In light of School Shootings. What about the shooter themselves? | INFJ Forum

In light of School Shootings. What about the shooter themselves?

Retroverse

Retroverse

Four
Jul 5, 2015
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I understand this is a sensitive topic and I want to caution people before reading my comments or any others involved.

If you are in the United States, I am positive you have heard/read/watched the news relating to the newest school shooting that took place in Oregon Umpqua Community College. By now this has been commonplace and almost if not already, a yearly thing. Even if its not school related entirely, mass shootings have been reoccurring more and more each year.

I feel a great loss for the countless victims who were slain in the massacres but at the same time I feel even more sorry for the individual who slain them. I feel like I am not on the popular side when I state that. However, if you were to hear me out I'll explain.

Since America has developed a nasty stigma about mental illness. People who are dire need of help often hide their issues. They that if they were exposed and people knew how they felt entirely, they'd be pegged as crazy. No one really wants to be labled as crazy, outcast, lunatic, weak. Those are all the things I notice periodically are associated with mental disorders. It saddens me because these people are literally dying for help. The help never comes and they finally lash out. Taking people with them and trying to make a statement. I can't condone them for killing people. Yet I feel sorry for them that they never got the help they deserved as a human being.

I would like to know if anyone felt the same way I did about the person who committed these acts. Do you feel I'm being naive and these people were never able to helped anyways? Or do you agree? Either way, I'd love to know what other INFJs think.
 
ruji said:
Sorry Denmark
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More than sorry you should be ashamed of yourself. Innocent people died, and for what? The self-esteem of a nation? At least show them the respect of not mocking them for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
ezra said:
More than sorry you should be ashamed of yourself. Innocent people died, and for what? The self-esteem of a nation? At least show them the respect of not mocking them for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
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do you know what mocking is?
 
ruji said:
I'll take that as a no.

Nice job derailng the thread with your temper tantrum.
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I'm afraid I didn't do as good of a job of it, as you did when you derailed it with your insecurity and poor taste.
 
ruji said:
Is it because English is your second language, or you just don't know what words mean?
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I'll take that as an apology and a prayer for the thread to continue as it was intended.
 
I'm not sure mental illness has a nasty stigma. Though I am one who has gone through the motions of being labeled and thrown into that world. Regardless of me not being bipolar or bpd, talking about what I was going through while I was going through it seemed like the easiest thing in the world. The second I opened up about it I realized everyone has these same kinds of troubles in their own way. I realized this because as I opened up about my problems they in turn opened up about theirs. And maybe because of that I'm not able to see a stigma against mental illness.

I also believe that there are so many people who have been wrongly diagnosed one thing or another that the idea of mental illness seems null and void to those of us who understand why psychiatrists are bull shit. Not all, but enough to damage a society. The line between actually having a mental illness and not having any mental illness seems so blurred to me and those that I've talked to. I'm just not capable of seeing any stigma.

Now on the note of the killer, he's fucked up and could have gotten help. Being a mommas boy is no excuse. He's a 26 year old enrolled in college. I call bull shit on him being mentally incapable and having a 'snow plow' mother.

Psychopaths and sociopaths do exist in this world. They're not some fable to scare people into not walking dark alleys at night. Having been the victim of people with psychopathic tendencies I know first hand they exist, and that they have no care for those around them. In that, I don't feel sorry for the killer.
 
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No Retroverse you aren't being naïve and it possible that the shooters could have been helped or at least stopped. There just isn't enough community responsibility and in many places in Western world the individual's mental issues are labeled as "not my problem" by the society at large. We are expected to self sufficient and those that are able to be are labeled as not adequate and failures. Often they are just tossed aside as an affront to a system that promises everyone who works hard will be financially rewarded for their efforts. These lesser people are just a burden in the eyes of most. The systems put into place to help individual cope with their problems are very far from adequate. So a small percentage of them lash out and these shooting are a result of that reality. Most shooter have a particular profile of being overwhelmingly young white males from fairly affluent backgrounds. They are in a social position where they feel the most pressure to succeed and live up to expectations.

The other reality is accessibility of guns which is are particular to the US. While its true that mentally ill people could use knives or some other weapon, nothing kills with the efficiency of assault weapons. There is no reason why these weapons should not be banned outright and its only the insanity of the US political system that stops this from happening.
 
Retroverse said:
...Since America has developed a nasty stigma about mental illness. People who are dire need of help often hide their issues. They that if they were exposed and people knew how they felt entirely, they'd be pegged as crazy. No one really wants to be labled as crazy, outcast, lunatic, weak. Those are all the things I notice periodically are associated with mental disorders. It saddens me because these people are literally dying for help. The help never comes and they finally lash out. Taking people with them and trying to make a statement. I can't condone them for killing people. Yet I feel sorry for them that they never got the help they deserved as a human being.

