killings in a belittling fashion.
Here's how I would have liked to have seen the Newtown killings reported:
Twenty year old Adam Lanza, who never once went on a date in his entire life, decided to end that miserable life yesterday. While Lanza is unlamented, tragically, he took the lives of as many five- and six-year-olds as he could, an incredibly cowardly act.
Adam killed his mother, reportedly because she had been thinking of institutionalizing him, since he was such a misfit. Then he went to Sandy Hook Elementary School, partly because that's where his mother volunteered, and he was jealous of the kids whom he thought his mother preferred to him. (He was probably right.)
Part of the reason Adam went to Sandy Hook was because he knew it was a "gun free zone." He knew that nobody there could shoot back at him, and, hero that he was, he also knew that first graders would offer no resistance.
You can see from these pictures that Lanza actually bears a slight facial resemblance to Michael Phelps, even though Phelps is 6'3" and a muscular 190 pounds, while Lanza was only 5'8" and a scrawny 135. But Phelps made something of himself, and now is reportedly one of the world's most prolific womanizers, while Lanza could only stay in his room and masturbate, a virgin to the end. No girl would have ever even considered going out with Lanza, given his extreme awkwardness.
Lanza didn't even have any male friends because of his Aspergers Syndrome. "He was the most lame, rigid person you could ever imagine," said one former classmate who asked not to be identified.
Lanza's family is now mourning the loss of Nancy Lanza, his mother, and wondering if they will ever be able to live down their association with this pathetic wimp.
People across the country are now shaking their heads and wondering if there's a more eloquent way of stating what a loser you are than to shoot a bunch of defenseless kids and then take your own life.
Now, how many copycat killers would that inspire?
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20 comments:
Thats good, I like it.
Anon --
Thank you.
It would definitely act as a deterrent to copycats but it would be a serious downer to skinny guys with low self worth who had never been on a date! :-P
Steven --
Nobody who didn't murder would be made fun of. This would be a deterrent.
My thinking was that if you are a small and skinny socially awkward virgin who has never been on a date and you are down on yourself and you read'pathetic wimp', 'no girl would ever consider going out with Lanza', 'most lame rigid person' etc, you might take it personally.
I agree it would be a deterrent though.
Stven --
You're right, that is a downside. But I'd say it'd be worth the price if it cut down on the murders.
People have been using pictures of look-alikes to claim sandy hook was a hoax like that picture of Phelps showing resemblance. They show a picture of someone from 10 years ago then show a recent one and say "Aha, see how the face is narrower, the ears hang more, the hair is thinner!". This has gone on for a lot.
I don't think it was a hoax but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a partial hoax to make it look like a hoax. Like in that episode of south park. They want people to believe that THEY are more competent that it really was. I suspect Sandy Hook and 9/11 were preventable.
Something I want to mention:
In Hong Kong, a while back after the protests in Mong Kok over laws about public food vending a while back, the feed on my facebook had links to claims the CIA or mainland was masterminding everything. Really? Protests about the legality of selling curry flavored fishballs and greasy noodles someone in the USA would ask? How is that an issue? But this is important for us here. Asia has it's own political and social turmoil. There isn't any debate about fat acceptance or safe spaces. Get this, in India, meat eating has been politicized. The more religous right have called for stricter regulations, the secular left have been calling for loosening laws. Quite ironic, the left in the USA is for vegetarianism. There are billions of people who have completely different issues in their own corner of the world. To think there are political and social issues in Ghana or Papua New Guinea over things we don't consider important!
But back on to Lanza:
I think Adam Lanza was classically autistic as you said (didn't speak until over 3, played dance dance revolution for 10 hours). I think we should pay attention to violence by ASD, but I disagree with people who are blowing it out of proportion. I believe that the rates of violence in ASD while higher than the normal population, is not abnormally high for organic conditions. Since it is one of the most prevalent we will see more incidents. The rate of violence for autism was estimated at 3% but I think it's higher, double that. For schizophrenia it is 8-10%, I'll use 9% for autism to be safe in the following. Schizophrenia is found in 1 in 250 but lets say its 200, ASD 1 in 60-70, so there will be around 3 times as many reported violent crimes compared to them, which is why it shows up in the news more.
Lanza was autistic and it contributed. We can also point out there were other factors. His autopsy on his brain showed it was normal sized, it had no deformities, but they found brain damage from anorexia, and he displayed new disorders after puberty, yet his autism could have made him obsessed with being an anorexic vegan, and being autistic without intervention means a greater chance of developing new disorders as an adult, and these problems can be prevented.
