rsd1200
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What is the definition of "mentally ill" which is being used here? What's the definition of "serious mental illness?"
How many first responders have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety?
How many teachers?
How many gun owners?
How many of us?
Exactly. That's why, once again, a broken record, that I like the Ten Lessons Learned (1). I've been going back through old school shootings and there is a definite commonality in all of the shooters. No matter their firearm of choice, and/or if they use homemade bombs, they all share an internal commonality. They may not be a person who'd you'd automatically flag as mentally ill and in need of lock down, but they may be dealing with things that they are talking to the wrong people about (via internet/friends), rather than parents, or counselors.
From: Humiliation, Rage and Toxic Masculinity.
[FONT=&]The shooter is almost always male. Of the past 129 mass shootings in the United States, all but three have been men. The shooter is socially alienated, and he cant get laid. Every time you scratch the surface of the latest mass killing, in a movie theatre, a school, the streets of Paris or an abortion clinic, you find the weaponised loser. From Jihadi John of ISIS to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine, these men are invariably stuck in the emotional life of an adolescent. They always struggle with self-esteem especially regarding women and sometimes they give up entirely on the possibility of amorous fulfilment. There are different levels of tactical coordination, different ostensible grievances and different access to firearms, but the psyche beneath is invariably the same. (2)[/FONT]
Young men who cannot find a place in the socialisation process will often take up a disdainful hostility towards domestication itself. The terminal rebel takes shape. A mild version of this was articulated two decades ago in Chuck Palahniuks now classic novel Fight Club (1996) and its later movie adaptation. But far more chilling than alienated urbanites secretly fighting in basements is the rise of ISIS, Boko Haram and other violently antisocial brotherhoods.(2)
My view is that the lone-wolf doesnt have a theory as much as a feeling. Those feelings of resentment are a combination of thwarted affective drives (limbic system) plus cognitions about culpability (neocortex). The weaponised loser tries to make sense of his emotions by supplying causal stories and moral judgments about why he doesnt have the sexual satisfactions, wealth or status that he expects. The people he thinks do have those satisfactions and freedoms must be brought low or punished, and the unattainable women who withhold their pleasures must be humiliated and destroyed. (2)
(1) https://schoolshooters.info/sites/default/files/ten_lessons_1.2.pdf
(2) https://aeon.co/essays/humiliation-and-rage-how-toxic-masculinity-fuels-mass-shootings