The War Against Violence

Another tragedy in the united of states. If you live under a rock and don't know about it yet, or you are from the future, read this little blip.

After promising a "day of retribution" on YouTube, a heavily armed, mentally disturbed 22-year-old went on a killing spree in a California college town, authorities said.

He fatally stabbed three men in his residence, shot two women to death in front of a sorority house, shot a man to death inside a deli, exchanged gunfire twice with police and injured 13 people as he drove from block to block, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office said Saturday night.

Elliot Rodger, 22, ended the Friday night rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, apparently by fatally shooting himself in the head while sitting behind the wheel of his wrecked BMW, Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Inside the car, police found three handguns -- all legally purchased -- and more than 400 rounds of unused ammunition, Brown said at a Saturday evening press conference.

The suspect formerly was a student at Santa Barbara City College and lived in Isla Vista, where the rampage occurred.

See the whole article here

This is becoming regular news to us. Stories like this. Sad stories of a psychopath on a killing spree of innocent people. At least drug dealers try to keep their murders between drug dealers.

And the public's response? There are less, "Aww, God please be with the families of these victims and embrace the victims with open arms." and more, "We need gun control." I mean it sounds absurd to me. To read a story about a stabbing and shooting that took place in a state that has a lot of gun control laws and actually think more stricter gun control would solve the problem. I know their heart is in the right place. Too bad their mind isn't. 

When all these stories started to surface, slowly I see this gun control debate use dead people as its platform. Back then, the gun toting rednecks were like, "They're going to take our guns," and the liberals were like, "No, we just want you to register them and have a background check," but it's morphing. More and more liberals want to ban guns entirely. The gun toting rednecks were right. You're trying to take their guns. And not because you truly care about the safety of people, but because you are afraid. Just like 9/11 scared the bejeezus out of everyone to invade privacy and start a war in the name of terrorism, these public shootings are scaring you out of your right to bear arms. Fear is an ugly bitch.  

Even the father of one of the victims was all, "We need more gun control," like the parents of many victims in the Connecticut shooting. I want to remind people that grieving people are crazy irrational people, and will be for at least 7 years. It takes 7 years for the soul to heal according to ancient Kabbalah belief, but I've noticed with everyone I know who faces grief, they are fucking nuts for 7 years. Not kill people crazy, but lost crazy. The crazy that makes you drink more alcoholic drinks than you usually would. The crazy that makes you push away loved ones and embrace the wrong people. The crazy that has you jealous of people for getting to keep their loved ones. Grieving people are always searching for something to blame so that it makes sense, so that it justifies the loss. Of course, in a case of a mass shooting, it's really easy to blame the gun. I would. If I lost one of my children to a psychopath on a violent shooting rampage, I would most definitely blame the gun. We ALL would. Even you gun toting rednecks would have a change in heart after losing one of your own to gun violence.

I don't understand how everyone else, outside of the victim's families, blame the guns. It always seems to be the people who already were against guns before the shooting using the victims as an emotional motivation to try to push their political agendas and platforms. That's kind of fucked up in my opinion. Show some respect at least. Enough to not make this about your politics and about what it really is. 

Folks, we don't have a gun control problem. We have a nut control problem. 

Most of these shooters qualify for a similar diagnosis between each other. I have them pegged at antisocial disorders (usually without the charm), heavy on the narcissism, a little affluenza (as described by modern media... spoiled brat syndrome), a little schizophrenia (the reality vs fantasy aspect), and the most critical component, depression. 

Now if you aren't obsessed with psychology enough to know what that means, what it means is you have a person who can't see beyond themselves. A person who is incapable of seeing your struggle and is instead, focused on their own, overplaying the role of the victim. Their story changes every time it's told, and they believe their own lies, but one common denominator in all their stories is they are the victim, usually to something most of us are like, "really, man up and move on." For instance, this shooter believed he was the victim, a poor poor victim, to virginity. He believed that a woman who didn't sleep with him is one who deserves death for not seeing how awesome he is. He probably felt just as victimized as a rape victim, or a victim of theft, or abuse. To him, the "rejection" was a punch to the face, every day. 

