SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Ohio boy exemplifies the media-created role of "the school shooter"
Main Page The Lounge Ohio boy exemplifies the media-created role of "the school shooter"Page 1 2
Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
Bad dog! |
In all the ballyhoo following the Florida shooting-- stupid questions like "why did he do it?" and stupid answers like "it's assault weapons"-- something stands out to me that I have not heard anyone else say regarding why these shootings are happening so often now. The media have created a new role for disturbed boys: the role of the school shooter. Yes, there have been school shootings going way back in our history, but this role was not formed in our collective mind: write hate filled entries on your FB or in a physical journal, study the actions of previous shooters you admire, wear all black, kill as many as you can and end your own miserable life. Last week a boy in Ohio was a would be shooter. He wrote the hate screeds on his cell phone, he wrote of his admiration for the Columbine shooters-- whom he knew by name, knew their plans in detail-- and he brought a .22 rifle to school hidden in a pants' leg. When he got off the bus, he went straight to the restroom. Cameras then show him emerging with the rifle in his hands. But instead of opening fire, he went back into the restroom and shot himself. He died the next day. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/p...ned-school-massacre/ John Lennon had a song, "A Working Class Hero is Something to Be." If you are aimless, drifting, filled with anger and resentment, it's a role you can put on like an outfit. It is "something to be." That is what the media has done with "the school shooter." Mostly unintentionally, and purely for the sake of ratings, they have created a new, twisted kind of celebrity. A face everyone recognizes. A name everyone knows. Something to be. The baying of the anti-gun simpletons will die down soon. When it does, I hope the "conversation" (sorry) turns to real answers to the question of why there are now so many boys and young men who want to kill masses of people and themselves. I don't think what I have just said is the answer, but I think it is part of a complex answer. And we need to identify on the other parts of the answer as well. It's not a problem we will solve, but it might be one we can ameliorate. The first step will be to understand the causes-- the real causes, not "It's the guns!!!" What are your thoughts? Why are these shootings becoming almost commonplace? ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | ||
|
| The Bishop Of Death |
Well said. I have had the same though but hadn't been able to put it into words. With your permission I would like to post this on my Facebook (yeah I know) page. With "justjoe" as the author. Under Construction | |||
|
Step by step walk the thousand mile road |
If one more person says we need to have a "conversation" or "dialogue" about "gun violence" or "assault weapons" I'm going to vomit, hopefully on them. Nice is overrated "It's every freedom-loving individual's duty to lie to the government." Airsoftguy, June 29, 2018 | |||
|
| Member |
It's a reflection of the deteriorating mental state of our youth. Currently more likely to die of suicide than normal things like experiencing a wild youth. ____________________________________________________ The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart. | |||
|
| Member |
I reply "We already had one. It ended Sept 1787" | |||
|
| Member |
It's Gun Free Zones. A safe space only for murderous cowards. From a bill sponsored by Joe Biden in the 1990s, of course. ---------------------------------------------------- Dances with Crabgrass | |||
|
| Bad dog! |
Sure, that's fine. ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
|
The Unmanned Writer |
At Julian high school there was a sophomore who posted a pic which showed his air soft toy. No threat included, no mention of the school or other entity, no mention of even using it. Nothing. Sheriff called, school closed for the day, massive investigation, determination resulted in something akin to the toy being in the pic of something else. Welcome to the revelation. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go" Will Rogers The definition of the words we used, carry a meaning of their own... | |||
|
| Bad dog! |
Several local punks have been arrested for vaguely resembling "school shooters." One dope said something about wishing everybody in his high school would "just disappear." Arrested.  I haven't heard anybody discuss this new role, per se, but it's clear that we now recognize it. And overgeneralize it. Now if a kid does any one thing associated with the role, he might get labeled. A photo with a gun at a gun range. An all black outfit. Expressing anger at his classmates. The media romanticized the role. No matter what any pundit says on television, you just keep showing some kid's photo, repeating his name, discussing his anger and hatred-- and you have made him into a kind of a hero. ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
|
Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie |
I wonder how much these leftists would scream and howl about constitutional rights if we were to start pushing for a law that limited tv coverage of mass shootings to the midnight hour for a maximum of one minute per day. I actually believe that would have an effect, but would I really want a law that limits free speech and free press even if the outcome is a few less shootings? No I wouldn't because I value our freedoms more, and such a law I believe would only open the door to more such laws. I have no doubt many leftists would give the same argument to legislation infringing on 1st amendment rights. But why is it then ok when it applies to our 2nd amendment rights? Anyway, I'm just rambling. ~Alan Acta Non Verba NRA Life Member (Patron) God, Family, Guns, Country Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan "Once there was only dark. If you ask me, light is winning." ~Rust Cohle | |||
|
| Member |
