Santa Barbara spree killer Elliot Rodger was being treated by “multiple therapists” and was a student at Santa Barbara City College. That’s according to his father’s attorney Alan Schifman, via abcnews.go.com. Schifman said Rodger’s family was “devastated . . . They want to send the deepest condolences to all the victims’ families involved at this time.” What’s more, Schifman indicated that the family notified the police of Eliott’s mental “issues” . . .
Schifman said in recent weeks that Rodger’s parents were concerned for their son’s well being and reported his disturbing YouTube videos to police, which lead to an investigation. According to Schifman, police interviewed Rodger and found him to be “polite and kind.” He did not specify which law enforcement division conducted the interview.
A social worker also contacted police about Rodger last week, said Schifman.
Brown said a YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” appeared to be linked to the crime. In the video, a man who identifies himself as Elliot Rodger sits in the driver’s seat of a car as he promises “retribution” and discusses his “loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires.”
“Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me,” he said in the video. He added that it would be his last video.
Schifman said Rodger was diagnosed as being a high-functioning patient with Asperger syndrome and had trouble making friends.
“There was an incident probably a year and a half ago where he was…he fell from a balcony at a party or was thrown off of it. I think he was probably a victim from my understanding of bullying throughout his life… I’m sure that had played a role in the terrible consequences from last night,” the lawyer said.
Regardless, once again a dangerous individual slipped through the social service and law enforcement net. Here’s hoping journalists throw more light on the backstory to this killing; there are lessons to be learned. Again. Still.
The first net he passed through was the family net, the primary net. How long before the Monsanto Mouthpiece in her two bits? Watching the video on Youtube is enough to make you sick.
Multiple therapists didn’t catch this? You don’t say? Are these the same multiple therapists that think that butt whipping is wrong? I’m sure they are.
Family is the problem. Specifically, punishment. When I grew up taking a time out and talking about why something is bad didn’t exist. If we did something wrong, we knew it was wrong before we did it. Kids aren’t stupid. We had ass whippings. You did something wrong and you got your butt whipped. They have no fear of consequences, “What, you’ll send me to my room that has a sound system, tv, video games, and a computer with a hard drive full of porn? Well that will show me!”
This is the problem. And who brought us this problem? The liberal bastards that think it’s abuse to whip your kids butt after he destroys property or catches someones house on fire. This kid was spoiled. I doubt he ever wanted for anything. Whipping his butt would have hurt his feelings though, and we wouldn’t want that right?
This kid needed fear and structure. I feared my parents, they could really whip some butt. I love and respect them to this day, they cared enough to teach me right from wrong and that actions have consequences. It also toughens you up, something this kid must have needed. People my age laugh when we talk about getting our butts whipped, because we look back and realize how stupid it was to do something we knew was wrong and suffer the consequences. If people really want this to stop then they’ll have to go back to “Spare the rod, spoil the child”. If not, well the police will show your child what consequences truly are. Unfortunately, it could be after your child has destroyed the lives of innocent people.
If you want to do something for the children, whip their butts.
They have other kids at school to fear; other kids that “whip their butts” on an ongoing basis.
Wasn’t each and every one of us ‘bullied’ at one time or another? Did we not ‘get over it’ without gunning down a few innocents? As I remember, we did. What has happened is that the current run of kiddies (those now being ‘raised’ and those just reaching young adulthood) are being brought up, after a fashion, as Speshul Snoflakes who are never punished for wrongdoing, never brought into the harsh reality of life, and are coddled unmercifully by their doting-but-brainless parents, schools, and government.
We also permit Those In Power to excuse aberrant behaviour as this-or-that ‘Syndrome du Jour’, such as Asperger’s (a convenient catch-all for all of the goofy things the Weird Kids in our day did, but without the glorified ‘syndrome’ label). I suspect that most of the time, if these defectives were given some caring guidance and DISCIPLINE (including corporal punishment when necessary), there’d be FAR fewer of them, and fewer of them means that more innocents are spared.
Me? Never. Not even once. I got in a scuffle once, but it was in my back yard. Kid was playing touch football a bit too rough.
Some old, musty book long since banned from schools contains this little tidbit of wisdom from ages past:
“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
Sounds like those old Jews knew a thing or two about raising kids in their “stumpfing around the deserts in sandals” days.
Aye! Our beloved and departed Uncle Joe would’ve agreed with you and ended with “But what do I know?” He lived a hard and full life, the earlier parts of it in the desert wearing sandals, but counted among his blessings a wise father who understood that advice. 🙂
DG, I absolutely agree with your views on modern parenting.
But, respectfully, if in fact this young man was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and this is not a “quick” diagnosis, by any means, we do have to recognize that we should be institutionalizing people who are at risk of doing themselves or others great harm.
I think this young man truly needed very, very long term institutionalization.
I have no problem with the institutionalization part, but we need to worry about who they decide to institutionalize. Because it could be us.
I like your parenting style. We could really use a babysitter to cover date night and my range time!
[email protected]
You Sir and I agree with every single word. It doesn’t take a village, it takes a parent.
I hear them keep saying that “village” meme on MSNBC, et al. When they say, “the child does NOT belong to his parents; he belongs to us all, I shout, “do you mean (name of my community) is going to send my grandson to college?” REALLY?
William,
If your child goes through the public school system in Kalamazoo, Michigan, yes, the “community” will pay for their college.
Uh, hello, you cannot “whip” Aspergers or personality disorders out of people. A lack of spankings as a child is not how psychotics, sociopaths, and people with anti-social personality disorder are created. Personality disorders are a mental illness. Whipping them as young children, would only have served to make this kid worse, buddy.
THANK YOU, Ggirl. Well said. Just like you don’t tell a diabetic to just “get over it” …you treat them…change their diet…help them function with what they DO have going for them…you can’t BEAT the disease out of them!
Who says that disturbed young man DIDN’T get spankings as a child? No one. We have no idea how his parents disciplined him — we can only assume. Mental illness is REAL…just like cancer, or diabetes, seizure disorders, etc., etc. There’s NO simple answer here. It’s possible that during puberty, his hormone levels, serotonin, dopamine and the androgens were off balance. It’s possible if they do a biopsy that they will find a brain tumor over the hypothalamus or at the brain stem…we just DON’T know…but it’s ALL very possible. There are so many things that could cause mental illness or even a physical brain disease that can be found on biopsy.
It seems his parents DID try to get their son help. Let’s not place blame when we don’t know all the details. The only thing we DO know is that 6 people are dead and a troubled young man is the one who did it.
You think this guy did this because he didn’t get spanked/disciplined? Really? Wow.
The guy had bad wiring. Severe paranoia and narcissism. These aren’t caused by getting spanked or not spanked. Save the folksy wisdom for normal kids. This guy was off-the-charts bananas.
I disagree with him passing through the family net. The family in this case knew there was a problem however they were helpless to do anything. They did the right thing in notifying police. That’s where the snowball started to roll.
His father was pretty much absentee, his mother gave in to his every little whim. His stepmother tried to place limits on his self centered and destructive behavior which drove him back to mommy who continued to give him free reign. By the time they “woke up” and realized they’d raised a little sociopath, he was already a legal adult and there was very little they could do or were willing to do.
I think you are the only one with a brain here. I’m sure no one else even peered into the manifesto. It has nothing to do with spankings, for fucks sake. You are spot on. I applaud you
This is actual the second time that some type of mass killings has happen on Isla Vita. Which is a unincorporated community on the UC Santa Barbra campus. This first incident was known as the Isla Vista massacre. Back in Feb 2001 a student at UC Santa Barbra who is also the son Dan Attias a prominent TV director did the following.
On evening of February 23, 2001, just after 11pm UCSB student David Attias drove his 1991 Saab down the 6500 block of Sabado Tarde Road at high speed into nine parked cars and five pedestrians, killing four and critically injuring a fifth. Attias ran the stop sign at the intersection of Sabado Tarde and Camino Pescadero at around 50 mph, during peak hours for foot traffic in Isla Vista. After slamming his Saab into two parked vehicles, he swerved and hit the pedestrians, sideswiping seven other vehicles in his attempt.
When his vehicle came to a stop, Attias got out and began (or continued, reports vary about whether he was yelling while driving) shouting about darkness and government plots, according to witnesses, he yelled “I am the Angel of Death!” and attempted to pick up victim Ruth Levy by the arm, but quickly lost interest, as he was surrounded by bystanders.
Police arrived shortly after the incident, and had to extricate Attias from a growing crowd. An unidentified first responder administered CPR to Arthur Levy, the sole surviving victim. In the initial aftermath, it was unclear if drugs were involved, as well as if the attack was intentional. Blood tests later showed that Attias was under the influence of marijuana and Lidocaine, neither deemed significant to the incident.
