The Seven Myths of Mass Murder
J. Reid Meloy, author of books such as Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures:A Psychological and Behavioral Analysis has an article readers might find helpful in light of the recent school shooting entitled “The Seven Myths of Mass Murder.” One of the myths, Meloy says, is that these incidents are increasing:
When a mass murder occurs, it receives instant and pervasive news coverage. Unfortunately, we are prone to overestimate the frequency of an event by its prominence in our minds, and mass murder is no exception. This is a very rare phenomenon and is neither increasing nor decreasing in the US. Since 1976 there have been about 20 mass murders a year. 2003 was the most violent year for mass murder, with 30 incidents and 135 victims. Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Edmund Oklahoma, and San Ysidro still resonate in the public consciousness, however, reminding us that these events do happen. A positive counterpoint is that rates of all violent crime have significantly decreased over this same time period, from 48 victims per 1000 persons in 1976 to 15 victims in 2010. The most lethal school mass murder in US history was in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, a bombing that resulted in 45 deaths, mostly children in the second to sixth grades.
There is a retired psychiatrist named James Gilligan, who spent 35 years dealing with prisoners who had committed the most horrible crimes. When he asked them why they did what they did (and this was thousands of times), what he heard every time was “He dissed me (or my family, girlfriend, wife, etc.).”
One day Gilligan realized what he was hearing was the story of Cain and Abel: humiliation followed by revenge. It’s an attempt to replace shame with pride.
Whenever I hear about school shootings, in every case the shooter feels he has been unbearably shamed and humiliated so he gets his version of revenge.
I used to know a young guy from South Boston. Over drinks one evening we talked about Columbine. He was adamant that the cause was school bullying. He was about 23 to my 48 at that time. He said people my age have no clue about the degree of bullying that goes on unstopped. He also said a major cause is the fact that the school systems are run by women. Women teachers, women administrators, women principals. There are nearly no men at all in the public school system, and the few that are there are either gay or terrified of being sued for “setting the tone.”
Also note that many “anti-bullying advocates” (like Dan Savage) are only interested in using it as an axe to wield against conservatives.
“He also said a major cause is the fact that the school systems are run by women. Women teachers, women administrators, women principals. There are nearly no men at all in the public school system, and the few that are there are either gay or terrified of being sued for “setting the tone.”
You bring up a cause but don’t explain why. Here is my explanation, feel free to correct me.
When men run the show, they become the Alpha males and bullies are seen not just as a threat to the weak, but a threat to the Alpha’s domination. So it’s in the Alpha male’s best interest to slap down the bully, lest he lost his position.
When females are in charge, they favor the Alpha male because of their biological imperatives. Unfortunately, that Alpha is usually the bully. And if that doesn’t happen, what happens is the bully knows there is no Alpha male to slap him down, so he gets to run the place because women don’t count in the male hierarchy.
Just my two cents.
And you are precisely correct!
In economics, there is a concept of “spite”, which is a willingness to incur costs to our self in order to incur cost/injury to some other person. It isn’t economically “rational” behavior but certainly seems to happen a lot. The Connecticut shooter may have gotten back at his mother, if that is what drove him, but he’s also dead himself. Assuming he could, getting away from her would have been the more “rational” and “mature” behavior. (Is that what men are doing by going “on strike”?)
” What Cullen has done is a disservice to the millions of individuals who are clinically depressed or have a psychotic disorder and pose no more risk of violence to others than your neighbor. Loughner has given paranoid schizophrenia a bad name..” from the link
once I thought if you give me 12 paranoid schizophrenics I make them great spiritual warriors cutting off the heads of the demons but then I see they could make an error bringing home the head of a human with sweet sweet smile of love on their face so that must be why God only gives me this license yet if the nation falls off the cliff we may need to teach paranoid schizophrenics something new besides hugging their teddu bears since many of them have been given the eyes to see demons
The issue that never seems to be addressed in these mass shootings is that treatment for the mentally ill is sorely lacking.
There used to be a state mental hospital called Fairfield Hills that was shut down by the state due, in large part, by the so called “mainstreaming” of patients. People who would otherwise be institutionalized were pushed out into the general public with tragic results.
Ironically Fairfield Hills was located in Newtown Connecticut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_State_Hospital
I grew up in the town right next door to Newtown. When I was a kid, we would refer to someone who was crazy as “a guy who belongs in Newtown”.
I realize that much “early reporting” is doomed to be wrong, but certain emerging facts are curious.
1. The mother was NOT a teacher at the school, and none of the teachers ever heard of her.
2. The guns were legally purchased by the MOTHER and somehow came into the possession of the killer, her son.
3. The killer (son) has been described as more than a bit loopy, and few of his acquaintances are surprised he did this.
4. The mother has been described as unyielding, inflexible and dominating.
If these turn out to be true, expect them to be suppressed by the MSM. There is much to this story that the anti-gunners and feminists won’t want to play with. I’ll wager the reporters will find the most illuminating material revolving around the mother.