-Ga
Ga --
I hadn't heard anyone suggest that Sandy Hook was a hoax.
Asians are silly in their own way (like the manner in which they adopt and adapt Western culture), but they're not silly enough to fight for something like fat acceptance. The Indian debate over meat-eating of course stems from Hindu beliefs, so it makes sense that that's a big issue over there.
Agreed, Lanza was further up the scale than just ordinary Aspergers (even though that's what I said above). Ironically, I think Aspies are less likely to get in street fights or bar fights or things like that, and I think they're far less likely to become serial killers. But when it comes to mass shooters, they seem to be way overrepresented.
Lanza was a mess. They evidently found child porn on his computer afterward as well. And yes, autism/Aspergers is comorbid with all sorts of other disorders.
I am not a Sandy Hook denier. But I think some info was left out or conveniently ignored. Based on the amount of bullets used and magazines, and some other info, Lanza had to know how to reload and aim like a person who had practice and knew how to use a rifle. He just didn't pick it up one day from his mother's cabinet and go firing. Also there is evidence of some disintigration in his behavior during his teen years, his personality changed rapidly, something else was going on in his head (I think I mentioned this before), they aren't giving full info on his full mental health history if there is one. The whole story has been condensed and edited, that's as far as I suspect, the whole picture of who Adam Lanza was isn't out in the open.
-Ga
Ga --
I vaguely remember reading that Lanza had gone shooting with his mother, who kept a number of guns around (I could be wrong about that, not 100%). And he obviously at the very least had Aspergers Syndrome, and some have speculated that he was more seriously autistic. Plus there was evidently child porn recovered from his computer later on. It seems as if a fair number of the mass shooters in this country have had Aspergers Syndrome. Eliot Rodgers had it, the Roseburg Oregon shooter had it, and the Virginia Tech shooter was thought to have it, even though that was later denied.
How he even got a hold of the guns is a mystery to me, wikipedia doesn't say. Did his mother lock them in a safe? If his brother noticed his deteriorating state why didn't his mother? Lanza didn't leave any manifesto like Rodgers, the child pornography hasn't been discussed. Video games and movies have been getting blamed....ughh...they aren't noticing the elephant in the room. And to restate it, I just feel some information is being omitted or conveniently not mentioned about all these recent shootings.
Europeans talk about guns and the USA and shootings.
But the reason why it seems the USA has more violence is the population size, if you combine europe and divided it by half to get the USA size, you end up with violence comparable. But they still love to disparage the US for it.
China with a billion people had a mass stabbing epidemic from 2010-12 and numerous violent workplace incidents happen frequently, not all of them are reported in the nationwide news since workplace violence is common enough (considering the nets they put on the side of buildings and bars on windows to prevent suicide, I think the working culture isn't helping).
I wonder if the increase in the US population size just means more violent incidents will happen, when we had 30 million people 150 years ago, there was less to report, and less ways of reporting. If you go back to the middle ages or ancient rome, a bunch of bandits coming into an entire town and razing it to the ground was everyday stuff. It's hard to believe but violence rates per capita may be going down overall in the USA. If China reported everything like the USA did, there would be a story every week.
But the biggest difference I've noticed is the most well known and some of most recent mass shootings in the US are not from going postal. The Columbine killers, Mateen, Lanza, Rodger, Holmes, Loughner, Choi, weren't disgruntled office workers or sleep deprived policemen who just starting gunning or hacking a bunch of people down on a bad day. You see plenty of that in Asia a lot from depressives or people with pent up problems snapping, and they don't write manifestos or care about getting seen in the news.
-Ga
Ga --
I wrote about that very subject here:
http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2013/12/going-postal-updated.html
One thing came to my mind. Adam's brother even after the massacre posted something on his facebook saying "I'll miss you bro" or something like that, something forgiving sounding I think.
Either Adam Lanza was a good manipulator and put up a facade in front of his family members (unlikely), his brother is the biggest saint on Earth and forgave Adam throughout his entire life, and/or this implies that Lanza had a decent relationship with at least some of his relatives for some time before the massacre which points to the evidence of some sort of disintegration or mental shift during his late puberty.
Personally in a way, I think Elliot Rodger is more evil as a person than Lanza, don't know how to explain it in short words, but the evidence Lanza was more mentally compromised when he commited his atrocities while Rodger was just a virgin.
