“I am nothing. I am no one. My life is nothing and meaningless.” And there you have the perfect distillation of the motivation of the Parkland spree shooter. Videos Nikolas Cruz made prior to murdering 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February were made public yesterday. They reveal that he is the quintessence of what many think a school shooter is.
This is the most disturbing footage I have ever watched. These were found on the Parkland school shooter, Nikolas Cruz’s phone… pic.twitter.com/K7p3jEBVob
— teddy (@__t_d_k__) May 31, 2018
I hate everyone and everything, and with the power of my AR, you will all know who I am.
That tracks perfectly with theories many so-called experts have put forward about these isolated, nihilistic narcissists who see their lives as meaningless and want nothing more than to achieve what they perceive to be significance by attaining fame.
“There is a certain group of school shooters who engaged in fame-seeking behavior. They want to be known,” said Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist who authored the book “Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters.” “They want to change from a nobody into a somebody and the only way they can think to do that is to kill a lot of people.”
“So why, you may ask, do we post a video like this here and name the shooter? Because it’s important to understand the pathology.”
Bullshit. There is NO benefit to naming him and giving this asshole EXACTLY what he wants. Spreading his name reveals absolutely nothing about his pathology and relating his words only plays into the very motivation that creates more of these shooters hoping to have their own ‘stories’ told.
Call him the “idiot” (he hates being called that) if anything.
Agreed. If you shoot a school up your name should be buried in some obscure court docs and never mentioned. It serves as advertisement and inspiration for crazies who would do horrible things. The media points to guns because they’re deathly afraid that them being complicit in school shootings will be pointed out.
Stop whining about the signal. You can’t stop the signal. TTAG is not the problem. The shooter and his enabling government employees are the problem.
It would be nice if all news organizations just referred to these murderous lunatics as something along the lines of “sh*tbags” and never used their names or faces. They could alter those videos to replace his face with a steaming pile of crap and dub over his name with “a$$hat,” and we could all still learn more about his pathetic world view.
This sets a good example.
http://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/
It would be nice if 90% of films didn’t have over the top gun violence in them and hip hop hadn’t been glamorizing gun violence now and for the past 30 years. It would be nice if the idiots in black lives matter stopped blaming people and groups who have nothing to do with their cultural problem of black on black crime. But all these and the news do keep feeding the beast because they are money whores. It’s profitable and that is that.
True Hannibal, if we could just get some censorship laws in place and restrict the first amendment and keep this knowledge of the shooter’s name from general publication, that would definitely stop at least some of these mass murders. And if it stops just one murder, the loss of some of our freedoms is worth it.
Restrictions of any information or freedoms is always based on some perceived public good. But like they say, and has been proved through history, most recently with hundreds of millions of deaths in just the last hundred years, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In the end, what you promote and justify as a public good for a restriction of a certain right or freedom, it will then be the other person using the exact same argument, in this case hate speech laws, to promote their version of the “public good” that will “save lives”.
No, in the end, the truth will set us free. And in the exploration of the truth of things, we will ultimately find what is the solution to a particular problem, constructively and that in the end, re-inforces freedom. Because your way, by instilling or instituting greater laws, with greater controls, controlled by fewer hands, only leads to mass death and tyranny.
Many places restrict publishing the names of sexual assault victims and underage victims and perps, and in other places it’s corporate policy. It doesn’t take a law if the media would act responsibly. Law enforcement could also have a policy of not announcing the name or publishing the picture, unless they needed the public’s help with the investigation. We know the Newtown idiot tracked/scored previous spree killings and was trying to outdo them. We are constantly told the names of the killers, but nobody keeps naming the victims. I won’t use the killers’ names. Attention and celebrity, from either fame or infamy, seems to be a motivation for many of these f<ks, and I'd prefer not to give it to them.
Alot of these kids are probably happy just being referred to as ‘school name shooter’.