Attias was charged with four counts of murder, four counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and five counts of felony driving under the influence. Residents of his hall told police and the campus paper that Attias had been known for his erratic behavior, including stalking of another student. Several students referred to him, with rolled eyes, as “Crazy Dave” and “Tweaker.”
He was sentenced to 60 years in state mental hospital but in May 2012 he was released as a Judge ruled he was no longer a danger to society. Really !!
It goes to show you do not need a firearm to kill people. Even if you were able to snap your fingers and every firearm in the US would disappear which we all know some people would prefer. There will always be a person who is mentally deranged that will figure out another way to harm others. Crazy is Crazy !!
With that being said that does not give others the right to deprive me of the right to protect myself from people like David Attias and others who wish to harm me and my family .
Seriously. While I am not “anti-gun,” and I don’t advocate removing all guns from humanity, logically, you must admit that it’s a lot easier to kill a lot of people at once with guns than it is to murder people with a car, or a knife. I think it would behoove us to restrict the gun option from people who clearly show signs of instability.
We ought to stop infringing upon the right of the individual to keep and bear arms with which they could defend themselves from this and other threats. When the actions of a person, mentally ill or not, can unfold unchecked by those around him, that is the real problem. There will always be criminals. There will always be mentally ill individuals who commit criminal acts. People need to be able to defend themselves from such things.
Agreed.
Why would the media depart from their m.o.? Let’s see who was involved here. Parents, police, social worker…yup! Oh, and a mentally disturbed guy. OK. Any one else? NRA Member? Nope. Gee, sounds familiar. Same story. Same journalistic reporting? Watching and waiting. Not holding breath.
Details which will, of course, never be mentioned.
How many times in the past, oh, let’s say, ten years, has any of these shooting sprees involved dedicated, conservative, card-carrying members of the NRA?
I say: zero!
You?
Not once. And I thank you for your question; it’s another point we need to keep raising.
And we’re failing at doing that. WE need to change that!
This is just plain sad.
I would hate to be his parents.
The “what could we have done better/different” questions will likely haunt them for a very long time.
everytime they think about him for the remainder of their lives I imagine, I dont mean to be harsh right, but an oh god we created a monster kind of thing.
What happened when his family contacted police? Was he put on the “no guns” list, or whatever? Did anyone investigate? When a family tells police “our son is going to be a mass murderer”, WTF HAPPENS? I say, nothing, we wait for it.
You’re absolutely correct. We need to see the truth. And the truth is they are setting up systems which are designed to get more children killed. Which is what they want, because the goal is *disarmament*, not safer schools!
What would you have the police DO? If I acted a bit off (well, maybe a bit more than I do now), and started writing black thoughts in my diary, or started making up slasher stories in my blog, and maybe made a horrific video containing extreme violence, or I tell you in an email that I intend to massacre by unstated means some unnamed people at an unspecified place at some unknown future date, would you have sufficient grounds to have me locked up? Or would I merely be Stephen King, or George Romero?
This society and culture simply CANNOT, although it would be ‘safer,’ imprison people for their thoughts. We can only use the power of government to punish DEEDS. The cops did all that they could; The little bastidge defective murderer did the rest on his own. Liberty, although wondrous, has a cost.
You’re exactly right. LE is very limited on what they can do. This kid was obviously smart enough not to tell the cops, “Yes, I plan on killing a bunch of people and then myself, is that ok?”. Unless LE can articulate why the kid is a danger to himself or others, they are powerless. Even then, all they could have done was a 24-72 hour commit, after which he most likely would have been back out. If the parents were really serious about helping/protecting this kid from himself, they would have taken the time to go to court and with the testimony of his mental health counselors, gotten him committed long term. Maybe they tried, I don’t know. I get the feeling that they had too many other things going on…
+1
It damn well should. The kid ruined his life on his own, but the character flaws that led to it are the result of his upbringing (or lack thereof).
Ban college students.
You might be on to something.
. . . and BMWs.
The parents went to the cops, the police “investigated” and found the shooter to be a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human,” according to the family’s attorney, and so the police did nothing.
Maybe if the kid had a dog . . . .
Sadly, the kind of highly intelligent but borderline pathological personality that the perpetrator represents is very good at looking completely normal and innocent under brief periods of scrutiny.
A single visit from the police is unlikely to result in any kind of affirmative determination of danger to society.
Why in the Hell couldn’t HIS PARENTS VISIT HIM IF THEY WERE SO CONCERNED?!?!?!?!?
His parents couldn’t be bothered to visit their son and have a serious discussion when they thought he might be homicidal. That means they definitely could not have been bothered to actually participate in the spree killer’s child rearing. No wonder their child turned into a monster.
My thoughts exactly. “Oh, Oh… Jr is threatening to kill people again. Someone should check on him, but I have Yoga today, I’ll just call the police and let them handle it.” What the hell did they expect the police to do? If the kid doesn’t threaten harm to himself or others, in their presence, there is nothing they can do.
Look, police are not psychologists, even if they had interviewed him, they are not trained to pickup on sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies. These personalities are able to project an image of normalcy, even be charming. The therapist however should have known better.
“Here’s hoping journalists throw more light on the backstory to this killing; there are lessons to be learned.”
Such optimism Robert.
From his Youtube account 3 weeks ago was this comment on one of his various driving videos: “I temporarily took all of my Vlog’s down due to the alarm it caused with some people in my family. I will post more updates in the future.”
I also think this deserves another posting.
This kid was bipolar not autistic spectrum.
I only saw a relatively brief video but didn’t you observe a marked lack of empathy? IMHO, he demonstrated sociopathic tendencies with narcissistic features based upon the limited information I have at my disposal.
Antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or bipolar disorder but probably not autistic spectrum. I agree.
Narcissism is actually a closer relative to Psychopathy than being a sociopath. He DEFINITELY suffers from personality disorder. I would label him a narcissist who unfortunately had the capacity to transform into a psychopath. Narcissists don’t necessarily seek out and destroy people on purpose. They lack empathy and just always think they are right. That rules don’t apply to them. They often seek treatment later in life when they have failed relationship after failed relationship, only then realizing that the only common denominator is them. Psychopaths gain actual pleasure through aggressive behaviors that destroy their targets for no other purpose than the pleasure they seek in doing so. It’s the parents fault. 100% I guarantee you this kid was neglected, ignored, and developed his personality disorder early in life. People see someone like this, with a BMW, affluent father, money, etc and conclude he was a spoiled brat who had access to a life most only dream of. All true, but that doesn’t mean his parents were good parents. Money doesn’t mean anything. More damage can be done to a child of money if he is neglected, ignored, unloved, spoiled, and entitled. Eventually that monster of their creation will step out into the World and realize he has never been given any of the skills required to survive in the real world. That is a powerful and overwhelming realization. Meanwhile a kid raised with a single parent in a trailer in the mountains, no money, but lots of love, structure and moral support from day one, is in actuality the true lucky one. He will be a success. His personality will develop properly. Money doesn’t mean anything.
I’m not making excuses for him, just another lesson parents should be aware of. There is an epidemic of absent homes in America, as a generation of entitled narcissistic monsters are being bred by parental figures more concerned with wealth and being “buds” with their kids, rather than defining the true role of father or mother. THAT is the true tragedy here. There are millions of Elliot Rogers across America right now, unlike anytime in the past.
I don’t completely disagree with you. My knowledge might be outdated but, psychopath and sociopath were practically interchangeable terms and the differences were medically debatable at one time. Basically, my impression was Antisocial Personality Disorder. There seemed to be some narcissism. If he were more purely Antisocial PD then, of course, he wouldn’t have had the core self-esteem issues of a narcissist but could’ve mimicked narcissistic behavior. I don’t believe that he was mimicking. Apparently and thankfully, the more extreme antisocials are supposedly rarer. Having only the video and his ultimate actions to go on, I couldn’t pinpoint if he was more Antisocial PD or narcissist. I’m well acquainted with sociopathy and, as you would likely agree, the truth of the matter regarding Antisocial Personality Disorder would keep most people awake at night if they only knew.
“the truth of the matter regarding Antisocial Personality Disorder would keep most people awake at night if they only knew.”
Hell yeah, they would! I disagree, because I’m seeing more Narcissist than the PD thing. But both must have been present.
But I’m guessing Ted Bundy could at least get laid, even though it ended badly.
From:http://www.healthyplace.com/ personality-disorders/main/what-causes-someone-to-develop-a-personality-disorder/ Personality disorders are thought to result from a bad interface, so to speak, between a child’s temperament and character on one hand and his or her family environment on the other. Temperament can be defined as a person’s innate or biologically shaped basic disposition.
