Why do people commit mass murder?

[highlander]

I have wondered what on earth is going on with these people and found a couple of articles

On the Las Vegas Mass Killing and Motives | Psychology Today

On Wound Collectors | Psychology Today

These things are deeply upsetting enough but more than that, it bothers me every time I see one of these stories in the news because those news stories just stimulate more activity. Why can't journalists just stop sensationalizing these crimes? It would reduce the activity

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I have wondered what on earth is going on with these people and found a couple of articles

On the Las Vegas Mass Killing and Motives | Psychology Today

On Wound Collectors | Psychology Today

These things are deeply upsetting enough but more than that, it bothers me every time I see one of these stories in the news because those news stories just stimulate more activity. Why can't journalists just stop sensationalizing these crimes? It would reduce the activity

Ratings and $$$, sadly.

 

[21%]

This is the first time I've heard the term "wound collecting" and my gut reaction was... I've got a problem with it. I'm not sure why. I feel like it will eventually simplify the issue into "Oh, he's a wound-collector", while I believe the real psychological landscape of such individuals is going to be much more complicated than that.

Based on nothing... I think for mass shooters that seem to come out of nowhere, it's a numbness, a disconnect, a loss of meaning of some sort, that made these people stop seeing other people as people. This is different from serial killers who are thrilled by act of killing. Most mass shooters seem to know that they are going to die.

 

[ceecee]

I have wondered what on earth is going on with these people and found a couple of articles

On the Las Vegas Mass Killing and Motives | Psychology Today

On Wound Collectors | Psychology Today

These things are deeply upsetting enough but more than that, it bothers me every time I see one of these stories in the news because those news stories just stimulate more activity. Why can't journalists just stop sensationalizing these crimes? It would reduce the activity

I don't know that it would reduce the activity. However, some media is at least not glorifying the shooters by talking about them ad nauseam, like they have in the past so that's an improvement.

Availability of firearms and mental illness, in that order, are what contributed to the shooting in Thousand Oaks yesterday. It's what contributes to most mass shootings. I have yet to see a single one that truly had no advanced warning of any kind or red flags. People do not want to deal with the issue before it becomes a tragedy and there are so many barriers to actual help, people are reluctant to move on a dangerous person . That seems to be preferred to action, including legislative action.

 

[Lark]

This is the first time I've heard the term "wound collecting" and my gut reaction was... I've got a problem with it. I'm not sure why. I feel like it will eventually simplify the issue into "Oh, he's a wound-collector", while I believe the real psychological landscape of such individuals is going to be much more complicated than that.

Based on nothing... I think for mass shooters that seem to come out of nowhere, it's a numbness, a disconnect, a loss of meaning of some sort, that made these people stop seeing other people as people. This is different from serial killers who are thrilled by act of killing. Most mass shooters seem to know that they are going to die.

Was there a Nirvana song that had the lyric "love my gun better than you" or perhaps its a distortion of the lyric or a live version of it, in many ways I think its sums things up on this to be honest.

Its not expanded upon, much, but Erich Fromm used to write about the biophilious and necrophilious styles or character structures, everyone experiences the biophilious drive, naturally, although when its blocked growth takes on the necrophilious character instead. The one involves a love or reverence for life, growth, change, development and the other the opposite, dead, unchanging, stagnation.

So someone who is necrophilious is going to love dead, objects, like a gun, more than a person, or in another conception the killing of living beings is about rendering them dead things, objects.

They're just ideas but you know, I think they are illuminating.

 

[Lark]

I don't know that it would reduce the activity. However, some media is at least not glorifying the shooters by talking about them ad nauseam, like they have in the past so that's an improvement.

I do think the way these things are covered makes a difference, at least to the likelihood of it "trending"

 

[ceecee]

I do think the way these things are covered makes a difference, at least to the likelihood of it "trending"

Social media doesn't come under the heading of "media" as far as standards, rules and laws in the US. But it doesn't seem to stop people from using it or insisting that it have any oversight, such as actual media with actual journalist standards. If you're bitching about Facebook and you're still using Facebook for example, what exactly does that say?

 

[highlander]

I don't know that it would reduce the activity. However, some media is at least not glorifying the shooters by talking about them ad nauseam, like they have in the past so that's an improvement.

It's a proven phenomenon that these kinds of things result in copycat incidents. I forget what it's called but there have been studies on it.

 

[ceecee]

It's a proven phenomenon that these kinds of things result in copycat incidents. I forget what it's called but there have been studies on it.

I'm not disputing that going by the phenomenon the only way to stop a copycat incident is to not report on it at all. Is that a better option - just not talk about it? Or not glorify the incident or the criminal, which is what appears to be happening in at least some of the media recently. But in this country that's a hard sell when violence and firearms are glorified, regardless of what the media does.

The other thing I hear all the time is "lone wolf" incidents. It appears most of the recent ones are not lone wolf at all. It may be one person committing the crime but they are part of a bigger, radical network. The shooting from yesterday appears to be a veteran with PTSD. Who could have been radicalized or might have been committing a copycat crime. But I reckon it had much more to do with his access to firearms than anything else.

 

[Lark]

Its not just guns though as there's been a lot of knife murder in london and there was that other Somali douche bag who went on some sort of a stab rampage until the cops finally gave him his wish and shot him.

 

[Lib]

Mass shootings in US haven't started with the media. I don't understand the compulsion to try to solve every problem by controlling what people say, provided that free speech is a fundamental human right, but not restricting the access to guns, which shows to be the actual solution to this problem.

