Look, the only description of the shooter is a NUT

[underpants]

Mental health issues. Disgruntled. Whatever.

Anyone who does these type of things is a nut. Pardon my bluntness.

Yes the press will pound on his being a Bernie supporter (he basically hated everyone) and it doesn't really matter that...Eric Rudolph, Robert Lewis Dear Jr. (Planned parenthood), white supremacist James Wenneker von Brunn (Holocaust Museum), anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder (Dr. Tiller) were all spurred on by extreme hateful rhetoric coming from the right including actual Fox News personalities.

They are were NUTS.

[jberryhill]

1. Which, btw, is always true

I never understand this sort of post-event phrenology where people engage in studying bumps on the head, palm-reading or whatever to figure out "what this was about".

It was about a person intent on doing violence.

[asiliveandbreathe]

2. Exactly - this is why "political rhetoric" should not have a seat at the table -

Focus on what we can do better to protect us all - removing the regulations on silencers doesn't get there...this should be issue based....

Be well all....ever vigilant...."Political Rhetoric" googled, sites many examples from Timothy McVeigh to Timothy Leary.....to Sarah Palin(ugh) to Sharon Engle -

[MFM008]

3. Thank you

Perfect.

[Lee-Lee]

4. No. Don't let people escape accountability for extremism by blaming mental illness

That's bad for two reasons.

First, your kind of language only serves to further stigmatize those with real mental illnesses and creates a climate of fear around mental illness.

Second, most of these people in fact do not have any diagnosable mental illness. They are just extremists, no matter in what direction, and we as a society need to hold extremists accountable fully for their actions. They are mentally competent and know exactly what they are doing.

If the person is actually diagnosed as mentally ill, then blame the mental illness to a degree without using the kind of bigoted language you do. But don't blanket label every one of them as "nuts" because it's wrong and harmful to others with real mental illness and it removes accountability for their crimes from them.

[LanternWaste]

5. What leads you to believe that hateful rhetoric has no matter in these shootings?

What leads you to believe that hateful and violent rhetoric is irrelevant to hateful and violent actions?

[underpants]

6. Actions not motivation

There is tons of hateful rhetoric but only someone who's nuts does these sort of things.

[yallerdawg]

7. Are most Americans certifiably nuts? Yes.

It's a damn shame we make this diagnosis AFTER they do something to us.

But it's a damn good reason not to arm Americans!

[ananda]

9. I agree with this.

I think there's a huge crack in our collective unconscious, which
is infected with white oppression, whether we like it or not, or
whether we agree with it or not.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I think it's fair to say that mentally stable, sane people don't go out

and shoot random strangers, regardless of what ideology or personal convictions inspired them to do so. That is not the action of a normal person. The specific diagnosis could vary - some might be schizophrenic or delusional in some way, though it seems most are not. But if you go out and shoot people because you hate (abortion, African-Americans, white people, Democrats, Republicans, Muslims, Rastafarians, trombonists, whatever) you definitely have a screw loose. So it's almost pointless to describe a mass shooter as "mentally ill" or "disturbed," because of course they are.

However, most mentally ill people do not commit mass murders, or do anything harmful for that matter, except maybe to themselves. The more important question is what it is about some peoples' personalities that motivates them to do so. An extreme ideology doesn't lead everyone who accepts that belief to become murderous; there are plenty of neo-Nazis and alt-right assholes in their parents' basements tweeting all kinds of terrible stuff but they aren't going to kill anybody. There are people I detest with the fire of a thousand suns but I'd never harm them. What is it that makes a particular person decide to kill? I don't know. But it sure as hell isn't normal.

[geek tragedy]

10. this isn't about mental illness, and we do ourselves no favors if we pretend this wasn't

politically motivated violence.

Yes, he was an extremist and a fanatic who decided to commit political violence. That's not a category of mental illness.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Extremism and fanaticism are not, themselves, categories of mental illness.

But it begs the question of why most extreme fanatics do not commit acts of violence while only a small percentage do. Timothy McVeigh was by no means the only extreme anti-government militia guy out there, so why aren't all of them out blowing up buildings? Basements are full of extremists who blast hateful rhetoric on social media all day, but only a few actually decide they ought to shoot up a church or an abortion clinic or a movie theatre. What's the difference between Dylan Roof and all the thousands of other white supremacist/neo-Nazi characters all over the country? Stochastic terrorism is second-hand terrorism, the attempt to motivate others to commit your crimes. But there have to be people willing to commit those crimes. Why some people, and not most others? There is certainly some kind of pathology involved. Normal people don't go out and shoot people.

[geek tragedy]

13. I'm certainly not an expert, but it could be that they just don't see it as paying off.

We're generally a very violent country, so it's not as if there's a strong cultural taboo on violence.

Why do men hit their wives but not their local alderman? I dunno.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Still, there must be a reason why some people resort to this kind of violence

while most others with similarly uncivilized beliefs do not. Mass murderers often seem to regard themselves as martyrs, since many of them don't survive the incident and if they do they are always arrested. They certainly know beforehand that they will end up either dead or in prison, and they don't care. The guy on the train in Portland was unrepentant and said he will die happy in prison. Dylann Roof said he shot the people in the church because "black people are killing white people every day." Normal people don't think that way. These guys are not mentally ill in the sense of suffering from a psychosis like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but they are not normal. They always seem to have a history of disturbed behavior of some sort.

[geek tragedy]

15. fully agree that these perps are messed up individuals and are abnormal.

how do we stop people from developing into such killers? Wish I knew.

[UTUSN]

11. k r