Some patients with personality disorders come from families that appear to be stable and healthy. It has been suggested that these patients are biologically hypersensitive to normal family stress levels. Levels of the brain chemical (neurotransmitter) dopamine may influence a person’s level of novelty-seeking, and serotonin levels may influence aggression.
@William Burke: I agree that it appears both are present. It’s just the degree to which side his personality exhibited more of that I can’t really tell from the information that I have. Antisocial PD with narcissistic features or Narcissistic PD with antisocial features? At the extremes, one has a lack of emotional context and the other has a core wound resulting in a damaged self identity. I don’t think it’s really possible for me to make a guess, educated or otherwise, from the video and crimes.
BTW: Those suffering substantial Antisocial PD often mimic appropriate emotional responses and probably get laid with greater frequency than those suffering substantial Narcissistic PD. The former’s emotions don’t get in the way of their game like the latter’s emotion would. The second can come off as a blow hard over time whereas the first is a smooth, calculated operator.
Yep. I was just thinking that psychopaths are so much more rare, it must be that sociopaths, being so much more common, must be the ones that wreak far more damage upon society.
Your thoughts?
I agree. Remember though, when I was being taught sociopath and psychopath were used roughly interchangeably. Things are different now. 🙂
Me also!
@William Burke: If we would’ve bet on it, I would have lost. After reading the whole “manifesto” that the murderer wrote, IMHO, he was clearly a narcissist; an obsessive, spoiled, paranoid, narcissist with severe social anxiety. I believe that your initial assessment nailed it.
A side note relating directly to the RKBA: He wrote about how he was choosing dates for his rampage other than the ones he really wanted because he was concerned about armed opposition, aka police officers. His French aunt is calling for the Whitehouse to do something about the availability of firearms. His father stated that the family was staunchly anti-gun and the murderer was brought up in an anti-gun environment.
Good to hear from you, John.
Agreed.
This young man had none of the problems attributed to him thus far. He undeniably had a personality disorder, not an affect disorder previously labeled. He wasn’t bipolar by any stretch of the imagination. What he had was a personality disorder, mostly likely narcisstic personality disorder. He was also clearly antisocial. He was a sociopathic narcissist. Simple. Problem is therapy and medication is useless for someone with this personality problem. Useless. In fact they are highly manipulative, as evidenced by his passing the visit with the authorities. There is no treatment and they make up the largest proportion of criminal perpetrators. They have no conscience. If you listen to his video and read his writings he is arrogant, grandiose, entitled etc. He had no moral compass. He was a bad person. It was all about him.
^^ This ^^
This was my impression as well. He was obviously lacking empathy.
I most agree, but I think it was psychopathology, rather than the socio-kind. It seems to me he was severely narcissistic, and narcissists are much closer to psychopaths than sociopaths.
As someone noted yesterday.
Y’all might be correct as my knowledge is outdated. Here’s a somewhat more recent article about that: http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/112693/psychopathy-versus-sociopathy.pdf
Is it just me, or is a pattern in place here.
Young man.
Treated for mental illness.
“Everyone” knows about it.
Nothing is done to institutionalize him.
“under the influence of marijuana and Lidocaine, neither deemed significant to the incident.”
Right….because nobody under the influence would ever possible be more prone to use a firearm irresponsibly.
Good God in heaven, have mercy.
Paul, you’re almost there. Keeping looking, because I think you’ve very nearly hit upon the truth of the matter.
Seriously.
Serious/sincere question:
What would you add to what I said?
Since I don’t recall exactly what you said, I’d just say we all understand it’s not about guns at all, and we all need to look more deeply into the effects of psychopharmceutical drugs, especially upon the psyches of the young. Because I’ve seen very few people here that have any notion about how dangerous they actually are.
And many spree killers are on multiple psychiatric drugs, sometimes as many as a half-dozen or more. And as far as I’m aware, there’s been zero published research on that. Yet “doctors” are just prescribing them to kids like they’re candy.
In most cases, the kids are not evil; they’ve just had their minds twisted and warped by “official” drugs, beyond all recognitions.
It’s not the guns, and in most cases, it’s got nothing to do with “evil”. If there’s any evil about it, it’s the doctors and shrinks prescribing so many drugs.
If anyone’s interested, the side effects that are listed on the drugs’ inserts is quickly available online. Spend an afternoon perusing them sometime. Each and every one has multiple (and I DO mean “multiple”) GHASTLY possible side effects.
Then realize there’s no available information on how multiple cocktails of them might work together. Or the opposite of “together”.
What I said is directly above your comment that “I’m almost there” ….
But…reading what you wrote, I share your concern about the over-medication of young people.
However, in this case, if he was accurately diagnosed as bipolar, there are medicines that do help in these situations. I would say that he should have been kept in a safe and secure psychiatric institution for a VERY, very long time
Sixty days seems like a long time, but … not enough.
In such an environment his medication can be very carefully watched and monitored while he is on it.
You’re right Paul. It takes years. Trust me on that one.
I’ll say this, weed and lidocaine likely didn’t have anything to do with that incident. Pot aside Lidocaine is a topical analgesic it doesn’t have any side effects it was probably oragel or something.
Having said that, I would like to see what PX meds the “therapists, and social workers” had this most recent shooter on I bet we will see the make-a-mass shooter diet of anti-depressants, anxiety, sleeping pills and likely adhd meds.
Yeah, pretty sure we’ll find out this is correct. Nearly EVERY spree killing of the past two decades has involved exactly what you describe. How long are we going to take their word for it that these drugs have benign interactions?
No, Lidocaine is NOT only a topical anaesthetic; It is used as an injectable subcutaneous anaesthetic, and as an IV drug in the treatment of heart arrythmia. THAT could be interesting, in this case.
Our (the pro-2nd Amendment crowd) response to this shooting MUST be that the perpetrator is a Liberal, a Democrat, and a “product of Hollyweird parents”. It is MANDATORY we use these facts to bludgeon our adversaries, the anti-gun zealots, over the head. Take the time to visit local news outlets websites and post comments, make them as vitriolic as those that oppose us, the Constitution, and Bill of Right’s.
When the Shameless Twat (Shannon Watts) financed by Bloom-BOIG makes her appearance to spew her anti-gun propaganda in order to exploit this isolated incident destroy her “figuratively”, insult, demean, and ridicule her. We MUST photoshop images of her, pasting her head on naked bodies (preferably unattractive ones), place firearms in the image, add a naked dwarf with Bloom-BOIG’s head using the barrel of an evil “assault” (sic) weapon to penetrate her fetid puss-filled orifices and post them or links to them everywhere possible then make it known here so we can then Google-bomb the image (just like the queer Dan Savage did to Santorum) making it the first result when anyone searches her or her discriminatory group’s name online.
Good grief.
If you don’t have the guts for the fight sell your guns at a buy-back and surrender to those who seek to deny you and millions of other law-abiding gun owners their 2nd Amendment Rights.
Make no mistake about it this is a “do or die” situation, do you think the anti-gun cabal will be satisfied with whatever anti-2nd Amendment legislation they successfully get enacted next? No, they WON’T! The Liberal agenda is clear, the organizations they champion and finance are based on the premise of disarming ALL law-abiding American citizens.
That wasn’t what he meant by “good grief”.
“Liberal agenda is clear” Yeah I miss 1990 too.
For whom the bell trolls.
A new gender class an Almostsexual. Probably wacked off, too.
We need more info on how he acquired his weapon.
Did this shooting happen in a constitution free zone? It seems like it happened in multiple locations, but Santa Barbra ca is basically one big constitution free zone so I think we can say this was in a gun free zone.
Yep. Inquiring minds want to know. BEFORE Shannon and her Menopause Marauders show up.
There’s that word again, “bullying.” I could go the rest of my life without ever hearing that word again. We are raising a generation of kids who feel like they can berate and demean other people because our modern utopia frowns on them getting punched in the face for being complete pricks. We’re also creating another class of “victims,” whose behavior will be excused because they were “bullied.” Maybe permitting a little violence amongst boys – the old schoolyard fight – would prevent greater violence later.
I agree 100%. People face “bullying” all their lives in one form or another. Sooner you learn to stand up for yourself the better quality of life you will have. After watching some of this kids videos he just comes off as a whiney, spoiled little rich kid, that has never had to face adversity. It seems like he just expects a girl to fall into his lap and love him instead of having to go out and work for it. He is a great example of what most women/girls dont want.
Yep. But you have to take into account that the kid who puts down his bully is likely to be expelled from school, while the bully may not be! Schools are strangely invested in bullying, in a passive sort of way. They don’t mind the bullying, because they’re ambivalent about doing anything about it. It’s just business as usual.