On top of it, this person is used to getting their way otherwise, so it's absurd to them they can't always get what they want. They feel entitled to all their wants. The hint of affluenza is obvious, hence why the media focuses on profiling these killers as middle class to upper class white boys. Most of these shooters really have nothing to bitch about. They live lives many people dream of having. But the basic law of economics states that your wants will always exceed your needs. You will always want. Every time you get something, you want something new. You feel empty without wants and desires. So imagine a kid having everything under the sun growing up, his wants are going to get creative, shallow, and empty. I always said that I don't understand the story of Job. To test a man's true character, you don't take everything away, but you give him everything. Evil, temptation, and all the things religion views as wrong takes on a whole new form when you are in a castle sheltered from reality. And it's not a matter of his parents saying "no," more often. It's a matter of him seeing the real world and tasting its flavor. 

So we have a victim of abuse, an abuse that doesn't really exist, one who can't see beyond himself, one who is entitled to getting his way, and now the critical component, it's hopeless. There is no way out. If you are on the road to hell anyway, you might as well take down the people who put you on that road along the way. 

Mix this in society's culture where men are supposed to be violent, aggressive, and authoritative to be considered men. Mix this in society where we use tragedies for our political platforms. Where we kill for fun in video games. Where violence is exalted in war, religion, and history. Where the real men are Marines who kill people and the boys are civilians filling out paperwork. Where a moral code of minimal force, restraint, mercy are not mentioned at all outside of Kung Fu movies. ...

Most of us can differentiate between fantasy and real life. But let's add the schizophrenic component to the mixture, where real life is but a dream. Think when you are dreaming, you tend to believe the most absurd things like it's real. When dreaming, you tend to be afraid when there is nothing to fear. One of the biggest parts of schizophrenia is that your awake state feels much like the dream state. Where things don't feel real, but worse, you believe absurd, irrational thoughts like they are real, and absurd fears like they are actual threats. This shooter felt threatened by "rejection." 

The reason I'm going into this, "please empathize for a second with this piece of shit" shpeel, one that most of you are probably, "I don't give a fuck what he was thinking, murder is wrong and he deserves death and hell," well the reason I'm doing this is because many people think we should go back to the days where we lock up the insane. Where we should not give crazy people guns. Solutions that still won't work. 

The reason I'm saying this is death doesn't stop evil. Darkness cannot drive out the darkness. Only light can do that. We need less darkness and more light. We need less emotionally charged lies we tell ourselves and more truth. 

We have to understand the mentality of these shooters in order to understand how to identify the risk of that specific mental disease concoction in particular. In war and football, you are supposed to observe your enemy enough to learn what he's about in order to use that information against them to take them down. We need INTEL is what we need before moving on with a platform to end this violence. 

History has proven that you can't lock up mental health. You can't make it go away with a magic pill. 

There are many non-violent mental health issues out there that people already associate to a violence enough to scare them enough to take away their rights, to assume they are wrong in the case of their own self defense, and to lock them away for life. Autism is one. Autism is one of the least violent things out there. They don't want to hurt people. If they do, it's an accident just like someone having a seizure, but they don't wake up wanting revenge on those who did them wrong enough to do something they think is wrong like murder. IN fact, all you have to do with autism is say, "Murder is against the rules," and I assure you they won't murder so much a bug. 

Everyone is crazy. Some of you are diagnosed; the ones who are in denial about your crazy, you are the danger to society. You are unlabeled, unmedicated, not getting therapy for whatever is wrong with you. It's stewing. To wage a war against crazy people will only hurt yourself. 

Not to mention... The fact of the matter is this crazy we are up against on the war against violence (I love oxymoron, read it again, the WAR AGAINST VIOLENCE)... the crazy we are up against on the war against violence is one that is a sneaky bastard. Even the shooter in this story managed to fool the cops into thinking he was an awesome citizen without any mental health concern. George Zimmerman has a similar diagnosis to this guy, and he fooled more than half the world. He still does. There's actually a genius to it, a diabolical genius, but still a genius.

So what do we really need?

1. Empirical evidence. We need to fund more empirical evidence, scientifically based by people who truly understand how correlational statistics operate, on the subjects of violence and sociopathy. And not just to understand the nature of it all, but also to test solutions. In psychology, they tell you not to focus on the problem, but focus on the solution, yet, ironically on a hypocritical level, most psychological studies are based on identifying problems and finding correlation instead of looking for solutions. 