You miss the point. The kid is dead. He does not see his name in the papers. Regardless of what he wanted, he does not see the result.
Yep, I can see why the FBI and various LEO agencies ignored this kid despite being called to his house some ridiculous amount of times. Can someone remind me why the 3 LEO’s stood outside the school and waited, and waited, and waited…
Seems that doesn’t come up much anymore.
Cowardice, the reports for these incidents should all end with the crazy murderer zipped into a bag, instead they waited for the nut to run out of ammo or potential victims.
The media likes to claim that their reporting of the shooters name isn’t contributing to more shootings, but clearly anyone can see that it definitely is, according to the very words of the shooter. It’s time for the press NOT to use the name of the shooter in any broadcast or print media. If they continue then the government should cut them off from any funding and if necessary cancel their FCC license.
So don’t fuck with 2A but fuck with 1A?
Is any of that registering?
Nice false equivalence. In much the same way that news organizations don’t give out exact recipes for chemical cocktails used in murders, or give out the name of child sexual assault victims, they could greatly curtail the notoriety mass shooters receive by simply not naming them or plastering their pictures.
Forcible compulsion not to name or speak of criminals = 1A violation.
And what about situations where the government is the assailant? Shall Americans be coerced into never speaking of it?
People need to learn that the answer is not always “There oughta be a law…”, and remember the principles of liberty and limited government. The 1A of people you despise is just as sacrosanct as your own loved ones’ 2A or 8A.
If the news networks had any sense of decency, they’d self-police this issue and the problem would be mitigated significantly. Sadly, we are dealing with horrible, amoral narcissists and they aren’t ever going to quit glorifying the awful. More and more I’m becoming convinced that these people are sociopaths who care for nothing except themselves and their egos.
When you think about it, journalists have a lot in common with mass murderers. At the very least, they have an unholy, symbiotic relationship.
But if they engage in responsible reporting practices, that might reduce the number of incidents that they take great pleasure in:
1. Sensationalizing for profit.
2. Exploit for progressive political gains.
HANNIBAL hit the mark on this one. This is one sick individual. Do not publicize this disgusting video. Burn it. No one wants to see this . if they do than they are as sick as he was. Good riddance , nobody !!
Does anyone else think it’s time for a return to the stocks and pillory? Shitbags like this generally figure they’ll die in their attack, which doesn’t really bother them since they don’t really comprehend the meaning of death.
What they do fear – obviously – is ridicule and “bullying.” Well, how about this? Make every effort to capture these monsters alive. Mandatory sentencing will include at least a 6 month stint in the stocks, constructed at a convenient location on the school grounds. Make sure an adequate supply of spoiled fruit and vegetables from the school cafeteria is available for liberal application. At the end of the school day, hose the bastard off and cart him back to his cell.
You wanted fame and notoriety, shitbag? Here you go – and act as a deterrent to the next one, who’ll get the same treatment.
They DO have the death penalty in Floriduh right?!?
The part that’s hard for me to wrap my head around is I could kinda understand the want to be famous, but the little twerp was on-deck to receive $800,000 from his mother’s estate in a few years.
800 grand. That’s a nice chunk of change, people…
Money can’t bring you true happiness.
More and more has been coming out about the role of the media in sensationalizing and spreading these. A recent TTAG daily digest included an article about the best theory being, in effect, a “slow-motion riot”. Rioters are regular people who, when put together under the right circumstances, do things that they would never have done on their own. And the theory goes that as more of these scenarios play out, more are inspired to do them.
So I propose that for every group who actually wants to do something about school shootings, we could stop them in their tracks if we did the following two things:
1) an absolute news blackout on them happening. The news must never broadcast them again.
2) If anybody ever needs to reference any school shooter, they should only ever be allowed to call them “shitstains”. No names ever. No glory ever. No mugshots. No coverage of their trial.
I almost guarantee school shootings would dry up overnight.
Again, don’t fuck with the 2A but let’s all fuck with the 1A?