But when a bully is stomped, they become angry, because they’ve been forced to take a stand, and frankly, they’d rather not. So they are apt to make the wrong decision.
The balance has been lost. It’s being eradicated from our society. Seriously, an attempt is being made at turning us into a nation of sheep.
My son was bullied in high school, but it stopped when the bully elevated the bullying to physical violence against him. He physically defended himself and gave the bully a couple well placed punches to his face. He was suspended for two days and I informed the principal that my son will ALWAYS have my permission and encouragement to defend himself when or if he is physically attacked by another student. That black belt in Taekwondo paid off, big time.
Apparently he was simply supposed to allow himself to be beaten up and hope a teacher or administrator would come to his rescue in time to prevent him from being seriously harmed.
You’re exactly right. Bullies will gladly revel in their sadistic games until someone starts punching, or even in the case of spree shooters, slinging lead back at them. Then the fun comes to a screeching halt and the “Oh Sh!t” moment begins. How this sacred tenet of the theories of “duh” has escaped so many minds amazes me. Bullies thrive on weakness. Punishing the victims for defending themselves, even if they scare their own bully away, still encourages weakness.
Perhaps the logic is that if we only punish a bully for his infractions, he’ll automatically come to school the next day and kill his victim who walked away a hero in students’ eyes for defending himself. This paranoid fantasy was created by a vile concoction of a sue-happy populace, lazy parents, and nanny-state worship. The only thing that’ll resurrect the good ole schoolyard scrap with properly dished out punishment is a massive cultural shift.
Required mental health exams for everyone. That’s coming next.
Not unless they can proved where my mind is.
Can a Urologist treat it? 😀
ROFLMAO!
I agree with most of his posts otherwise I would’ve written Proctologist. 😉
Slow clap.
Interesting to see if a host of “meds” was also part of his “therapy”. High end California therapists are famous for some psychotropic pharmaceuticals.
You can count on it. It’s not just California; it’s everywhere. When my daughter was 14, she was having terrible headaches. The “doctor” I took her to PRESCRIBED ZOLOFT, and nothing else!
After a few days, she climbed out of her bedroom window and wandered all over town in the middle of the night, in a heavy drizzle. She remembered practically none of it. As she had been taking it only a short while, I was able to just have her stop taking it.
So the police investigated and didn’t find anything unusual about this kid. How is more laws mandating checks going to work if the police did exactly that in this case??
I personally thought the parents attempt at deflecting blame was pathetic. “We called the police”! Really? WTH did you think they were going to be able to do? The parents knew his mental history, not the police. The parents had spoken to his therapists, not the police. The parents and mental health “professionals” were the ones who could have stopped this from happening, but didn’t. The father who broke down crying and blamed the NRA, should be blaming the people who could have/should have seen this coming and did nothing. Unfortunately, we are more likely to see a civil suit against the manufacturer of the handguns used, then against the mental health people who were asleep at the wheel.
We supporters of the 2nd Amendment have a remarkable opportunity to use our voice and our organizational political clout to actually start doing some good in this country – we need to call for better, more effective care for the mentally ill.
Time and time again, a mentally disturbed individual will find a way to arm themselves and perform these horrendous acts, and the social debate will be about firearms. The reality is, these are just the most visible and shocking consequences of ignoring the mentally ill in this nation. Walk along any major city’s streets and you’ll see the more pernicious consequences of this ignorance in our homeless; the vast majority of whom are acutely mentally ill. Talk to any law enforcement officer in a major city and you’ll find that the majority of their job is dealing with mentally ill individuals. Talk to families – even wealthy ones like the Lanzas and (now) the Rodgers – and you’ll find that the resources, tools and options for dealing with their mentally ill children are lacking.
For far too long, we have been on the defensive when things like this happen. We are forced to deflect, to get the media and a large portion of the population to not see the firearm as the problem. We have been extremely weak at proffering actual suggestions for solving the problems of mass shootings and tend to suggest things that are patently absurd sounding to those who aren’t intimately familiar with the reality of violence and firearm ownership. While we are switched on enough to know that CCW and arming school teachers is a solid solution – it rings as an insane proposition to those who have pulled the wool over their eyes as to how the world works.
What we need to do is start pushing for mental-health reform in this nation. Reforms that would help solve not only the tragedy of mass-shootings, but also bring everyday benefits to our streets and our families. The NRA should partner with mental health experts – regardless of their stance on guns – and use their political clout to push for serious structural reforms across the entire spectrum of mental-health driven social issues.
The next time something like this happens – and there will be a next time – it would be our side that can go on the offensive. The fact that we’ve dismantled the mental-health safety net, the fact that we’ve marginalized these issues, the fact that we use our police and prisons as the de-facto mental illness safety net are acute national tragedies in their own right. We would serve ourselves and our country best if we could become champions of fixing this issue.
Our response MUST be that Liberals/Democrats in the media and academia have demanded for decades that we “mainstream” the violently “mentally ill” into our communities and that the shootings by that segment of society is the Liberals fault for forcing the states to release these ticking time-bombs into our locales.
There is also another argument to be made, that’s that the “mentally ill” are more likely to victims of violent crime due to their disability, some will question “why does that matter”? The answer of course is that those of us that are armed have an opportunity to protect the vulnerable in society from evil-doers when these potential victims are unable to do it themselves.
It is imperative that we exercise caution in this campaign to preserve our 2nd Amendment Rights. We MUST remember that Liberals in the psychiatric field under pressure from the biased Liberal media (which hates ALL guns even those carried by LE) under the direction of Democrats and the anti-gun zealots are increasingly championing diagnosing Americans as “mentally ill” in order to deny them the 2nd Amendment Rights. Some will ponder what responsibility do the “mentally ill” have, of course it’s to take their medication but we cannot deny them the ability to defend themselves unless they have a history of violence like infamous NYC Subway Pusher Andrew Goldstein or Larry Hogue, The Wildman of 96th Street.
My solution is to arm everyone but convicted felons and those with a documented history of violence after all the “mentally ill” are still American citizens and should be allowed to protect themselves in their homes and in public.
Not only the 2A rights of the mentally ill are and will be denied; ALL their rights are revoked in many cases. The failure of the current system is illustrated by the recent death of a schizophrenic inmate at NYC Correction Department’s Riker’s Island Detention Facility. He was being held for a week when he died, and was denied his medication while the guards watched him deteriorate. THAT is the result of the Liberals’ “mainstreaming” pogrom.
And as a parent of a schizophrenic child I have skin in the game.
@GA: BINGO! Absolutely correct.
“What we need to do is start pushing for mental-health reform in this nation. Reforms that would help solve not only the tragedy of mass-shootings, but also bring everyday benefits to our streets and our families. . .”
Oh, yeah? Like what? The basic reason tragedies like this happens is that this kid was protected by the exact same civil liberties that protect the rest of society. That’s you and me. Did you notice his flat emotional affect as he was discussing his plans to kill a bunch of people because he couldn’t find love? This is typical for a person with Asperger’s syndrome—there was no more emotional connection with what he was planning to do than there would have been if he’d been announcing his intention to go buy the morning paper. If you bring him in for a mandatory psychiatric observation he’d just sweet-talk his way out. That said, we should keep in mind that just having Asperger’s syndrome, like autism, bi-polar disorder, or a host of other cognitive or affective disorders doesn’t make you a ticking time-bomb just waiting for the right trigger. There’s a reason people with mental illness have the exact same civil rights protections as everyone else and it’s the simple fact that there are plenty of people with Asperger’s syndrome who would never dream of harming someone else and who, despite their emotional disorder, work hard at being good friends and good parents and good people. There are some reading these words, right now.
The hard truth about this tragedy is this: spree killings like this are a social cost for living in a free society. We’re not going to “mental-health reform” our way of these events any more than we’re going to “reasonable gun-control” our way out of them. Spree-killers always want to send us a message. They want us to feel as miserable—to BE as miserable—as they are. I think there’s a kind of weird communication that goes on between spree-killers. When Seung-Hui Cho (the Virginia Tech spree-killer)., Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook), and Elliot Rodger started shooting people they wanted to profane the freedom we enjoy in leading our daily lives. But they were also telling each other: Do this enough times and we’ll force them to kill their own freedom.
Riders on the storm
There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road . . .
Jim Morrison, “Riders On The Storm”.
The hard truth about this tragedy is this: spree killings like this are a social cost for living in a free society.
Aye! This is very important. The best solution is more shall not be infringed, not less.
{Fist pump}
I Think one of the important lessons here is learning which definition of ‘crazy’ is enough to get your rights revoked.
The guy was seeing a therapist, but the therapist didn’t report him to anyone else as being a danger.
The parents, apparently, thought he was crazy, but the police didn’t, apparently.