I would like to know if anyone felt the same way I did about the person who committed these acts. Do you feel I'm being naive and these people were never able to helped anyways? Or do you agree? Either way, I'd love to know what other INFJs think.
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I am not sure if you are being naive, but I see it a little differently I think. In this latest cases the perpetrator had attended a special school, lived with his mother well into adulthood, who from the sound of it, cossetted him and was open about the fact that he had psychiatric issues. Similar situation with the Sandy Hook killer (I am purposefully not using these sickos' names). I think the actions of these individuals stem from a culture of nihilism, adulation of violence and alienation, which unfortunately is fecund ground for malignant narcissists and their evil acts.
EDIT: And my final thought is that our zealousness to destigmatize mental illness sometimes causes us to overlook the fact that some people are just bad. Or that some mentally ill people are also just bad and their mental illness does not explain or negate that fact.The individuals I mentioned in my post above were treated solicitously for their anti-social behaviors and given the benefit of educational exceptions. My concern is that their potential danger was overlooked precisely because they were hiding under the label of things like aspergers and autism.
 
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My heart goes out to the victims of this event, their families, and their society.

Although I am not saying by any means that mental health issues are irrelevant, I don't understand why this is inevitably made into a discussion of mental illness. In a country where you can buy a gun in a grocery store, anyone at all whether mentally ill or not can conveniently obtain the deadliest of combat weapons ever devised for the purpose of slaying another person over the most trivial of disagreements gone wrong, all with the greatest of ease.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you were a person living in a country where citizens are not permitted to carry personal firearms, where an event like this has not happened in the 20 years since the most recent similar event when everyone decided it was better to hand in their guns, and where shootings now happen so rarely that it is headlining news when a single shooting happens. If you were a person living in a country like that, seeing one mass shooting after another, would you still see mental health as being the most salient issue at stake here, and the issue that most urgently required discussion and action? I am just asking you to think about it from a different perspective.
 
invisible said:
My heart goes out to the victims of this event, their families, and their society.

Although I am not saying by any means that mental health issues are irrelevant, I don't understand why this is inevitably made into a discussion of mental illness. In a country where you can buy a gun in a grocery store, anyone at all whether mentally ill or not can conveniently obtain the deadliest of combat weapons ever devised for the purpose of slaying another person over the most trivial of disagreements gone wrong, all with the greatest of ease.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you were a person living in a country where citizens are not permitted to carry personal firearms, where an event like this has not happened in the 20 years since the most recent similar event when everyone decided it was better to hand in their guns, and where shootings now happen so rarely that it is headlining news when a single shooting happens. If you were a person living in a country like that, seeing one mass shooting after another, would you still see mental health as being the most salient issue at stake here, and the issue that most urgently required discussion and action? I am just asking you to think about it from a different perspective.
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Yeah, I see your point. I don't disagree at all. But it's deeper than that. Why do people keep wanting to do this? And when people really want to do something, they find away. There is a problem with mass killings via machete in Asia, for example. Again, the machete, not guns, were used to kill over 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda. Guns, their availability and the glorification of them are certainly a problem. But the deeper problem is why people want to do this at all.
 
I think part of the problem is we live in a culture which glorifies aggression and show of might. If you don't like something, then "do something extreme" to let your voice be heard. People have become vigilantes who feel they should be able to make decisions about other people's lives without any social accountability. Social responsibility has gone down the drain. Anger mgmt is a cute phrase for Charlie Sheen rather than a real issue in which a macho culture still believes the best way to handle problems is to express your fears, feelings, and concerns through might and physical force. It's the imposition of one person or group's will over another and the need to dominate. We still think we have a right to make others do something they don't want to do, and think we shouldn't have to respect their free will to say "no" to submitting or suppressing their will to please another. We think if we are right, we have the right to impose that will on others, and we think we are not accountable for those actions.
 
The scary thing is this

People “like him have nothing left to live for,” Mercer wrote on August 31. “On an interesting note, I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are... A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/01/umpqua-gunman-id-d-as-chris-harper-mercer.html

I've been saying for years that glorifying this stuff doesn't help. Are we finally seeing the truth?
 
PintoBean said:
Yeah, I see your point. I don't disagree at all. But it's deeper than that. Why do people keep wanting to do this? And when people really want to do something, they find away. There is a problem with mass killings via machete in Asia, for example. Again, the machete, not guns, were used to kill over 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda. Guns, their availability and the glorification of them are certainly a problem. But the deeper problem is why people want to do this at all.
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You're right. But I think it is more meaningful to compare countries that are more similar in terms of culture, history, and economic climate. And I tend to think that dealing with the practical aspect of convenience weapons of mass destruction represents a more pressing concern than discovering why people do it. (This is my personal belief.)
 
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