2. We need to change our cultural belief as a whole toward mental health. Moms who drink and swear posted about how mental health gets the shaft on media coverage. We need more awareness on this subject, and not blue ribbons of autism awareness, but more actual facts of real events and resources to finding help. The media has too long ignored social responsibility for profits and entertainment. More specifically in this subject, we need more awareness of sociopathy symptoms. People still think a sociopath is going to kill people. Most sociopaths don't kill. They manipulate, self harm, and use passive aggressive means to convey misery in others. I consider sociopathy to be the polar opposite of autism, and it can be just as disabling for those with severe enough symptoms. Everyone falls on that spectrum, but the people in the middle of sociopathy and autism are considered normal.  

3. We need stricter FDA laws on medications. The FDA is now bought and paid for by corporate interests, including the pharmaceutical companies (in addition to food companies). We need to remove the corporate interest from government all together, like that would solve a bunch of our problems, but specifically mental health, some of these meds are worse than the disorder by itself. The sad thing is, many of them are useful meds when used properly, but the studies were so half-assed, we don't know how to use them properly. 

4. If you want gun control, real gun control, how about treating it like you would a driver's license? Make the people pass a gun use and safety test, one that explains the laws and consequences. One that explains how important it is not to trust just anyone with your gun. Make them receive a license to use a gun, complete with photograph and thumb print. Each gun should have a VIN number and be registered, and pay property taxes if you want. Keep track of the registry like the DMV. This won't stop the psychopaths. They will find any means to hurt people if guns aren't available, but it will make it easier for police to figure out everything about that gun that was used in a crime. You don't "CONTROL" shit by removing it. You control by managing it. 

5. We need better laws in the sense of what the police can do when there's a stalker, a threatening letter, or a threatening youtube video. When kids hear another child threaten to bomb a school, they call the police, and the schools usually shut down for that threat or react some way. But outside of the school, there isn't much you can do. I've been stalked and threatened. I had one guy threaten to strangle me with my own hair for not answering my phone, in a creepy voice, on my voicemail, and my military chain of command laughed at me for being nervous about it. The police said there's nothing they can do until a crime is committed. Coming up with some sort of preventative game plan for threats and harassment would not only help in situation like this where parents called in a disturbing video, but also in situations where women end up raped. There's a difference between the defendant on Matlock being quoted in the heat of anger that he was going to kill someone, and an actual threat from a psychopath. If you can't tell the difference in most situations (some I'm sure are very gray area), then we need public education reform that includes the addition of a common sense curriculum. 

By the way, I got rid of my stalker by finding a person with a stalker, and giving my stalker their stalker's phone number. 

6. If you want to go to any extreme on this, teach people safety. When they see a gun fight, show them how to take cover. Kids in schools have been practicing drills for this sort of thing. In the military, it's called Readiness training. It's training you to be ready for violence. It's really sad we have to resort to such things, but if fear will drive you to anything, self defense should be the place you need to go. What you really seek isn't gun control. It's control. Rape is about control, and many rape victims seek means to get that control back for years after a rape, and that's what you are feeling: the same desire for control a rape victim feels, but much less extreme to what a rape victim feels. 

This is just the beginning of what we NEED to be doing. If you want to end the violence like this shooting, you needed to find this shooter the therapy and the help he needed BEFORE he struck people with a violent, conspired plan. That youtube video wasn't a warning. It was a plea for help and attention cloaked as a threat. As of now, we have no real help to offer someone plagued with that kind of disorder except death. We have no help to offer concerned family members. Ignoring that will only increase this violence. We need to figure this the fuck out for their sake, for our safety, and for humanity. 

My turn to do the fucked up thing... Innocent people died because you were too concerned about gun control to give a shit about mental health. 

I can do the rhetoric thing too. It's ugly isn't it? Let's try to reserve that for soap operas in the future... mmmkay.


Oh. Yeah. Happy Memorial Day. Please say a prayer to the fallen soldiers while praying for the victims of this tragedy. Remember, our soldiers of the past fought for your right to bear arms. You really kick them in the face when you do that whole, "we need to recall all your rights and liberties for safety concerns." This is America, home of the brave. Start acting brave. We are morphing to a country where we want to keep God out of the government when we really need to keep fear out of the government. If God gives you cojones, bring Him back. We need the bollocks to FACE our problems instead of FEARING them.