New Rampage Killing by a Senior in NY State

[editec]

Getting all hung up on the notion of an "assault" rifle is nothing more than a distraction.

XXXXXXX smokescreen.

 

[martybegan]

Why will that be interesting?

It is interesting because the new psychosis fashion, at least for the young crazies, is to use the military glamour guns like they see in the video games they play --- assault rifles. And today the Senate Democrats are introducing a bill to ban assault rifles: high time, too.

However, it's looking like this Kurt Myer guy used a shotgun. They took a lot of long guns out of his apartment, and I wonder if any of them are assault rifles. Basically, it's a bad sign if people have assault rifles: it's pretty clear that means the owner wants to assault people! Since that's what they're for. I think if a man has assault rifles, he should be watched carefully; by owning these he is showing he wants to run around killing a lot of people. Which obviously makes him a public danger.

Will it make the victims less dead?

I mean, for an analogy, if I got news that a friend or relative had been injured (or killed) in a car collision, among my questions would not be, "what kind of tires were on the other car?" ...

None of this is relevant to the issue.

Then why are they the least used class of weapon when it comes to assaults and murders?

 

[Esmeralda]

It's become almost common place. People barely pay attention unless at least half a dozen are dead.

And yet, the news reports on it like its the first time its happened. Go figure.

For each of those dead people, it IS the first time it has happened.

Likely, its the first time for each of their family members as well.

Ridiculous, I know - how we all get upset at the piles of dead bodies getting higher and higher. I would bet however, that if if it were your family member, or CHILD, you would be a tiny bit upset.

But maybe not.

My post was meant to be ironic. This kind of thing has become so 'normal' and common place in America, unless the death toll is high, people just seem to take it in stride. I think that's very awful, but it seems to be how it goes nowadays. There was a time when such a thing would shock people, but no more.

 

[Circe]

This kind of thing has become so 'normal' and common place in America, unless the death toll is high, people just seem to take it in stride. I think that's very awful, but it seems to be how it goes nowadays. There was a time when such a thing would shock people, but no more.

There are so MANY mass shootings now. People are getting used to it. The FBI now has a definition of mass killing: four or more dead. There have been 201 mass killings, nearly all shootings, since 2006, according to USA Today.

I suppose we're getting like Mexico; mass killings constantly. I want law and order! The government needs to take a lot better control of these out-of-their-heads shooters.

 

[TNHarley]

lol

 

[martybegan]

Then why are they the least used class of weapon when it comes to assaults and murders?

The issue we are discussing is not general assaults and murders.
The problem is the rampage random shootings, like the one yesterday in New York State.

In those mass killings, assault rifles are commonly used: at least 50% of the kills, most especially when it's young men who are modeling on their violent shooter video games with the glamour guns. Though the old guy who shot the firefighters in December in New York State also used an assault rifle. More and more of the rampage shooters are using assault rifles, because, after all, they are intended for assaults. That's what they are for: so that's how people are using them.

Getting all hung up on the notion of an "assault" rifle is nothing more than a childish distraction.

Then why ARE you all hung up on the assault rifles, editec? I suggest you gun guys simply jettison the assault rifles and the high-capacity magazines. There is general agreement that the latter jam anyway, what a downer not to be able to kill as many moviegoers or shoppers as planned because the bullets won't feed in. You lose nothing if you jettison the big magazines and if you simply give up the assault rifles, that bounces the ball right back into the anti-gun peoples' court. They probably would forget about the issue for awhile. Now it would be their problem to deal with other ways to reduce the carnage going on --- faster commitment procedures, perhaps, or more state mental hospitals.

You are defending the indefensible --- AGAIN. It's like the torture defenders. Or the guys who defended the losing Iraq War II. Or Herman Cain. Now you all are defending assault rifles??? In America? You need military assault rifles for "home defense"?? This is basically indefensible and you are going to lose YET AGAIN.

I wish the right would climb onto the side of law and order and NOT on the side of mass killings of tiny children or wiping out the local barbershop. Is that really asking too much?

A) he used a shotgun, and B) even if he owned semi automatic rifles, how does his going nutters mean others who merely own them are more likely to be nutters?

Your original premise is still flawed.

 

[Pogo]

Why will that be interesting?

It is interesting because the new psychosis fashion, at least for the young crazies, is to use the military glamour guns like they see in the video games they play --- assault rifles. And today the Senate Democrats are introducing a bill to ban assault rifles: high time, too.