Am I the only one seeing the disconnect or are certain rights more negotiable than others?
I disagree.
Looking back through history, the Soviet Union hid reports of mass murderers, and did not report crime statistics to make it look like the Soviet Union was “crime-free”…the “communist paradise”.
The Broward (actually Coward) County officials, at the behest of the 0’bama did just that–hid criminal activity in order to keep from being the most crime-ridden county in Florida. Publicize his name and his mental illness, and his use of psychotropic drugs, which are almost always dangerous in children and young adults. It is interesting to note that Trayvon Martin’s criminal activity was also “excused” under this 0’bama “crime-reduction (by statistics) program.
Bring this whole dysfunctional mess into the open where it can be properly evaluated and critiqued, placing blame where it belongs–on city and county officials trying to make themselves “look good”–school officials pushing psychotropic drugs to make boys “less fidgety” and more compliant while robbing them of their natural spirit. police officials who are outright cowards and are afraid of their own shadows, refusing to do their jobs because “they feared for their lives”, and on the shooter and his parents for not getting the proper help.
There is a lot of blame to go around. Let’s get it all out in the open…
I find it funny when cops claim reasonable fear after they kill someone who wasn’t a threat at the time and when there is a real threat to them they run as fast as they can and sometimes scream as they flee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ88SGPgWD0
Had he posted these anywhere?
and he slipped through the cracks of the system how? Guns didn’t make this idiot kid, this madman was truly a narcissistic a$$$$$$$$ who felt the world owed him. These kids are easy to spot if you know what your looking, but parents and adults have to be looking. People like him are the reason people like me fight to keep our 2A rights.
“I am nothing. I am no one. My life is nothing and meaningless.”
I hope you make a lot of new “friends” in the joint. Sleep well, you worthless piece of shit.
And one day, when you can’t stand it anymore, put your sheet to good use.
The last “hotel” I visited had No sheets, it was a small wool like blanket with little copper wire threads that’s almost impossible to tear
yep and sites like this give him and them exactly what they wanted!!!!!
This country needs to address the epidemic of mental illness. The current system is broken beyond repair. Very little can be done about the dangerously mentally ill, the best case scenario right now is the police involuntarily committing them, but they’re released 72 hours later.
Between the rampant prescribing of anti-depressants (who’s mechanism of action and side effects are poorly understood), the non-existant mental health system, and the glorification of mass shooters it’s no wonder that this keeps happening.
But AZGUNNER, you do not bring the true solution to the problem.
So what was the common factor in most of our history in our country, where kids would be bringing guns to school as rifle teams and they have guns in their cars and trucks parked in the school parking lots and school shootings were pretty much non-existent?
Two parent families, in a country that was almost universally Christian in belief. There you go, I propose that a return to these fundamental institutions would be the solution to this issue with nihilistic murderous loners, high on psychoactive medications, left within their own minds, no reason not to go out in a blaze of infamy in the decision to self destruct.
Christianity isn’t the solution to stop murder. It will lead to murdering somewhere else, which will breed terrorists. Society shouldn’t have to rely on religion for morality.
A lot of Asian families do not have a religion yet their kids turn out well. What they do have is parents (and grandparents), discipline, respect, manners, short term and long term goals, etc. They also don’t really experience the American mentality of “You’re 18 now. Get the fuck out of my house!”
It sure as hell wouldn’t hurt…
No. Alot of Asian families are Buddhist, not athiests. Big difference. Buddhist Doctrine really emphasizes the family and in the discipline of children listening to their parents. Plus the Asian culture emphasizes education, learning and Entrepreneurship.
Large portions of a culture turning away from a belief in a higher power and believing that there is no God or Gods it’s not a new phenomenon. Atheism has always been at the end of a culture before it shortly collapses into chaos, Anarchy and the creation of a new Dark Age. This is demonstrated in all of history, as well as the Bible and its 6000 years of examples with the Jewish people rejecting God’s laws and embracing many beliefs as well as no belief in God, and it documents the chaos, the Anarchy and in the collapse that transpires as a result of this turning away from the truth.