 

[rav3n]

You can't make mass shootings disappear by not talking about them. But when they're discussed, rather than rely on conspiracy theories, rely on objective information.

Stephen Paddock's father was a psychopath. His brother was on the run from the law. Stephen himself was on two types of anti-anxiety meds and supplementing with alcohol from morning to night which amplified the strength of the meds. He was anxious because he believed in the ridiculous conspiracy theories that the gubmint/military had plans to kick down doors and take away people's guns. He was also in a highly anxious state prior to the shooting because he had lost a lot of money on his investment properties.

 

[Andy]

I have wondered what on earth is going on with these people and found a couple of articles

On the Las Vegas Mass Killing and Motives | Psychology Today

On Wound Collectors | Psychology Today

These things are deeply upsetting enough but more than that, it bothers me every time I see one of these stories in the news because those news stories just stimulate more activity. Why can't journalists just stop sensationalizing these crimes? It would reduce the activity

I suspect that the lone gunman syndrome (for want of a better word) often starts with self-loathing mixed with a bit of projection. They hate themselves, so they assume everyone else hates them too. In the end, their murderous rampages are suicidal. When they survive it's usually more to do with the skill of law enforcements agencies than any survival instinct. Quite what it takes to push someone to that point, I'm less sure about.

 

[Lark]

I suspect that the lone gunman syndrome (for want of a better word) often starts with self-loathing mixed with a bit of projection. They hate themselves, so they assume everyone else hates them too. In the end, their murderous rampages are suicidal. When they survive it's usually more to do with the skill of law enforcements agencies than any survival instinct. Quite what it takes to push someone to that point, I'm less sure about.

I definitely think that the majority of spree killer incidents are murder-suicides, the only time I know of in which it didnt appear to be so was in a movie I saw once in which a guy uses a rampage as a cover for a robbery and frames his friend as the shooter, it was more of horror movie than the action thriller I thought it had intended to be.

I remember reading some sources after the Columbine massacre, when these kinds of things were less of a trend, talking about it being some kind of dark side of the "American Dream" and a cultural thing as opposed to individual pathology, mainly because there are nations, even english speaking ones, which do have the same availability of firearms, but perhaps not the same gun culture, and spree killing does not happen.

The other thing I was going to mention in this thread was that fire arms offenses and spree killing of that sort is not the only mas murder, there was the nurse in Germany who admitted to killing hundreds of people, there was Harold Shipman in the UK, there where a few nurses in the UK killing elderly clients or babies with insulin or medication. That appears to be a thing almost. Not sensationalised but yet still happening.

 

[anticlimatic]

I have wondered what on earth is going on with these people and found a couple of articles

On the Las Vegas Mass Killing and Motives | Psychology Today

On Wound Collectors | Psychology Today

These things are deeply upsetting enough but more than that, it bothers me every time I see one of these stories in the news because those news stories just stimulate more activity. Why can't journalists just stop sensationalizing these crimes? It would reduce the activity

Shooters are trolls on a homicidal level. Don't blame the media's reaction, it's just a symptom. The fact that a tiny handful of them virtue signal by not 'saying the name of the shooter' is ultimately irrelevant if the rest of them who want traffic/readers do. The core of the issue is more personal, and you can do your part- just stop giving a shit. In yet another one of life's most counter intuitive systems of cause and effect, the more people care about mass shootings and feel worked up as though they should do something about it, the more they are perpetuated. If nobody cared, no media would bother with it, and they'd go about as reported and read as any given city's local obituaries- which every day in almost every place exceed the death count of this last shooting.

Empathy: OFF. It's the only way to save lives. If you can do it for any random obituary section in any random city, you can do it for random shootings.

 

[highlander]

I don't know that it would reduce the activity. However, some media is at least not glorifying the shooters by talking about them ad nauseam, like they have in the past so that's an improvement.

Availability of firearms and mental illness, in that order, are what contributed to the shooting in Thousand Oaks yesterday. It's what contributes to most mass shootings. I have yet to see a single one that truly had no advanced warning of any kind or red flags. People do not want to deal with the issue before it becomes a tragedy and there are so many barriers to actual help, people are reluctant to move on a dangerous person . That seems to be preferred to action, including legislative action.

This talks about copycat crime and the effect of it over history

Copycat crime - Wikipedia

 

[ceecee]

This talks about copycat crime and the effect of it over history

Copycat crime - Wikipedia

I wasn't disputing it, I just think there is more at play. The Thousand Oaks shooter said he was looking forward to out collective "thoughts and prayers" and nothing more. He was right.

 

[Virtual ghost]

This is evidently individual but usually revolves around psychological/family issues, media sensationalism, radicalization over internet, money problems, substance abuse etc. So clearing this mess is indeed a challenge that can't be solved over night.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

We need to reopen the insane asylums. Not everyone there needs to necessarily being in a padded cell or even stay in the building all the time. It might be more like a retirement community, except for mentally unwell people who need more oversight in their lives. There's some people who I think who just be happier there.

I've just been shocked by how fast they release people from the psych ward at hospitals. They come out after 24 hours sometimes and it's like, damn, did they even look at you?

 

[Mole]

People commit mass murder under a totalitarian belief system like national socialism, international communism, or. Islam.

Yesterday an Islamist committed mass murder in the centre of Melbourne, Australia.