We haven’t, yet, heard from friends or coworkers or fellow students so we don’t know, yet, if any of them thought he should be looked into further.
All of that, so far, indicates he was probably ‘crazy’ in the generic sense but not crazy enough for someone to Baker-Act him.
In my opinion that is the point that needs hammering home when the bloody-shirt-wavers start their waving…. just saying he was crazy after the fact means nothing other than an opportunistic moment to further someone’s agenda.
“I Think one of the important lessons here is learning which definition of ‘crazy’ is enough to get your rights revoked.”
Especially when the “official” personage making the decision about your future is crazier than you are.
It’s obvious, to me at least, that some of the “mental health” (whatever that is!) “professionals” are further gone than they people they pretend to “treat”. They make “treat” a scary word indeed. I think of a “treat” as a lobster tail in butter and bacon grease, or maybe something as humble as an Italian Ice.
Certainly not a round of electroshock “therapy”. Sometimes it’s unclear who the “crazy” are, and who is not. Or less so, certainly.
From the LA Times
“Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said some of those killed or injured in Friday night’s Isla Vista shooting rampage may have been struck by the suspect’s vehicle . . . “It’s a combination of people suffering from gunshot wounds and others who received some traumatic injuries that … may have been struck by the vehicle,” Brown said.
But I’m sure it will still be blamed on guns.
“Slipped through”, my ASS! With all those warnings? All the warnings about Cho, and so many others, we can’t even keep score? The only logical conclusion is that *someone* WANTED it to happen. *Someone* with the power and influence to make sure the cops were called off.
We MUST NOT let the gun-grabbers get away with blaming this on guns! In fact, every shooting and murder spree in the past 20 years, as far as can be ascertained, has featured a person (usually quite young) on SSRI or other psychiatric drugs.
Here, before you “conspiracy nut” me, read this list:
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/every-mass-shooting-over-last-20-years-has-one-thing-in-common-and-its-not-guns/
It ain’t the guns. It’s the pharmaceuticals, often in conjunction with FPS video games. We need to make this our message. We need to wrest back the truth from the official liars.
Friend, on this one I disagree. Pervasive violation of shall not be infringed is at the root of this tragedy, IMHO. I think that the things you mention are important but are ancillary to the primary problem. People must have the freedom to be armed and defend themselves. The rest of the equation will balance itself out through deterrence and culling.
And do tell how he would have been stopped during a sudden attack like this?
I do not disagree with you about an armed society being a polite society, able to defend itself from this kind of random burst of violence, but …. in this case, how would things have been different?
We can’t expect it to always work out. There were multiple warnings about this kid’s behavior, and no one took them seriously.
Or else they did, and let it happen anyway. What are the other possibilities?
OK, one of the BIG problems when the red flags begin to pile up: Where can anyone find a bed in an institution for him? That’s what happened in Virginia recently. No bed, no supervised treatment. So sorry. Too bad the State had to cut funding. Goodbye.
@Paul T. McCain: In the spirit of Glasnost this is a serious answer to a serious question. IMHO, what you’re asking is a valid question but it requires a crystal ball answer. It is a numbers game over many incidents and not an answer to a specific one. Deterrence and culling is the overall effect. Some of my other comments on this article give a few more details.
Classic yin with no yang. Power with no offsetting power. Armed shooter, unarmed victims. Internationally, it is called a lack of deterrence. Spiritually, it is called an imbalance. It is always an unstable situation.
^This is the heart of the matter, IMHO.
I find it hard to get behind the idea of institutionalizing someone because they “might” do something. innocent till guilty and all that. Not everyone who talks crazy is a legitimate threat. Ultimately, it’s actions that dictate reactions.
Speaking from the perspective of somebody who has had to deal with very serious cases of bipolar disorder in people….
Trust me.
We need to institutionalize some of these folks, but that went out the window years ago.
I agree. But I maintain the problem in many cases is the prescription drugs themselves. Just look at the side effects on the inserts, and you’ll realize we SHOULD NOT be trusting the doctors’ judgements on this one.
The medical professionals have dropped the ball on this. They’ve been taught in med schools that these drugs are the universal answer, and they are not.
I like the idea of institutionalization, but with as few drugs as are necessary.
The biggest problem is that GPs, Internists, and Pediatricians are prescribing these drugs for people at the drop of a hat, with the encouragement (and cursory training) of their friendly pharmaceutical rep. Prescribing these drugs (and adjusting the type and dosage) should be the exclusive purview of a trained psychiatrist only. It ain’t candy, boys and girls.
One point that must be pushed is that none of the gun grabbing laws passed would have stopped this.
Further, all the concerned parents, police and social workers weren’t able to predict his actions. Likely, had one of then seen it coming, I doubt they could have gotten action to stop him.
This is the basic issue the gun grabbers avoid. Yes the guy was crazy. However, he wasn’t crazy enough to be stopped. Were something tried the ACLU and all the rights groups would be in court protesting. All the bans and limits won’t stop these killers.
“once again a dangerous individual slipped through the social service and law enforcement net” Herr Farago hat recht. I would like to draw your attention to the “net”, especially the social service part. Psychiatrist = Md, Psychologist = PhD, Therapist = LCSW or MA, Counselor = anybody, including people who wave rattles and talks about evil spirits. Show me a mental health professional who claims the ability to precisely predict any individuals future actions and I will show you a quack. At best, they can offer an opinion on the probability of possible behavior that might or might not occur. Their opinions are invariably influenced by their personal bias. Do not make the mistake of thinking they have some esoteric knowledge that enables them to predict the future. Expanding their role in determining who may or may not exercise their 2nd amendment rights will be the end of RKBA in this country.
Apparently, the Rodgers family showed police some of Elliot’s previous videos in which he threatened violence and suicide. That’s a pretty big clue that something was VERY wrong with Elliot. They chose to ignore it and, I’m assuming, inform no one within his “care circle”: the college or medical professionals. Or maybe they did. I’d like to know more.
Wow…really?
Now THAT is a “detail” that must be hammered home and repeated often.
So.. A kid who was handed everything his whole life couldn’t figure out how to function, had no place in society, never had any meaningful relationships with the opposite sex, and I somewhat doubt had any real friends. He was placed on drugs to treat the depression caused by his circumstances and decided to direct all that anger outwards and end his miserable existence.
Obviously there is no excuse for what he did. My deepest condolences to the victims and their families.
I have to wonder though, which was the greater contributor to this situation-
The drugs for warping his mind or the parents for failing to teach their son how to live and find a place in this world?
Suicides and mass shootings usually occur when the subject feels alienated and/or apart from society and deems life not worth living. Since it seems our society is becoming increasingly disconnected and more people are slipping through the cracks this will not be the last mass shooting and probably not the last perpetrator who fits this profile.
This profile being:
(1) socially rejected & isolated
(2) permanently single
(3) depressed/angry
(4) medicated
I’ll even hazard a fith category – parental neglect
Quit blaming guns. They aren’t the problem.
In this case it’s NOT his “psychiatric” condition but the fact he was a spoiled little pencil-neck who believed his status as an affulent “Son of Hollyweird” insiders entitled him to have all his wants and desires satiated. I’m sure pseudo-celebutard’s parents contributed to his self importance never holding him responsible for anything negative he did and that they showered him with expensive gifts and vacations thus reinforcing his belief he was “special”, yeah he’s “special” all right. If this metrosexual murderer had spent time in the gym rather than attending exclusive Katy Perry concerts and Hollywood premiers maybe some of the females on campus might have found him a suitable mate. I wonder whether his unsatisfied need to prove himself a virile male has something to do with being molested by one of the recently revealed Hollyweird homosexual film producers that have been preying on young male teens for decades
His PRESCRIPTION medications should be FRONT & CENTER here — “multiple therapists” probably = “multiple scrips”…..
“I’m 22 years old, and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl”
Maybe if someone provided a hooker…/sarcasm
Will you morons stop with the “der you gotta whip yer kids” nonsense. You literally sound like complete idiots lacking so much intelligence it’s crazy. Just shut the hell up and keep your caveman, barbaric, nonsense to yourselves.
I agree. Another “system” with failure built into it.
Use your heads for something besides a hat rack, folks! A lot of us were raised without being beaten, and turned out fine.
Beating kids is a sign of failed parenting, not successful parenting.
I believe you agreed with the “cavemen” earlier…
Huh?
If you cannot tell the difference between a ‘beating’ and parental discipline, you would best be kept away from pets and children. There IS a difference.
People were talking about “beating” and “whupping”. “Disciple”, not so much. I was addressing them then, not you now.
