by Bud Biddle
The news media is feeding on this horrific tragedy of yesterday giving the killer the consistent recognition he always had wanted, needed and never attained in his short 22 years of privileged life. The recognition he knew he’d obtain posthumously, by the news media’s fervor to pursue and glorify the story, is now cast in stone and continues unabated.
The drumbeat of coverage has all the earmarks of a coronation. The candlelight vigil by thousands, the unfolding story and rehash over and over of the same facts and photos of the killer, his BMW [like it was at fault] and the related sensationalism. This killer got/is getting…exactly what he wanted and knew he’d get in death. A mass killer’s public send off lasting days on end. An infamous tribute he sought and enjoys.
His parents knew he was embarking on the murder spree and was called and warned by the killers psychologist 15 minutes before the killings actually began. The killer’s parents left for their son’s location to prevent his killing spree. Apparently neither the killer’s doctor, who warned the parents, nor the parents thought of immediately calling 9 1 1.
That said, my issues rest with the new media now. They treat these mass killings, depending on the status of the killer, the family, the victims and the killing magnitude…almost like the assassination of a political figure. That coverage being wrong as well.
The unabashed coverage of the aftermath of mass killings fuels the minds of likely 1000’s of others suffering from the same delusional/paranoid and insecure maladies this recent killer had.
Editorial Boards of print news organizations and the powers that be who control TV news outlets should ALL come together and decide better ways to minimize post carnage coverage like the one’s we keep seeing. Such an agreement of self censorship might somehow stop some of the copy cat killers that are still at large who just might be pushed into action by gaining an ill gotten prominence from engaging in mass killings.
A media consensus to minimize post carnage coverage might serve as some kind of a deterrence to such horrific acts. Just maybe, if these nut cases knew they’d not obtain a celebrity status for multiple killings, they’d not do them as much or at all..? Who knows…~ ?
Memorial Day, 2014. A day when politicians, slick back their hair, put their suits on, arrive at the grave sites of our fallen heroes, garner the media spotlight, then give speeches making it seem that war’s and the sacrifices made are just fine.
Very few media reports included that the killer not only used a gun, but his shooting spree actually started out as a knife spree. The first three victims were stabbed to death in the killer’s apartment. From what I’ve read, one news outlet that got it right is a newspaper out of Australia, (without a Liberal agenda) that reported the killings correctly as;
“a violent knife and gun rampage.”
Harold, thank you for your common sense thinking and pointing out the facts. What troubles me is the silence from the far left. The nut cases have failed to rally the troops and form candlelight marches. And the usual legislators are not taking to the podium to decry how we desperately need more restrictive gun laws. I’m sure it will all happen eventually, but I’m surprised it’s not happening right now.
“What troubles me is the silence from the far left.”
Michael Moore has commented on his Facebook page:
“…While other countries have more violent pasts (Germany, Japan), more guns per capita in their homes (Canada [mostly hunting guns]), and the kids in most other countries watch the same violent movies and play the same violent video games that our kids play, no one even comes close to killing as many of its own citizens on a daily basis as we do — and yet we don’t seem to want to ask ourselves this simple question: “Why us? What is it about US?” Nearly all of our mass shootings are by angry or disturbed white males. None of them are committed by the majority gender, women. Hmmm, why is that?…”
Actually that’s not true Jim. The leading cause of death for black males under 30 is gun shot. Should we ban black people from owning guns?
Look, we have 350 million here and almost as many guns – the question is, if we are so deadly to each other why don’t we have more mass killings?
What we have are anomalies consistent the number of mentally ill that for whatever reason made their way around the many roadblocks we’ve erected for our safety and went on to kill people. I can recall three incidents in recent times where a car was used to mow down people, but we don’t talk about banning cars. Guess it doesn’t fit the agenda the left has created for us.
The point is, you don’t punish innocent people or objects for the acts of a criminal…you punish the criminal. The club, the car, the bomb, the axe, the knife, the chair leg or yes, the gun, none of these things did it on their own, it was the person wielding the weapon did it! Banning the object has a very limited effect because there are no end of deadly objects. Better we learn to defend ourselves and take proactive steps to get crazy people off the street and away from deadly objects.
Moore is also incorrect about our murder rates, many third world countries have it far worse.
I think Moore’s point is “Why?” Why does this kind of thing happen so often in the US. As he points out, gun ownership isn’t the whole problem, nor does he advocate a gun ban.
Somehow whenever this kind of thing happens, the discussion gets derailed into gun ownership rights. I believe we need to focus on why a guy like this would resort to such violence. We also need to focus on more effectively dealing with mental health issues.
Jim, you’re on the right track as far as I am concerned. It’s real easy to blame guns, but we’ve got em, they’re not going away and the better thought now is how do we deal with our mentally ill and our criminals who are violent and sometimes use guns? Our homicide rate is bad, no getting around it, and in some cities it’s horrible, what can we do to the people who are violent to change things?
I would like to see more reporting of mentally ill people that are a danger to society. The 24 hour law for healthcare professionals to report immediate threats is too long, the law should be changed to say, immediately. This young guy in Santa Barbara was in counseling, how could professionals not pick up on his violent nature and do something about it? I heard he tried to shove girls around and got beat up for trying. Nothing came of that either. What about the deputies sent to do a welfare check? Shouldn’t they have run a check to see what weapons he owned? Did they? Was their sufficient cause (if it was known) to take away his guns since he was under psychiatric counseling? I think it would be a close call, but probably the answer is yes, better to err on the side of caution. And what about the parents? They were worried, could they have done more? When they read about his retribution plan, did they immediately alert police or did they delay by hours and take another option?
So far the shootings (and stabbings) in Santa Barbara have been blamed on guns, violent movies, TV,, music, and video games, and mental illness. I have a very hard time believing the root cause is any of these.