However, it's looking like this Kurt Myer guy used a shotgun. They took a lot of long guns out of his apartment, and I wonder if any of them are assault rifles. Basically, it's a bad sign if people have assault rifles: it's pretty clear that means the owner wants to assault people! Since that's what they're for. I think if a man has assault rifles, he should be watched carefully; by owning these he is showing he wants to run around killing a lot of people. Which obviously makes him a public danger.

Why will that be interesting? Will it make the victims less dead?

I mean, for an analogy, if I got news that a friend or relative had been injured (or killed) in a car collision, among my questions would not be, "what kind of tires were on the other car?" ...

None of this is relevant to the issue.

That's the point -- I mean he's already done the deed; it's a little late to start watching him. I'm pretty sure the death on the other end of the barrel is the same regardless what the weapon of choice was, so seems to me if somebody gets to the point of killing strangers, he's gonna use an assault rifle, a shotgun, a pistol or whatever he has access to. I disagree that we have an "assault rifle culture"; we have a gun culture. Which one it is used going to be a matter of what was convenient at the time.

Also I'm not sure we see a pattern here; this guy was 64 and Spengler 62, but Adam Lanza was 20; James Holmes 24; Jared Loughner 23; Wade Page 40; Seung Hui-Cho 23, Jim Adkisson 58; Harris and Klebold, etc etc. so the age distribution is all over the map. What they do have in common might be touched on here:

>> There is no psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many authors have speculated on their motivations. However in this study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masuline identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity. <<

-- which again refers back to "gun culture" mentality.

I submit the question of whether an assault rifle was used here is a tree, whereas what we need to see is the forest.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Then why are they the least used class of weapon when it comes to assaults and murders?

This is true; there have been exaclty ZERO murders comited with a legally-owned assault rifle.

 

[Circe]

Also I'm not sure we see a pattern here; this guy was 64 and Spengler 62, but Adam Lanza was 20; James Holmes 24; Jared Loughner 23; Wade Page 40; Seung Hui-Cho 23, Jim Adkisson 58; Harris and Klebold, etc etc. so the age distribution is all over the map.

No, I can't agree: at this time the age distribution is two-humped. You've got the very young kids from 14 to 25; they usually shoot up schools and/or kill their families. Though there are exceptions to the kill target: Holmes shot up the Batman movie, Jared Loughner went to Gifford's political meeting, and Jacob Roberts shot up the Clackamas Mall in Oregon.

Then you've got the old guys, usually with NO record, presumably afflicted by dementia and "age rage." There have been a lot of them lately and I suspect that's because the Baby Boom is now aging out, so there will be a lot more senior shooters in the next 10-15 years. The Holocaust Museum guy was 88, the firefighter shooter was 62, and this guy yesterday Kurt Myers was 64. The Alabama school bus hostage-taker, Jimmy Lee Dykes, was 65. The sixties seem to be a particularly bad age range for shooting rampages.

There are some mass killers in the middle, but the distribution is generally two-humped, with shooters mainly being young boys who are just developing their schizophrenia, and the old guys who become demented.

So that's two morbidity categories of mental illness the mass shootings are coming from. There are exceptions, but if we focus on the two main categories of crazies, young schizophrenic males with access to weapons at home and elderly males going into dementia with large stocks of weapons they bought when they were younger, it would profit public law and order a LOT getting weapons out of the hands of these two groups. Diagnosing more quickly and getting these guys away from guns when they show signs of impairment would stop some of these mass shootings.

 

[Circe]

the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masuline identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity.

-- which again refers back to "gun culture" mentality.

Very likely.

I personally suspect that the older men are nearly all men who have no wife or woman in the home to keep them in order. Nearly all lived alone. They may have been widowed, or they may simply have always been mean and have driven away any women in their lives. Spengler lived with his sister, but he killed her, and Lanza killed his mother. I would guess that an urge to shoot up the town at age 65 probably is of a piece with being mean and violent earlier, too. Young or old, males who want to collect guns and kill a lot of people with them were never nice guys, after all.

 

[Pogo]

That's the point -- I mean he's already done the deed; it's a little late to start watching him. I'm pretty sure the death on the other end of the barrel is the same regardless what the weapon of choice was, so seems to me if somebody gets to the point of killing strangers, he's gonna use an assault rifle, a shotgun, a pistol or whatever he has access to. I disagree that we have an "assault rifle culture"; we have a gun culture. Which one it is used going to be a matter of what was convenient at the time.