Where oh where do you get bi-polar from? Nowhere is it mentioned in this post rev. Aspbergers syndrome is mentioned. Think a higher functioning Adam Lanza. I have a son with a similar diagnosis. “Global Delay”. He’s a great kid, never misbehaved, polite and nice. He has a very hard time making friends and relating to others. He is 21 & gets straight A’s in college. And I’m never taking him shooting. His mother thinks there is NO problem. I have a very hard time getting a read on what he thinks.
My son was raised to know right from wrong, he’s a Christian and yet I really don’t know what his future holds. It’s not nearly as simple as a lot of folks make it out to be.
He’s lacking something, and I don’t think it’s your fault. As you’ve explained, we know very little about what’s going on in their minds; they seem disconnected in some ways.
Practically nothing is known about “Asperger’s”; it may not even be a useful diagnosis. Clearly, we know so little about human behavior that it’s arrogant to pretend we do. Most medical science lacks humility, above everything else.
I would also add that, overall, the research as shown that people diagnosed with Asperger’s and other “spectrum” disorders are not more predisposed to violence than the general population.
And if you look at extreme, homicidal outbursts like Rodger’s, you’ll find that the common thread isn’t biopolar disorder, or autism, or any specific mental “disorder” at all, but rather untreated rage. These are often perfectly “normal” people who are angry about their lot in life — losing a job, etc. . . . Social isolation doesn’t help matters, obviously, but at the end of the day, some people are just angry, destructive, and sociopathic. That’s not something anyone can “fix,” and it usually has nothing to do with any particular mental illness.
Also, since you say you have a hard time “getting a read” on your son, I have a few thoughts as someone with Asperger’s: I had a hard time relating to my dad growing up. It took time and patience on both of our sides, but we got over it. And we have a great relationship now.
Also, people “on the spectrum” have real, genuine emotions just like everyone else — we care, but we often have a difficult time expressing things nonverbally. You don’t necessarily have to “get a read” on your son — just listen to what he says. Also, it might help to pick up an activity that you can enjoy and work on together — maybe take him out to the range some time. 🙂
A few thoughts:
The knee-jerk reaction here seems to be: “He had a diagnosis. And was being treated. And he seemed kinda creepy. We should’ve committed him before this great tragedy happened.”
For the record, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s/”high functioning” autism as a kid. I have had a ton of therapy and am currently on medication.
And the therapy worked — it allows me to function socially and build meaningful relationships — I currently have many close friends, a wife, a daughter, and a job as a rabbi. My family, my friends, and the members of my congregation would be devastated if I stopped getting therapy because I was worried that some bureaucrat could have me institutionalized.
I agree that if someone makes *statements* (as Rodger did) or takes *actions* that indicate they are a danger to themselves or others, that the proper authorities should be notified. But those laws are — as we RKBA folks are constantly pointing out with regard to NICS — already on the books.
The answer here is not to further pathologize anyone getting mental health treatment (as are 13.4 percent of American adults), and strip them of their 2nd Amendment rights and possibly institutionalize them whenever we (subjectively) think that they’re “a little off.”
All this would do is discourage people from seeking needed treatment and hurt both them and their families.
“And the therapy worked — it allows me to function socially and build meaningful relationships — I currently have many close friends, a wife, a daughter, and a job as a rabbi.”
I would suggest that what helped you was the level of human interaction in the therapy you received. Also, you probably were very lucky to have good, competent, patient people working with you.
Which suggests to me that what is needed is more good, competent, patient people working with troubled kids, instead of “professionals” who are worse than the kids they “treat”, throwing every new mind-bending drug at them!
We need to understand that many of these psychopharmaceutical medications are, in effect, potent *hallucinogens”, not some benign panacea!
Keep speaking truth, Dan. If ever people need to hear truth, it’s now.
Take all these mentally ill, on mood pill people and put them on a list and have MDA take care of them ,afterall they are mom’s and they want public safety so task them with the burden of the same, same mentals that need drugs to operate.All these mass shooters ,and I mean ALL OF THEM ,EVERY SINGLE ONE WERE ON MOOD ALTERING PERSCRIPTION DRUGS ,with a side affect of SUICIDE,what the drug companies so conviently hide is ‘IT IS SUICIDE A F T E R HOMICIDE, ahhh they left that part out of the warning labels.Must be an oversite???
Yup – listen closely to the side effects the speed-reader rolls out in the ads. Notice how often “thoughts of suicide” and even “death” are mentioned. Really surprising some of the ads where they pop up.
My personal favorite is “unusual ideation”.
Who cares about the what ifs. He’s a nut case! You don’t try to dissect them unless you are getting paid to treat them, because it’s a never ending cycle.
He was a danger and slipped through the cracks.
Funny how adults say a kid was “evil” or a “nut case” when he does such a terrible thing, but if he turns out all right, they say it was “good parenting”!
I call the nut cases, nut cases for nut cases like Rogers and the Sandy Hook shooter…Adam whatever it was, because they are nut cases. They have serious mental health issues that were not noticed, acted upon, properly medicated and somehow obtained a firearm and performed pure evil.
If you read any of the above you might just notice that he didn’t “slip through the cracks,” he roared through in a rocket-propelled muscle car. His parents called the cops on him. The cops interviewed him. They walked away because he didn’t threaten to harm them or anyone else, including himself. Until he did. That’s the way the Liberal laws work in California (and most of the rest of the country as well).
His parents may have been concerned but let’s be honest he wasn’t funding his lifestyle on his own…. i call BS on his parents being worried but not so worried they weren’t willing to cut off all his funding…
Anyone know the model of the bimmer? A 4 cylinder BMW is criminal enough to push some over the edge.
Yeah, like a 325i. Entry level money pit. They buy one, because they know nothing about cars, and want a BMW.
The same kind of people buy VWs.
His BMW was certainly not entry level.
You GO, boyfriend!
I don’t think he “slipped through the cracks” His parents are to blame, no doubt. They created this monster. But narcissistic personality disorder is literally untreatable. Read about it sometime. Most therapists won’t even touch on it because the subject won’t come back again, or the subject simply reads up about it and then manipulates the therapist. Narcissists are cunning, manipulative, always above average in intelligence and usually articulate. This kid was an introverted narcissist who on a dime could manipulate anyone into believing he was a regular person as he did to the authorities. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of accusations. Simply put, there isn’t anything anyone could have done until he broke the law. And what’s sad is these types usually commit their first offense, and it’s mass murder that nobody can believe they were capable of. It’s human nature to want to place blame on someone when we see something this outrageous. And in this case, it’s not black and white, it’s complex. The only true blame rests with Elliot himself, and his parents who created, bred and grew him into the monster he became.
I find myself tempering my usual OFWG reaction. I know several families with children, usually young men, who seem similar to this person although they have not committed murder or multiple murders. In my opinion the therapist’s are useless although in reality all they can do is recommend a treatment regimen, diagnose the condition and prescribe medication that the patient usually stops taking. When I say they are useless it is my frustration coming out. I really mean there is no cure.
The police cannot do anything until a law is broken. Usually the most a background check turns up is some domestic violence if the family needed police to deal with a violent occurrence. In the same vein a family cannot have an adult family member committed unless the adult agrees. I believe there should be no constraints on the second amendment. I believe we should be able to buy a gun from any one or any business with no burden. I believe we should be able to purchase fully automatic guns. I believe convicted felons should be able to purchase, own and carry a gun upon release from prison. I also believe there a people who will purchase a gun and will use it to commit murder for the reason of personal gain, anger, revenge, passion, entertainment or in the case at hand a train of thought that probably no one on Earth can understand. I weigh the risk that these people pose against the known risk of the evolution of many societies where an elite group took the rights of the masses and made life and death decisions for the masses. I’ll take the risk of my equal being a deadly threat. I will not accept the risk of the government deciding how much protection they will provide or how much liberty they will take.
Exactly. Well stated.
I HAVE a great relationship with my son. I have NO GUILT. I’ve always been there for the 2 sons who live with me now. I believe because I had a disastrous early marriage( 40 years ago) that I wanted to redeem my life and make things “perfect”. Life doesn’t work out as we’d always like.. .Burke gets it. That is all.
I bet Iknow how to handle a dick like him. Point a gun at the CS and he would piss his pants. What does it take to understand people like him! They are bullies and want to be known in public. I do know he would have folded like a rag if somebody pulled a weapon on him and fired, he would have shit himself. How long is it going to take to wake up the public! Always be aware of your surroundings, the BG can come from anywhere, watch your flank.
The government is stupid. still.
Oh and one more thing. More than likely he was taking an SSRI antidepressant. This would only make his grandiosity worse and would take the brakes off, allowing him to act out his superiority complex. These medications energized his bad behavior. Without them he would simply be another spoiled brat with a sense of entitlement. The medications he took created the emotional anesthesia necessary to do what he did.