While I think there may be some truth in the idea that reduction of media coverage may influence the actions of those seeking attention, the problem seems to be to be far more nuanced than just that. Our issue in modern times with nuanced problems lies in the fact that most folks are accustomed to twitter/instagram/FaceBook and the 90sec sound byte. They essentially have the attention span of a gerbil with about as much cognitive ability. There are real societal issues at play. For the most part these are 'experiments' we've allowed to play out, for a variety of reasons. I doubt the collective will exists to roll things back, hence the focus on the tool rather than the root cause. A good chunk of these shooters come from broken homes where the father is either absent or not very engaged. This is due to a variety of things: some men are assholes who probably shouldn't have offspring, the family court system, evolving societal ideas regarding single parenthood, and so on. A good chunk of these shooters are either on, just withdrawn or just had a dosage change of a psychiatric med. A recent study has shown that in someone who is otherwise healthy, these drugs increase the risk of suicidal or violent action by a factor of 2. (see:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066537/) This, of course, brings the idea there are multiple models of depression. Not all depression is rooted in brain chemistry imbalance. So if a slice of these shooters are depressed for some other reason then, technically, they're healthy and perhaps the drug(s) are playing a role. And then we have the general societal attack on males. We've all heard about 'toxic masculinity' and so on. Imagine you're a young man in the current atmosphere. You have a set of ideas and feelings and you're constantly being told you're 'wrong' for having those ideas or feeling that way. Combine this with the general feminization of schooling and a sharp rise in the use of ADD/ADHD drugs to keep kids in line (and no, I'm not saying the ADD/ADHD are not real issues. I'm saying when all you have is a hammer....). Boys are doing less well in school, attending higher education at a lower rate (which, given the current college climate, may not necessarily be a bad thing), and generally having a much more difficult time in the labor market as a result. This leaves them feeling aimless and useless. tl/dr: it's an extremely complex, multi-faceted issue and we no longer have the collective will to look at it for what it is, make an evaluation and change. Jeff Rippey | |||
|
| Member |
Jeff Rippey | |||
|
Chip away the stone |
It is known, but not widely publicized, that mass shooters often seek infamy. They are aware of what previous mass shooters have done, and seek to equal or exceed their infamy. We live in age when it's all too easy for these things to become a social epidemic or cultural fixation on mass murder. This is the 3rd for 4th time I've posted this, but it's worth making sure everyone sees it. Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyKvTn5BT5c Ari Shulman has been following up on these concepts and linking articles on his twitter feed that are worth reading. | |||
|
| Bad dog! |
Thanks, rusbro, excellent video. ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
|
| Laugh or Die |
I was with him until he started in on video game violence. Lost me at that point. ________________________________________________ | |||
|
| I have not yet begun to procrastinate |
What I posted in the "Predictable Insanity" thread about the FL shooting: I think it's time for public outcry and pressure from politcians to force news talking heads to not mention these scumbags by name. The FBI is able to censor the dollar amounts taken from bank robberies due to the .gov being very intertwined with the banking system and the news stations buying into it. Why is the amount of cash taken held secret but the "news" outlets turn every murderer into a celebrity? It's beyond disgusting. - - - - - - - - - Never mind...that's been dumped. Oh well...the petitions started as a snowflake's means of bitching and "doing something". -------- After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box. | |||
|
| Bad dog! |
I don't think he was claiming that video games cause school shooters. He cited it as a part of the violent cultural atmosphere for boys in the US-- something that adds to negative influences. Boys have a hard time of it in the US these days. They are committing suicide at a rate about 3 to 4 times that for girls, year after year. Whereas girls get the positive cultural message over and over, "You go girl! You can do anything you want to do! You can be anything you want to be!" (and that's a great message, no problem with that message), boys are told that they are toxic, just because they are boys. I can't imagine a worse message for a developing boy.... There is an ad on tv I've seen many times: a few boys are on their bicycles, stopped in front of what looks like a deep puddle. As they stand there, a girl comes peddling past them, grinning at having shown them up. There was a particularly awful ad during the Olympics, featuring one of the female skiers. It shows her in several sequences of shots from past races leaving boys behind, ending with one sad looking boy she just defeated. When she signs an autograph for a little girl at the bottom of the hill, she adds something like BTTBET, or something like that, "Better Than The Boys Every Time." (Which is stupid and false. There is a reason that the ski events are separated by sex-- excuse me, gender. The men would win every single event every time, from downhill to ski jump. Men are bigger, stronger and faster in just about every single athletic contest, not just skiing. --I'm not sure about curling.) White boys have the double whammy of their toxic masculinity and their privileged skin. I don't think there is one single factor that explains school shooters. I think there is a complex web of factors-- most of which are mentioned in one place or another in this thread-- and probably no single element that recurs in every event. And I agree that news outlets ahould volunteer-- and they will need a mighty push to get them over the line-- but they should voluntarily agree to not mention the name or show the photo of the next dark, twisted soul who thinks he has found "something to be." ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
|
| Conservative Behind Enemy Lines  |
Just this morning, my wife read that someone killed himself on the White House lawn. Then she asked me why. I replied, "Because for a brief moment, everyone across the nation will know all about this guy. His name, where he grew up, what his views were, etc. If he'd done himself in in the privacy of his own house, only a handful of people would know. Violence is the mediocre person's claim to fame, now." I found what you said riveting. | |||
|
| Bad dog! |
It is important to not just deny that guns cause shootings, but to talk about the real causes. The gun controllers immediately jump in and "explain" why it happened-- assault weapons, large cap magazines, the thing that goes up. But the key thing is that they are offering an explanation, and uninformed listeners believe them. Then we come in and just say, "No that's wrong, guns aren't the problem." But we fail to offer explanations of our own-- just that it is not guns. I hate that expression "have a conversation." From a liberal it means, "shut up and listen to me." But our attitude needs to be, "Okay, a conversation. Bring it." ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
|
Sigforum K9 handler |
“Have a conversation” has always meant “get a lecture”. Just like “compromise” has always meant “we give, they take”. | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Ohio boy exemplifies the media-created role of "the school shooter"
Main Page The Lounge Ohio boy exemplifies the media-created role of "the school shooter"© SIGforum 2024