Also I'm not sure we see a pattern here; this guy was 64 and Spengler 62, but Adam Lanza was 20; James Holmes 24; Jared Loughner 23; Wade Page 40; Seung Hui-Cho 23, Jim Adkisson 58; Harris and Klebold, etc etc. so the age distribution is all over the map. What they do have in common might be touched on here:

>> There is no psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many authors have speculated on their motivations. However in this study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masuline identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity. <<

-- which again refers back to "gun culture" mentality.

I submit the question of whether an assault rifle was used here is a tree, whereas what we need to see is the forest.

No, I can't agree: at this time the age distribution is two-humped. You've got the very young kids from 14 to 25; they usually shoot up schools and/or kill their families. Though there are exceptions to the kill target: Holmes shot up the Batman movie, Jared Loughner went to Gifford's political meeting, and Jacob Roberts shot up the Clackamas Mall in Oregon.

Then you've got the old guys, usually with NO record, presumably afflicted by dementia and "age rage." There have been a lot of them lately and I suspect that's because the Baby Boom is now aging out, so there will be a lot more senior shooters in the next 10-15 years. The Holocaust Museum guy was 88, the firefighter shooter was 62, and this guy yesterday Kurt Myers was 64. The Alabama school bus hostage-taker, Jimmy Lee Dykes, was 65. The sixties seem to be a particularly bad age range for shooting rampages.

There are some mass killers in the middle, but the distribution is generally two-humped, with shooters mainly being young boys who are just developing their schizophrenia, and the old guys who become demented.

So that's two morbidity categories of mental illness the mass shootings are coming from. There are exceptions, but if we focus on the two main categories of crazies, young schizophrenic males with access to weapons at home and elderly males going into dementia with large stocks of weapons they bought when they were younger, it would profit public law and order a LOT getting weapons out of the hands of these two groups. Diagnosing more quickly and getting these guys away from guns when they show signs of impairment would stop some of these mass shootings.

Well you might have something there. It's plausible. But it's still aiming at treating the symptom rather than the disease, i.e. "getting these guys away from guns when they show signs". Seems to me it's a better quest to find out what's bringing them to that point in the first place and eliminate that root cause, rather than take a reactive stance. The latter is basically playing whack-a-mole, and that means we're always one step behind.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Diagnosing more quickly and getting these guys away from guns when they show signs of impairment would stop some of these mass shootings.

You cannot show where any of the people you mention could, would or should have been adjudicated as mentally ill prior to the point that they broke the law.

 

[Circe]

Well you might have something there. It's plausible. But it's still aiming at treating the symptom rather than the disease, i.e. "getting these guys away from guns when they show signs". Seems to me it's a better quest to find out what's bringing them to that point in the first place and eliminate that root cause, rather than take a reactive stance. The latter is basically playing whack-a-mole, and that means we're always one step behind.

True --- but tackling all senile dementia and all schizophrenia --- that's kind of a big order.

If you are saying it would be good to deal with the new fashion in madness that leads them to massacre, I could see that -- there are fashions in madness: madmen used to think they were Napoleon, but they don't anymore. I think they are very easily led, and focus on dramatic things in their environment, like the young men's video shooter games or the old men's angry rightwing paranoia talk. I think their minds are weak and there is nothing to hold them back from dramatic stimuli, like imitating Napoleon or deciding to copycat a guy who shot up a school.

Something has changed. Used to be lots of people had one or a few guns. Now some people have huge stockpiles of guns, and also a lot of people are into rampage murders of many bystanders. What changed? How can we stop it?

 

[martybegan]

the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masuline identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity.

-- which again refers back to "gun culture" mentality.

Very likely.

I personally suspect that the older men are nearly all men who have no wife or woman in the home to keep them in order. Nearly all lived alone. They may have been widowed, or they may simply have always been mean and have driven away any women in their lives. Spengler lived with his sister, but he killed her, and Lanza killed his mother. I would guess that an urge to shoot up the town at age 65 probably is of a piece with being mean and violent earlier, too. Young or old, males who want to collect guns and kill a lot of people with them were never nice guys, after all.

There is so much stereotyping, assumptions, and outright made up concepts in your statement that I really don't know where to start.