It’s simple really. SSRIs are known to worsen sociopathy. He didn’t need any help with that.
+1
This young man had none of the problems attributed to him thus far. He undeniably had a personality disorder, not an affect disorder previously labeled. He wasn’t bipolar by any stretch of the imagination. What he had was a personality disorder, mostly likely narcisstic personality disorder. He was also clearly antisocial. He was a sociopathic narcissist. Simple. Problem is therapy and medication is useless for someone with this personality problem. Useless. In fact they are highly manipulative, as evidenced by his passing the visit with the authorities. There is no treatment and they make up the largest proportion of criminal perpetrators. They have no conscience. If you listen to his video and read his writings he is arrogant, grandiose, entitled etc. He had no moral compass. He was a bad person. It was all about him.
Guns and Video Games don’t create monsters. They are simply objects that are used for sport, or games that are an outlet for pleasure. What creates a monster are absent parents. Being ignored. Being spoiled and bred into an entitled monster with no skills to survive in the real world. When everything is done for you, how does one develop self worth? Evident by his constant reminders that he drives a BMW and has 300.00 glasses. That’s all he possesses. Material defines him. Who can relate to someone like that? Nobody. This creates a social inverted and awkward person who in turn has no outlet to share this with because of the neglect from parents who were probably more interested in what brand of shirt he wore in family photos than his social development. This is a case of a Narcissistic home creating a monster. Someone spoiled, entitled who had no idea how the World really works. This means constant failure after constant failure, without the skills needed to cope, a rage is created and the narcissist becomes a psychopath. Zero empathy. Nothing is his fault. Girls don’t like him, and that is their fault, not his. Without any self confidence gained through failure, struggle and achievement he had zero confidence. So the only outlet of his rage became the people around him. With seemingly no control over his own life because he was never taught how to be a man, work, but rather spoiled and entitled his only chance to feel control was through aggression and force. Inside he was a hollow shell. No soul. No light. Nothing. This kid was a monster and there is NOTHING TO BLAME NOR NOBODY TO BLAME BUT HIS PARENTS. This isn’t a tragedy, it’s a predictable epidemic in our country.
EXACTLY RIGHT.
You see, parents shop around for a diagnosis that isn’t personality based. Why? Because it makes them bad parents if little Johnny has a rotten personality. Parents of these children want the problem to be endogenous. It’s all part of making them, the parents, unaccountable for bringing up rotten children. By making it Bipolar, Aspergers, etc. parents can sigh relief and say, “gee thank god it wasn’t because we were lousy parents who brought up a monster with poor values”. In doing so they get permission to throw a bunch of pills at the “medical” problem. Pills don’t work for these types of problems and instead magnify them. Personality problems are commonly referred to as AXIS II disorders and are mostly intractable. We learn right from wrong at an early age. We get our conscience from our parents usually. Our moral compass that tells us right from wrong. He never got that. He was instead, indulged. I read the whole “manifesto” he wrote. I think it was 140 pages long. It was very well written, concise, clear, and self-possessed. It was one big whine about how he was great and everyone else wasn’t. You don’t get this way with a medical problem that requires medication. You get this way because you are overindulged and no one set any boundaries for his behavior. So it grows and grows until you have to deal with real life. he was ill equipped for that because in real life you have to earn things. Like a woman’s affection for example. he thought he should just snap his fingers because he was very special.
well said.
My last long winded post was cut off. I wanted to write that what he had was an adult temper tantrum because he couldn’t get what he felt entitled to as such a special person. Gotta go have lunch, my wife is calling. 🙂
Have a happy Memorial Day everyone.
All of that was spot on except that what I was taught regarding when personality disorders are more fixed than not was different. Much of the research I had read leaned towards the opinion that the disordered personality of antisocials and borderlines are laid down very early in development with possible confounding genetic components. Also, as was the case (and might still be for all I know) with Borderline Personality Disorder, insurance was reluctant to pay for extended treatment due to the perceived inability achieve results. Bipolar and complex PTSD were the working diagnosis in order to avoid the borderline label for insurance purposes. DBT was showing some great promise for Borderline PD but Antisocial PD was, of course, practically impossible to treat.
Interesting. One BPD nearly ruined my life, and it took a long time for me to nudge it into a hard-to-get-to corner of my mind.
But I am in her presence far more than I’m comfortable with, and sometimes it comes back to me. I wish it were not the case, but it is.
Been there too, my friend. I stopped dating and marrying because my “mate chooser” is broken. 😀
It’s true, IMHO, that many in the medical community who treat psych patients are messed up themselves or once were. The healthier I became, the less I wanted to deal with those suffering from psychological issues.
Still, as messed up as some of my upbringing was, I never had the impulses that this murderous bastard apparently had. He was one messed up guy. Something very scary was going on in his brain. (For the record, I am and have always been personality disorder free. Many of my issues and quirks stemmed from growing up in such an environment. 😉 )
Pleeze !! This is the parents fault!
They knew this kid was f-cked up!!
They saw the videos!! For the past year!!
They knew he had issues! They should have NEVER left him alone in SB. He clearly was a danger to himself and others!! I hope they get sued! The police did not know the kids back story. The kid was smart. They should have called a shrink to get the kid committed! Because he was threatening to kill people. The parents are selfish idiots!! They are the ones to blame. They gave him the money to buy the guns and amo! And the fancy car. The sent him away because the didn’t want to deal with him. So we society had to pay the price for their selfish behavior!
The father of one of the victims pleas for something to be done about guns.
Guess he forgot about the 3 men who were stabbed to death and the other four run down by the car.Reminds me of the morning of the Sandy Hook shootings ,before Sandy Hook news reached the air,there was the story about a man in China who had stabbed 20 some children with a knife………but knives and cars are not weapons.My money is on psychiatric drugs.All the mass shooters have been on cocktails of psychiatric drugs…..oh but we must’n talk about that ,it will ruin big pharma profits..The Swiss gov’t mandates all men own guns assault rifles at that,and they don’t go around doing mass shootings..
Us has 5 % of world population and uses 50% of pharmaceutical drugs.But again we can’t talk about pharmaceuticals.Rodgers was under the care of several therapists ,so what are the odds,he was not on legal drugs.Poor little rich boy bored with life of course he needed some drugs.
Unfortunately we may be looking in the wrong direction here. There are a lot of children today being born with spectrum. Some say it is from aging parents, the food we eat, measles and mumps vaccines, wi fi/cellular phone signals flowing through infant brains because parents are addicted to their phones, and etc. Something is causing this epidemic. Aspie kids do not know how to communicate that they are upset with words very well so they lash out with violence. It is why there is a teacher and 5 aids along with larger budgets allocated to special education in the public education system. These kids become adults don’t get their way and murder people.
I hear you. Why did you stop signing your posts, “Randy”? At first I thought it was quirky. Nothing wrong with “quirky”, a milder word than “eccentric”, to be sure. Then I came to think of it as distinctive, and I just wondered why you stopped.
Or is this a different Randy? I’m confused about that.
Ummm…you are definitely generalizing. Aspies are not all violent. In fact, most aren’t. And many, if not most have normal levels of emotions. They do have what are called sensory meltdowns sometimes, but that is a panic attack/rage episode based upon stimuli rather than something emotional such as rejection. During a meltdown they might hit themselves or a parent or the ground or scream and what not, but it would be unusual for one to premeditate a murder. Elliot Rodger’s massacre was planned out and was the result of things he felt for a long time. He wasn’t lashing out in the moment because he got overstimulated. I experience sensory meltdowns and they occur when there’s too much noise and “busy-ness”, not when someone rejects me. A lot of aspies are somewhat afraid of or disinterested in sex and socializing.
I believe this kid was a covert narcissist. I’m not sure whether or not he would have been diagnosed with NPD, but he was obviously in a narcissistic state when the manifesto was written. I do blame the parents, besides him. His father seems self-righteous and like he was neglectful, and a father’s girlfriend should never tell the kid what to do, in my opinion. We don’t know she wasn’t emotionally abusive or competitive with him. Sometimes that sort of mistreatment can be very subtle, and he seemed to mistrust women for whatever reason. I don’t think being turned down by a couple of sorority girls alone could produce that level of resentment bordering on paranoia.
And why did he focus on them anyway, if he thinks they’re shallow and only focused on looks and brawn? Was he not focused on the same things? I don’t see the average person with asperger’s being that shallow, hypocritical, and prejudiced. The disorder is often linked with deep thinking and being less prone to discriminating that a neurotypical.
I don’t much disagree with you. But there is something in play that none of us are seeing clearly, and it has nothing at all to do with “evil intent” or anything else. I think it’s a drug-induced psychosis, wherein the killer is so disconnected from reality – and it won’t be the first time, by any means – but a psychotic break.