Asians do a lot of ancestral worship and treat honor as essentially its own religion.
– someone who has been to Japan.
He wants notoriety? Hang him in the center of town. Leave him there until the birds peck his eyeballs out and he bloats up and stinks. Then throw him in the landfill. There is the notoriety befitting a shit bag like him. Maybe if the next one sees that he’ll think twice about it…
This. But it won’t happen in this rapidly collapsing, sick society.
Americans rather hang an insensitive comedian publicly instead of a murderer.
This begins to stop when media stops publishing these nutters crazy manifestos and their photos. These pieces of sh*t deserve zero recognition. No one should know their names.
In the U.K. they memory hole important data. America should be just like the Brits?
Common Sense Gun Control — Everybody who didn’t post a video like that gets to keep their AR.
Aaaand, that same week…
>300 million guns, some several 10’s of millions of gun owners, in around 1/3 of US households, shot exactly no one, because they aren’t whack-jobs, who post crap like that.
Exactly like the week before.
And the one after.
I get so confused. If they knew about this kid, and didn’t stop it, what are they doing? If they ddn’t know about this kid, what the heck good are they.
Public safety: you’re doing it wrong.
To “protect and serve” is essentially marketing to keep the police force in existence. You know products rarely lives up to their marketing.
This is all the more reason this rat and all like him who murder should be executed and fed to hogs. No exceptions for minors or the “ insane”. What is insane is how the left and right coddle these vermin and the courts protect them. What’s insane is that multiple government agencies knew of his threats and did nothing. What’s insane is that the Sheriff whose deputy cowered in fear as kids were being murdered still has his job. What’s insane is that most all schools still have no improvements in security or access controls.
And so the political class chooses to punish the law abiding gun owners. And the same political class will one day issue orders to confiscate guns from the law abiding and kill those who resist. All while having failed to insure the safety of schools and failing to rebuild the mental institutions and filling them with the dangerous citizens who wander the school grounds, city streets, and jails.
Don’t worry Trump is fighting real hard to protect America’s failed economy using fascist/socialist/communist methods and infringing on human/civil rights. Two term President right there.
“This is all the more reason this rat and all like him who murder should be executed and fed to hogs.”
Why even bother with the aggravation, stress, and expense of executing them first?
Into the pen, jackwagon…
If the murders were for fame and notoriety, give them what they wanted. Hung by the neck until dead from the State Capitols lawn, with publicized, media coverage, Copycat that.
Warning: Sarcasm Alert. “I solemnly swear to support and defend SOME of the Constitution of the United States against MOST enemies, foreign and SOME domestic.” End Sarcasm Alert.
I was not going to watch the video, but after reading comments I decided to watch it. That video is the most chilling, frightening, pathetically sad and heart-breaking thing I have ever seen. Even worse than the Santa Barbara Shooter’s video.
It left me wondering what we are, or are not, doing that leaves young people like this so utterly broken beyond repair in our contemporary society. A lot of possible factors have been discussed in various posts and comments here on TTAG in the past few years. It’s not just a broken mind, but a broken spirit on display in this video. I am not trying to solicit sympathy for this kid because there is no possible rationale for what he did, but I do feel empathy for him because no one could ever want to be as damaged and hate-filled as he is. He damned himself and probably the worst is yet to come…there’s not an “epidemic of violence”, but an epidemic of self-loathing running wild in this country among our young people.
Thank goodness for all the good, stable young people you know and tell them how proud you are of them. Love them and encourage them because they are the counter-balance to this kind of self-created demon.
These nut jobs have been around since the beginning of time. They just didn’t have the internet platform.