First, let’s take guns. Are there more guns per capita on the street than there were 25 years ago, 35 years ago, 45 years ago. I don’t have any figures but it is my perception that there are probably fewer guns per capita than in the past. In addition, gun laws are stronger rather than weaker. How can you have fewer guns and stronger gun laws yet far more tragedies like SB. Will decreasing the number of guns and increasing the difficulty in acquiring a gun end these tragedies? I doubt it. It might even make them happen more often. The killer’s own manifesto indicated he decided not to attack at a yearly college block party because he remembered there were a lot of police officers around. What do police officers have? Guns! He was concerned he wouldn’t be able to kill as many people as he wanted before he himself was killed. Would it have been different if the people with the guns were not police officers? Nope! He was afraid of the guns!
OK, so is it the violent movies, tv, music and/or video games that are to blame. Again, when I look at the past I really doubt it. We have had violent entertainment of many different kinds for many many years. Yet, we didn’t have these mass killings. Granted, the Sandy Hook killer was obsessed with violent video games but was that the cause or was it an outlet for his feelings that finally wasn’t enough.
So it must be mental illness, right? Well is it? Are there more mentally ill people per capita now than in the past? Granted most (if not all) of these terrible events were committed by mentally ill people. But was that the root cause? If it was the case, how would you explain the increase in the number of these mass killings? I think mental illness is part of the explanation but I think there is something more involved that is not being examined.
About 10 years ago the wife of a close friend of mine left him for another man. They had been together for about 25 years. He didn’t see it coming and was devastated. Of course he was depressed, very depressed. He went to a doctor about the depression. It was probably the worst thing that ever happened to him, even worse than losing his wife. The doctor treated his depression with drugs. He treated the side effects of those drugs with more drugs. When he was out of answers he sent him to a psychiatrist who prescribed more drugs. I visited him at one point and he was so drugged he moved like my 85 year old father who has Parkinson’s Disease. He was moving in slow motion. Friends and I confronted him about his condition, a condition he was totally unaware of. He thought he was moving fine. He listened to us and got a different doctor and slowly weaned himself all the drugs, but then the “voices” started telling him to kill himself. He was so sure the voices were real even though he couldn’t explain them. So instead of getting completely off the medication he had to continue to take some just to maintain his sanity. He will have to take the drugs for the rest of his life. He is 59 years old, can’t work, and lives with his parents. All this happened because he was depressed in a situation where he should have been depressed. The drugs destroyed him!.
We have become a overly medicated society. Really! Ask around. I’ll bet you will find it is very difficult to find a friend that isn’t taking some kind of medication. We take pills for pain. We take pills if we can’t sleep. We drink energy drinks to be able to work. We take pills if we are sad even if we have reason to be sad. We take pills because we can’t focus. We take pills for sex. We take pills to lose weight. And then we take pills to counteract the side effects of the pills we are taking. On and on and on!
I’m 59 years old and went in for a physical. I was asked by 2 nurses and 2 doctors and a lab technician what medication I was taking. Every one of them was really shocked when I said none. They were genuinely shocked. One even didn’t believe me at first. They made me feel like I was doing something wrong.
Could it be that the root cause of the tragic events is a society filing their bodies and minds with chemicals, chemicals with long term effects that nobody truly understands.? The common thread in all the recent mass killings along with mental illness is a person under treatment by a psychiatrist. The Santa Barbara killer was 22 and had been in treatment since he was 7. Are we creating these killers? Are they just people with normal problems or illnesses magnified by treatment a branch of medicine that really doesn’t know what they are doing?
I stated the killer was 22 and had been in treatment since 7. The Sandy Hook killer was also a young man in treatment. The theater killer was also a young man in treatment. Another thought struck me. Maybe it is more complex than we thought. Maybe we also need to examine the medication used by the parents. Maybe the killers are the parents of people that solved their problems through chemistry and were damaged before they even were born. I hope not because if that is the case we are in big trouble.
According to Dr Keith Ablow of FOX:
This kids was seeing two professionals but I haven’t heard if they were psychiatrists or psychologists and don’t know if the same law applies to non-doctors…if not maybe it should or they should be required to seek immediate assistance from a doctor. I would think writing a manifesto and sharing it with his therapist would at least warrant immediate temporary hospitalization and evaluation.
Re #7 More Common Sense : My wonderful nephew who had just become a man committed suicide after taking such drugs prescribed by physician and then stopping them abruptly because he did not like how they made him feel. In his case, because he was an adult, no one was warned of the possible suicidal side effects of quitting the drug. He calmly, without giving anyone a clue, hung himself in his grandparents basement.
Dewey is an idiot … as usual.
Dewey has a point, as usual. The killer was very clear about his motivations: he believed that he was entitled to sex from women, and eventually decided that going on a rampage was the only way to prove himself an “alpha male.” Most men don’t kill anyone over the sexist idea that women owe them sex, but it’s still a very common idea.
Here’s a very fascinating, though disturbing take on what motivated the killer.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dispatches/2014/05/i_could_have_been_elliot_rodger_young_frustrated_and_full_of_rage_toward.html
So, both the extreme left wing cretins believe that a deranged killer is the product of a society that promotes the belief that “men are somehow entitled to something from women.”
Idiots as usual.
Women, beware of Chris and Dewey.
Pie: “So, both the extreme left wing cretins believe that a deranged killer is the product of a society that promotes the belief that “men are somehow entitled to something from women.”
Idiots as usual.”
Pie, what is your actual objection to this argument? Do you even have one? Or do you just start reaching for ad hom insults the moment you see mine or Dewey’s name? Your comments are increasingly uncivil and needlessly rude. The killer himself said that his motivation was to get revenge on all the women who wouldn’t sleep with him. Why should this be ignored?