From similar killings, we find out they were on multiple psychiatric drugs, and they are prescribed in combinations in which there is no publicly-published papers to describe what is happening. But I think it’s well-known within circles such as DARPA. I’m talking about mind control, folks. Like extreme technology, this sort of mind control is always about 30 years ahead of the published data. The SR-71 Blackbird, for instance, was flying alongside the U-2 for decades before the Blackbird’s existence was admitted. Whatever is being seen, the real research is about 30 in the future from that. This is fairly well-known.
Sirhan DEMONSTRABLY did not kill RFK, but was under a trance, and stood right in front of RFK, yet no rounds hit RFK from the front. The fatal shot was fired by a “security guard” name Thane Eugene Cesar, who was employed mainly by an aerospace company. The fatal bullet was fired from the position where Cesar was, directly behind RFK’s ear. He was shot at point-blank range, within 3 inches, as the coroner, Thomas Noguchi, found. Powder burns behind the right ear, folks, while Sirhan, the decoy, fired blanks. Sirhan’s .22 revolver held (going from memory here) eight rounds, but the LAPD found that 14 shots were fired! Sirhan was a patsy, a decoy, who, to this day, remembers not one thing about that night.
Mind-controlled assassins were old tech in 1968. Imagine what is possible today. Holmes was a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado, in what is officially described as a “mind-brain interface” program.
Sound like mind control to you?
It does to me.
Most of you here are used to my “ravings”, but you need to do some research on your own, because it is unflattering to you to dismiss these as paranoid ravings, if you don’t actually investigate it yourselves.
It’s your call; I can’t make you research it. I guess this is my role, and I know what’s coming from the uninformed.
However, an easy search will show that most of these mass shootings have occurred shortly after gun control legislation has been introduced into Congress. How convenient! This is NOT hard to figure out: they obviously want us disarmed. Why would they NOT use advance technology to advance their agenda?
Call me whatever you choose; I don’t give a rat’s ass. But you owe it to yourselves to look into it, which is all I’ve ever asked.
Some of you have. What about the rest of you? Did you know that for a few years, it has been possible to buy a genetically-engineered pet monkey in Asia that glows in the dark?
Having read the manifesto and seen the videos, it seems that Rodgers suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. Could his shyness have been due to an additional diagnosis of Asperger’s? Maybe. But a person with Aspergers would ordinarily prefer that people did not take an undue interest in him. A more likely explanation of the awkwardness and shyness is social phobia.
For those who wonder what could have stopped this, the answer is simple- a psychiatrist. The parents, police and a “therapist” had the information. A psychiatrist would have the expertise and experience to commit the patient to a psychiatric hospital.
The law enforcement person or persons who interviewed this young man bear all of the resposibility for these crimes. To end the investigation because the shooter was polite to the officer show such profound ignorance that the department is also culpable. We ask parents to report their own kids and these parents did. We ask mental health providers to report potential violent patient and that was done. The shooter was screaming for health with the videos he made. Law enforcement bears all of the responsibility for not protecting the shooter and the college community. It appears that all of this young man’s raging was about females. I want to know if the officer was anyway swayed by the fact that all of the raging was about women? Is this a civil rights crime on the part of law enforcement?
The murderer bears responsibility for these crimes.
yup. pure laziness .
police: sigh, another call, i got to do my job (drove to roger’s apt)
police: got a call from your parents, heard you are depressed, everything is okay?
roger: yes
police: heard you have crazy youtube videos? take them down okay?
roger: yes
police: no more crazy videos, okay?
roger: ok
police: sigh…another quiet, timid asian kid. …oh well……better get my 15 and stop on over to the closest donut shop
Aspergers ….
We really need to better ” treat ” this mental health condition …
The patten is self evident.
Oh and a little Compassion May just save lives …. Ya think ?
It’s not clear that Asperger’s is a “mental health” condition at all, though I detect a certain snarkiness in your post. Perhaps you would have them all executed, “just to be safe”, eh?
For the record you don’t seem to give a damn about, it may be a neurological condition, IOW, a TRUE disease, and not some metaphorical gobbledygook.
You see, “mental illness” is a terribly misleading term. How can the mind be “ill”, when the mind is not a physical entity?
Brain is physical, mind is not. One may have a defect (“illness”) of the brain, but no one can pinpoint where the mind exists. It may be external to the body, for all anyone knows. No one has ever found the mind.
It’s like someone claiming you have a “humor illness”. Where is your humor? Can you locate it in a chart of the human body? I didn’t think so.
The mind cannot be drawn or weighed; nor can it be found. So “mental illness” is a HUGE bit of repression-speak. It’s a way of denigrating human beings, by saying they’re “ill”, but the location of the “illness” can never be located.
I keep stressing this in the hope that one day, people will get it.
How’s your “laughter illness”, folks? Are you “laughter ill”. I sure hope not. Laughter and humor have no physical location or dimension. So how could they be “ill”? “Mental illness” is a form of brainwashing.
Something may be seriously wrong with you, but it can’t be your “mind”. If you think mind can be ill, first you have to demonstrate where the hell it exists.
And no one has ever done that. Not one person.
” When we remember we are all mad,
The mysteries Disappear And life stands explained “.
Mark Twain
Great quote by my man Sam!
Did any of you people, at all, read the manifesto published? Many of you sound ignorant and backward. Try reading about something from a source before acting high and mighty, ‘spankings’ and ‘liberals’ have nothing to do with the issue. You sound like children who yell because no one will listen to you. I wonder why
I’ll bet hitting him as a child would have taught him that hurting people who don’t give you your way is wrong.
If you can’t tell, I was hit all the time as a child and it only made me resentful and permanently full of hatred towards the American Jesus I was forcefed.
Thanks. Great post. Hitting a child is not the panacea some hardliners seem to think it is. It cannot be done unless it is accompanied by lots of love.
I see that love lacking in a lot of posts, and I wonder if they were denied the love every child needs, if they are to grow up right.
I wasn’t hit or spanked that I can recall. I don’t think it happened.
But I had a ton of love showered on me, and it’s the quality of the love that matters. The rest is all bullshit.
here is my opinion on this event.
As much as I want to blame them, it is not elliot rodger’s parents fault. a lot of ppl said “why the parents can’t do more to help this child” Wait a momemnt he is a 22 years old MAN. He is not a child anymore and he is independent. The parents have no legal and financial responsibility for this man. Furthermore, the parents tried their very best to prevent this crisis by hiring a therapist for their son and warning the police. What else can they do????
This is police fault and they will be sued for gross negligence. This was an easy case and they BLEW it. Here are the three reasons why.
1) The PARENTS warned the police. Not a therapist, relatives, friends. When a parent (the closest person) warns the police, immediately the police should put a red flag. Furthermore, the warning is a PROBABLE CAUSE. A probable cause to able to get a search warrant to search his apartment. Instead, the police did the easy way and ignore the situation, probably stereotyping “another quiet emo Asian kids who is stressed out in college”
2) his crazy youtube videos. Come on, he posted his crazy videos IN PUBLIC. everyone can see it. this is not classified or some obscure video sites. You got a warning about a teenager or early 20’s adult; you should first go to the facebook and youtube. (this is common knowledge) This is the easiest quickest way to find out somebody. Police was LAZY and didn’t do anything about it. and even if they watch the videos they probably didn’t take it seirously.
3) search gun purchase database. anyone purchase a gun is in the database. the police can easily search this up and find out he purchased guns.
In conclusion, having one information is still not easy. But if you do all three, this is an EASY case; Elliot Rodger need to be locked up and thrown into a mental institution. The police blew this one and hopefully they will have pay financially to the victims. I am upset the mass media is covering up for the police. ……..
He was not a victim of bullying in that balcony incident. If you read his manifesto, he started that because he was insanely jealous that guys were talking to attractive girls near him, and he tried to push the girls off the balcony for giving other guys attention but not him. The other guys, naturally, defended the girls and he ended up being the one pushed off. He even admits to lying to his parents and the police to try and make it seem like he was the victim.
He wasn’t a victim, he was a psycopath.
Elitist liberal Jew who snapped when the blonde ‘goyim’ women he felt so superior too, wanted nothing to do with him!
What a douche bag!
He had the syndrome called The poor little rich kid. He was given everything he could ever want. And he didn’t understand that he was such a jerk that no one wanted nothing to do with him. Start taking his toys away and put him in a time out you could say! Make him get a job and learn how to build character. That life ain’t just handed to you. He just might have had more respect for he parents . He expected everything and everyone to just fall in his lap without giving any effort in obtaining his goals. He was just a spoiled Brat!
You tell ’em, Sarge!
You tell ’em, Sarge.
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How to take care of Mental Health during Covid-19.
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