-Ga
Ga --
I'd agree with you that Lanza was more disordered than Rodger. I think Rodger probably had Aspergers, whereas Lanza was little further along the spectrum. And it turned out that Lanza's home computer had child porn on it, a further level of disorder.
As far as Adam's brother forgiving him, I think once you really love someone, you'll alway love him no matter what he does. I heard recently that Ted Bundy's mother told him twice on the day of his execution, "You'll always be my sweet little boy." By that point she had to have come around to the realization that he was a serial killer, but her mother love remained.
Why have serial killings seemed to not be on the news nowadays while mass shootings now are?
(I am not asking about them literally being in the news)
The most notorious serial killers that I can name off the top of my head (at least in the USA) all were active before the 21st century.
Aside from columbine or virginia tech, can't name any mass shootings from before the 21st century immediately. And the ones other than those two I imagine that happened were more like the shootings in Asia, going postal, no weird manifestos or youtube videos (of course there wasn't youtube back then).
-Ga
Ga --
It's true, mass shootings seem to have increased. And VA Tech actually occurred in 2007, the 21st century. There were other mass shootings in the 20th century, the most famous maybe being the Texas bell tower shootings that occurred in (I think) 1966. But there seems to be a certain copycat element to these shootings and they do seem to have increased.
With serial killers, you're right there too, the most famous occurred in the 20th century. I can't think of any famous ones recently. I suppose Kohlepp from South Carolina (whom I wrote about) would qualify. But his numbers weren't up there with Bundy's. And the Gilgo Beach killings qualify. I wonder if the FBI hasn't gotten better at tracking serial killers and stopping them early in their runs, and if that doesn't have something to do with it. Back in the 20th century, people were just getting up to speed on the concept of a serial killer, and had no idea what to look for until the end of the century. Now, they seem easier to identify (as a serial killer) and predict. Plus there are so many security cameras everywhere these days that it's harder to get away with a long string of crimes than it used to be.
I guess the difference with mass shootings is that they are impossible to predict, someone who's never committed a crime before just snaps and who can predict that?
I know this is an old post. I'll keep it short. They released more info on Lanza recently, he had an interest in pedophilia. There was the child porn on his computer you already knew about. But what if he was interested for another reason?
Two things that stuck out.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-adam-lanza-sandy-hook-20181209-story.html
"“Honestly, doctors touching my penis when I was a child was worse than it would be if I consented to an adult in a loving relationship with them."
"....reference to a book about an experience in the young life of Austrian psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut. As a lonely boy controlled by his mother, Kohut developed a close relationship with an older male tutor....... Kohut reported that the rich intellectual relationship he had with his mentor ushered in the best years of his life.... eventually became sexual."
If he wanted to molest a child that'd be awful.
If he wanted to be a molested child, that sounds like an old South Park episode.
-Ga
Ga --
I've heard there's a relationship between having been molested as a child and turning into a molester as an adult. Though most people certainly wouldn't consider a typical doctor's visit molestation.
I've wondered if Lanza's killing a bunch of 6- and 7-year olds wasn't somehow the equivalent of a serial killer going after the objects of his desire.
as a person with milder form of Pervasive Developmental with history of mental health crisis.
based on my opinion, although it is true that people with history of developmental delays and mental disorders are more likely to be victims of perpetrators than being a perpetrators themselves, it is because of severe form of developmental disorders, people with milder forms of developmental disorders and mental disorders are more likely to be perpetrators than a a person with moderate to profound and very, very severe form of developmental disorders, because anyone with severe disorders are not able to function as very well in the nature and might have a learning issues that prevents a person from committing most crimes or prevent a person from breaking the laws at all.
I assume that Andam has milder form of developmental disorder with symptoms of conduct disorder NPD and APD with psychotic features that may have lead him to snap
My symptoms of Pervasive Developmental Disorder is mild to the point where I am able to do things that involves social skills, have all the skills to be like a psychopath ( as I developed all the social skills by getting special education and because I don't have trouble with social skills at all anymore, I am more likely to commit crimes than a profoundly developmentally delayed population.
Just because I have Pervasive Developmental Disorder, doesn't mean that I am not capable of of being a perpetrator, especially because my symptoms of developmental delays are now very mild
I don't have trouble with social skills at all anymore, even though I do have history of developmental delay and reports that in childhood and early adolescents that I had developmentally delayed milestones and delusional prospective of myself that is part of developmental delay
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