The simple fact that the subset of rampage killers is so small that only general conclusions can come from any analysis of them. The same is not true for serial killers, who have a different pathology, and have a predictable pattern. Most spree killers are "one and done," which precludes them from having the patterns and rituals one can analyse to see a base cause.

 

[Circe]

The simple fact that the subset of rampage killers is so small that only general conclusions can come from any analysis of them. The same is not true for serial killers, who have a different pathology, and have a predictable pattern. Most spree killers are "one and done," which precludes them from having the patterns and rituals one can analyse to see a base cause.

Au contraire.......there are getting to be a huge number of rampage killers. 201 mass killings of four or more at once since 2006, the FBI says, and a lot of what are clearly intended to have higher counts get stopped early, like Spengler who shot the four firefighters but only two died, plus his sister, so he doesn't "count," in a sense, but he meant to. It is only too plain that we have an epidemic going on. They are getting very easy to analyze for the general patterns.

I agree that serial killers are quite different and can be analyzed and have been, effectively (though there are more and more of them, so maybe not all that effectively).

We've got so many rampage killers now that we can already see that the phenomenon started out with young male schizophrenics (though one of the very first was a 16-year-old girl in 1979, Brenda Ann Spencer, and nothing like that was ever seen again!! So far.) They claim bullying and feelings of persecution, though often they themselves are the bullies and persecutors, like Eric Harris was. They do not "snap," they plan, for months.

Suddenly we have a new phenomenon joining in with the first current, elderly demented men with clean records. They all own their cache of weapons, and their rampage does seem more sudden, they just "go off"; needs study.

You are right that the rampage killers tend to be "one and done" as you say -- either they suicide (the young ones) or they are killed by police (the old ones) but there are enough who do NOT die that they can be heavily analyzed and studied in jail, and boy, they sure are --- for instance, we know that the young ones read extensively about other rampage killers, and compete for a higher hit count. Adam Lanza had lots of articles about Andre Breivik in Norway who killed 77; he was certainly trying to better that number, but he didn't get enough time.

The old guys who become demented rampage killers is a new thing and as there are more and more of these killings their pattern may become clearer.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Au contraire.......there are getting to be a huge number of rampage killers. 201 mass killings of four or more at once since 2006,

28.7/yr is a "huge" number and indicative of an epidemic?

 

[martybegan]

The simple fact that the subset of rampage killers is so small that only general conclusions can come from any analysis of them. The same is not true for serial killers, who have a different pathology, and have a predictable pattern. Most spree killers are "one and done," which precludes them from having the patterns and rituals one can analyse to see a base cause.

Au contraire.......there are getting to be a huge number of rampage killers. 201 mass killings of four or more at once since 2006, the FBI says, and a lot of what are clearly intended to have higher counts get stopped early, like Spengler who shot the four firefighters but only two died, plus his sister, so he doesn't "count," in a sense, but he meant to. It is only too plain that we have an epidemic going on. They are getting very easy to analyze for the general patterns.

I agree that serial killers are quite different and can be analyzed and have been, effectively (though there are more and more of them, so maybe not all that effectively).

We've got so many rampage killers now that we can already see that the phenomenon started out with young male schizophrenics (though one of the very first was a 16-year-old girl in 1979, Brenda Ann Spencer, and nothing like that was ever seen again!! So far.) They claim bullying and feelings of persecution, though often they themselves are the bullies and persecutors, like Eric Harris was. They do not "snap," they plan, for months.

Suddenly we have a new phenomenon joining in with the first current, elderly demented men with clean records. They all own their cache of weapons, and their rampage does seem more sudden, they just "go off"; needs study.

You are right that the rampage killers tend to be "one and done" as you say -- either they suicide (the young ones) or they are killed by police (the old ones) but there are enough who do NOT die that they can be heavily analyzed and studied in jail, and boy, they sure are --- for instance, we know that the young ones read extensively about other rampage killers, and compete for a higher hit count. Adam Lanza had lots of articles about Andre Breivik in Norway who killed 77; he was certainly trying to better that number, but he didn't get enough time.

The old guys who become demented rampage killers is a new thing and as there are more and more of these killings their pattern may become clearer.

You have not taken observer bias into account. Is the number increasing, or has the number we noticed increase due to heightened media attention and/or media transformation from local to national/worldwide?

Did you hear about a shooting of 4 people 2000 miles away 40 years ago, or is this a new phenomenon that leads one to beleive there are more of these than previously?