Posted on 12/18/2012 6:36:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The emerging profile of Adam Lanza, the suspected shooter in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., is depressingly familiar.
He has been described as being socially awkward and a loner. He reportedly had Asperger's syndrome — a high-performing form of autism — and may have been afflicted by other psychiatric problems. And he was male. His sex almost goes without saying.
According to Mother Jones, 62 mass shootings — defined as a single spree that killed at least four people — have been carried out in the U.S. since 1982. Only one was perpetrated by a female.
In 2006, Jennifer San Marco fatally shot her former neighbor, then drove to work and killed six colleagues before turning her gun on herself. The rest of the massacres were carried out by males, 44 of whom were white.
What is the connection between gender and outbreaks of massive violence? A helpful way to approach the question is to look at the three main categories of mass murderers. There are "family annihilators," who, as the name suggests, turn on their families.
There are "set-and-run" or "hit-and-run" killers, who usually hide and try to avoid capture. Then there are "pseudocommandos," a category that would seem to include James Holmes, the suspected shooter in the July movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., and Seung-Hui Cho, who in 2007 killed 32 people during a rampage at Virginia Tech.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Your post exactly expresses my initial reaction to the article.
“Two patients enter an abortion clinic, only one comes out alive”!
“Crazy women just make you wish you were dead.”
Well, not always. :) At least not while they can keep you from figuring out how crazy they really are.
>>> the author is focusing on the means, not the evil.
What I said is that focus was too narrow.
And thus any conclusion or whatver it arrived at, the point (so few female mass murderers) is not valid.
We’re trying to find causes other than the obvious for these mass shootings.
Beginning with Columbine, these shooters have 4 common traits.
Disconnected from a solid father,
mood altering drugs,
loners with few or no friends,
and heavily into computer gaming.
The father part affects the other three.
1.2 million women kill every year in America.
I think the meds are a part of it, but they treat a symptom that the schools created.
The problem is that school boys and girls are at the age where their bodies begin growing rapidly. Schools used to have a thing called "recess" in the morning and afternoon to let the children go outside to run around and generally expend energy. This would tire them out so they could sit quietly in class and learn their lectures.
Many schools today have driven out recess, along with many other outlets for energy like band, PE, shop, etc., and replaced the time with social behavior modifaction classes on the environment, alternate lifestyles, and multi-culturalism.
With no outlet for their natural energy, boys are labeled as ADD and drugged by the schools until they graduate. While drugged, their emotions are also suppressed. They don't learn to deal with their emotions when they're young, so they are consumed by them when they graduate and are taken off the meds. All it takes is for a girlfriend to dump them, or another boy to court a girlfriend, or a best-friend to die or move away, and they explode from their pent up suppressed feelings.
That's my theory, anyway.
-PJ
Men have always been much more violent, going back way before feminism was an expressed or acted upon concept.
Occam’s razor—testosterone.
In 2006, Jennifer San Marco fatally shot her former neighbor, then drove to work and killed six colleagues before turning her gun on herself. The rest of the massacres were carried out by males, 44 of whom were white."
Interesting. It would be interesting to know what the race was of the 17 male shooters that were not white. Considering the racial proportions of the population, it's very likely these attacks are mainly male, and evenly distributed proportionally across the races. Pointing out that white males do more of these events may only be due to the racial proportions of the populations, not that white males snap any more than a male of any other race...
Very interesting....
well it’s high testosterone that makes women more aggressive too. the female hormones make them more emotional.
Of course, by limiting it to those after 1982, they left off the girl in San Diego that killed a bunch of her high school classmates because she didn’t like Mondays. I think that was in the 70s. There was a song about her.
I think also that black and Hispanic males are also more often from lower socio-economic strata, without parents able to shield them the way this kid’s mother shielded him.
Thus they are likely to enter prison system before they reach their going off peak, if you will.
seems the study is pretty narrowly focused...
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