When the dust settles, this may very well turn out to be nothing more than a seriously f*cked up family that produced a bad seed that went POP and took 28 innocent people with him.
Anders Breivik’s mother was a ball-busting feminist and emotionally abused her son his entire life.
Aha! Vee haff vaht iss cahlld, ze pattern!
A truly outstanding book that covers these topics and is well worth reading:
The Dark Side of Man:
Tracing the Origins of Male Violence
by Michael Patrick Ghiglieri
Highly recommend it.
I have an autographed copy. I was in the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA, on leave from my overseas job and had it on my to-buy list. The author was in the bookstore two days previously and autographed all the copies he left behind. I didn’t even notice until I got the book home.
What about the Origins of Female Violence? Oh, sorry, I forgot: no such thing. My bad.
Anders Breivik’s mother was a ball-busting feminist and emotionally abused her son his entire life
the WomanChildren-ruled nations of the west are reaping their own matriarchal, misandrous fruit
whatever the shooter’s past, we can be certain he was bullied and emasculated in various ways, as are all males in the Fempire (except the few shielded by sufficient wealth)
he killed M-O-M first, striking at the root, and as others have commented, the Medea will spin this with the usual “how could such a terrible thing happen” nonsense, when in fact Medea’s silencing of men over the past forty years greatly contributed to, and worsened, the psychological desperation of such men
like so many others, he spoke in the only way he was allowed to speak
Brenda Anne Spencer, remember her? I do. Frist day of school my senior year, in 1979, she opened fire on an elementary school across the street from her house in San Diego. Killed the principal, a janitor, and wounded 8 children.
16 years old, she had expressed some interest in hunting. So her father bought her a rifle for Chistmas. She then pretended to be sick so she could stay home and set up a sniper post from her bedroom.
When the police finally arrested her, they asked her why? And she said, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” The Boomtown Rats made a hit song out of it one month later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2I84-A9duY
I’m sure that wasn’t the first school shooting, but it is the most memorable.
Charles Whitman, in 1967, killed his mother, then climbed up the University of Texas tower and started shooting people on campus and on the streets. He was actually hitting pedestrians on Congress Street from a half a mile a way.
Guys were pulling over, taking deer rifles out of their trucks, and shooting back. This is Texas, you know. Interstingly, the Austin patrolman who climbed up the tower and shot Whitman, I think his name was Ramirez, became the first person ever promoted to the Texas Rangers who was not a descendent of the origingal Texas Rangers. It used to be that if your grandfather, your father was not a Texas Ranger, you couldn’t be one. But we made an exception in this case.
When I was in high school, there was a shooting range, mainly for the ROTC guys. A lot of guys had rifles on the racks of their pick up trucks. There was none of this school violence that we see today. Hey, if someone opened fire at school then, he or she would have been gunned down, and I mean quick.
I have two handguns, a Ruger .357 magnum revolver and a Glock .9 mm automatic. I don’t have a concealed carry license, yet. I suppose I will soon.
Here’s a good one for you. After the VA. Tech. shooting I started openly–ok in Arizona–carrying a .38 snubby… I know, I know but it’s light. I immediately noticed a difference in the way I was treated by people wherever I went. People smiled… people (3) invited me to their church… the wife of a man leading a book discussion in B&N insisted that I join them… several people struck up conversations with me and one guy, same B&N, brought his family over to meet me and invited me to their church. I swear on a box of 20 full patch it’s true but at the time I’m thinking to myself, “Just what in the hell is going on.”
But then it hit me, thinking that carrying would be threatening I gave big smiles and hellos (unlike many open carry folks I might add) to everyone and harvested the same in response. Still I didn’t feel like… oh, yeah, I got into a discussion with one women who asked me, “What’s with the gun?” but went on to tell me she carried a knife which none of her boy friends have liked. Anyway I kept the smiles and put the gun and holster away. I guess I will have to go back to carrying but this time in a fanny pack thingy. I just never got used to carrying openly. So the moral of the story is, if you are going to openly carry the bigger the caliber, the more… No, no, wait a minute… LOL
If any of you open carry, smile a lot, and please let me know what your experience is.
While the Ft, Hood massacre was a mass killing, it doesn’t beling on the list of mass mursders. It was Islamic terrorism, not murder per se. And has a wholly different root cause then any of the othersw, and it will happen again.
I started concealed carrying, legally, a Ruger LC9 after Aurora, Colorado, although I’d owned it for a while. All I could imagine was being in that movie theater, unarmed and cursing myself, while being shot, for not being able to effectively protect myself.
Off topic, interestingly enough, the local mall doesn’t allow open carry of firearms but explicitly allows concealed carry, assuming you have a permit. Of course, that mall also has a Sheriff’s office on-site. A local gun store prohibits carrying of loaded firearms, including concealed carry, in the store. I’ve carried in there several times but never admitted it, and they’ve never asked. I think what they absolutely cannot allow is customers waving loaded handguns around in their store, since the store is in a fairly built-up suburban area and there is, literally, no safe direction to point a gun, not even straight down.