The Internet did not create this demon (although at some point it may have provided means to further his descent into madness along). It merely provided a convenient way for him to display his twisted mind and spirit. Similarly, before the Internet, the Zodiac Killer, Unabomber, Jack the Ripper and others sent messages, letters and manifestos to Newspapers, which were the Internet of their day. The Newspapers did not create those demons, either.
When people call them evil and crazy it feeds their desire to kill/retaliate.
Society and parenting have brought much of this problem into existence. Americans and parents like to ignore the issues, which only makes it much worse. They like to cast responsibility onto other things.
If you don’t think it’s environmental, then you think it’s genetic? If it’s genetic, why is it starting to become the norm? Are Americans genetically becoming psychopaths? Do we need to get rid of all the sharp objects and weapons from America and have wardens roaming everywhere?
It’s definitely environmental, which can effect genetic factors already present. By “environmental” I include both physical factors and mental/emotional factors. It seems clear to me the Human Brain is greatly affected by chemistry in the body, which affects the mental emotional state and is further affected by things like bad parenting, negative social interactions and other environmental influences (toxins, pharmaceuticals, even bad dietary habits). Many people utterly fail to understand how deeply interconnected and entwined all these factors are. You have to look at the whole picture to find the connections. This, I think, is why we keep failing to understand many Human issues. We want it to be one thing or another when it is the total environment and many factors in the environment, both tangible and intangible. Once an imbalance is created it begins to self perpetuate and expand. Other factors aggravate the situation and the person gets worse and worse.
A quick example, a friend of mine thought his Testosterone levels were declining in his mid thirties, so he got a Testosterone Test done and was prescribed Testosterone injections. After a few weeks, I saw him and asked how he was doing. He said he was doing great, felt much better, exercising more, losing weight, having great sex with his wife again. Then he said, “…the only thing I don’t understand, though, is that I fly into screaming rages over what might be small things. It really scares my Wife and Daughters….”. Later, he told me he talked to his Doctor who reduced his injections significantly and the rages subsided in a few weeks. Changing the environment by changing the body chemistry changed the behavior both ways.
“…there’s not an “epidemic of violence”, but an epidemic of self-loathing running wild in this country among our young people.”
That’s a creation of Leftist ideology.
They want everything and everyone cut down to the lowest level…
Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Breaking down the individual’s sense of self-worth prepares the masses for becoming obedient, hive-minded Thralls in the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is essential to Organic Theories of the State and that applies to both fascist and communist/socialist implementations. The individual is merely a cell-like component of the State…and eminently expendable…
After the initial identification of the criminal, there doesn’t need to be a constant reminder of who he is.
I have seen the murderer’s face and heard his name so much it almost feels like he was my roommate. That was one of his main goals, which he succeeded at doing.
Unfortunately, he pretty much succeeded at his other goal because a coward with a gun stood around and watched him do it.
I have seen this regressive behavior since 1999. I grew up around these kids. I knew a lot of kids like these school shooters. I seen the cult worship… However, back then kids didn’t emulate exactly like they do now because some of them would join a gang and kill people that way, others would stick to hurting themselves or their messed up boyfriend/girlfriend/friends. Then the internet came around to replace the “street” life.
On the internet is where they spent most of their days. The internet is where they met up with other people like them and started their little secret online groups. The emo, goth, death metal types would start feeding each other’s fantasies of death, destruction, rebellion, revenge and retaliation. The pain will no longer be contained, it would spread. With the degradation of American society, media, Hollywood and politics leading to the obvious outcomes. Now the youth know that instead of just hurting themselves they can hurt others to gain gratification and glory.
Why take out your rage in a mosh pit when you can do that at place you hate to people you detest?
Welcome to America, boys. Maybe the girls will eventually join in.
I will not be surprised when there is an American couple deciding to go on a shooting spree.
From Russia with love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHGI18sE2I0
TTAG being part of the problem. Stop naming these kids, stop showing their videos, stop showing their mass shootings.
The media creates copy cat killers by showing these kids that they will become famous for doing these horrible things.
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