Discussion for article #223319
There is a common thread in most of these mass killings. The perpetrators are ostracized, and live miserable existences. Before you point your finger at guns, or his woman hating, I’d take a good hard look in the mirror, and ask yourself if your attitude contributed to the problem.
Another common thread is questionable police work. The police are told that Rodger has been posting disturbing videos, bad enough to make those around him very worried. They don’t watch the videos, but simply drop by for a few minutes’ chat, and decide, “He seems nice enough.”
You’d think that taking a quick look at the videos would be the first step. They were on YouTube - it’s not as if they needed probable cause to gain access to them.
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Tough to say, but I’d guess that women, in particular, probably picked up on his “they owe me some sex” vibe, and steered well clear. Any woman who considered perhaps reaching out to him, and trying to help, probably realized that he would then latch onto her like a bear trap. From “slightly creepy shy guy” to “persistent scary stalker,” in short order.
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Please explain to me how this person had anything remotely resembling a “miserable existence”. Looks to me like he was doing pretty well for himself.
Couldn’t get the women he desired to have sex with him? Gee, how unusual is that?
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The second amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Am I missing something??? I don’t see ANY relationship between ANY mass shootings or individual shootings or “accidental” shootings and “A well regulated militia”…
Please, Will someone explain to me how the “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” has been cherry picked away from the first part of the sentence which reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state”???
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In a world where the police have infinite resources, sure. I don’t know Santa Barbara well enough to say whether the sheriff’s budget is adequate and what the crime situation is there. There are a lot of people in every community that are potentially a danger to themselves or others; sorting out which one is likely to act on their impulses is not simple. Even experts disagree on individual cases. And even if they agreed, the laws make it very difficult to impose treatment on adults who don’t want it.
But if your resources are limited, looking at the video first would be the smart move. If it turns out to be a prolonged selfie of some guy picking his nose, you don’t have to waste your time going to interview him. On the other hand, if he looks like Hannibal Lecter on a bad day, that tells you where to put your limited resources.
(I’m a new user, so this is my last possible post in this thread. Apparently “three on a match” is the limit. So, I won’t be able to respond further. Great system. Oy.)
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I think his “perceived” miserable existence would be more accurate. To him it was miserable and that appears to be his excuse for what he did, whether that’s true or real, doesn’t really matter, the dead are dead and the injured are injured.
It seems to me, that an “investigator” receiving a call from a person’s Mother and Psychologist! about disturbing videos their son and patient were posting on the internets would view the video BEFORE visiting him. Seriously, for self protection if nothing else. What if they were about shooting cops coming to check on his welfare? I’d want to know what I was walking into.
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You’re assuming that police have work access to youtube, the greatest American time waster ever. Maybe detectives, but probably not patrol-persons. And the initial interview would have to be done before a case for detectives would be opened.
Now if someone had accused him of being a crack dealer or having an overdue parking ticket … Immediate SWAT response.
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If some kid had posted that he was going to show up with a few bags of pot for sale at the local 7-11, the same authorities would have arrived in swat gear… I really do not understand their inability to forge a potential-shooter response mechanism, manned with well-trained people, it is as if they are under a demonic gun spell or something… they swallow camels whole and choke on the gnats.
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Gee, some surveillance state.
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That’s not accurate at all. The FBI opened a case Nd investigated. Found nothing that was prosecutable or suspecious, and in accordance with THE LAW, closed the investigation after 90 days.
Now if you WANT to have police investigating everyone all the time, just say so. But that’s probably going to be interpreted as the first step in taking the guns away. We’re gonna need more prisons and torture, excuse me, interrogation rooms.
And then the paranoids will start losing sleep again.
Ah, America the Beautiful.
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Most (if not all?) of the so-called “founding fathers” would have studied Latin as a part of their general education. The grammatical construction found in the second amendment is very similar to what is known in Latin as an “ablative absolute”, in which an adverbial phrase precedes and modifies the main clause of the sentence. Translating into English can often sound awkward, but it has been theorized that because of their familiarity with Latin, the authors of the Bill of Rights would have understood that the second part of the sentence is entirely dependent on the first part of the sentence, and under no circumstances is it intended to stand alone as an independent thought.
So to answer your question, I suppose a linguist would say that because language is constantly changing, American English has drifted far enough that the general public has difficulty understanding what was intended by a centuries-old sentence, making it easy for partisan judges and lawmakers to pretend that the first half of the sentence never existed.
Being the curmudgeon I am, I would argue that the study of Latin is about so much more than “learning a dead language”, and it’s a shame that somewhere along the way, it has lost relevance in our short-sighted educational priorities.
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Nothing in my mirror had anything to do with his mental problems that lead him to kill others.
Try again.
Heh.
SIx cops: “four deputies, a police officer and a dispatcher in training.” My mistaken assumption is that one of them may have had a modicum of common sense.
Not that I spend a lot of time is police cars, but I have seen an odd “folding” device mounted just to the right of the steering wheel. I has a “television” like monitor that hinges away from a typewriter like keyboard. I believe it displays information. Here in Minneapolis we installed some sort of invisible information transporting network called City Wide WiFi. The police have their own “secure” version of it. I wonder it that would have been useful?
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So the system once again failed to pick up the signs of an impending mayhem because it leaves to patrol policemen to make a final decision if someone is a nut job or not. But we are incessantly asked, by some lunatics, to leave our own security and well being in the hands of the system.