Trying to understand a shooter's motivation is not to excuse their actions.

[tekisui]

We need try to understand why the shooting at Ft. Hood took place. It is not to give the shooter cover or make excuses for them, but to learn. It is worth understanding, not to place blame on others, but to do what we can to minimize the risk of future acts of mass violence. Each thread and each bit of news helps us to put the picture together.

Sure, people flip out from time to time and do horrendous things. But, they are rarely in an isolated bubble. Outside pressures are worth looking at to fully understand.

[Thickasabrick]

1. This was just way too fucking rational - how dare you?

:hi:

[old mark]

2. OK, but I don't reallyunderstand the passion for "understanding"

every act of violence...is there some idea we will somehow change people and never have a violent act again if only we "understood" it all?

I have worked with violent individuals for years and I think the best we will be able to do is to try to help the victims/relatives get some relief from the horror of the act on their lives. I don't believe in "closure" and all that pop bullshit, maybe some healing at best.

mark

[Thickasabrick]

11. I think every human is capable of violence. It's just that most never

get to the "snap" moment. This guy clearly did and I think it's important to understand what was going on with him prior to his "snap".

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. The passion for 'understanding' is what has led to therapy for PTSD for

returning troops. What precipitated it was seeing vets go off the deep end, time and again, one war after another, and always being ignored. In WW1 it was called 'shell shock'. WW2 it was 'combat fatigue'. Vietnam it was ignored, figuring the short rotations obviated the need for worry, because obviously combat fatigue was a product of years of near continuous front-line duty - even if it wasn't.

The need to understand it led directly to doing something about it. Now, there is a need to understand that there are stressors other than combat. You do know that kids raised in violent ghettos have PTSD at rates higher than combat veterans? Understanding can alert people to the warning signs of incipient violence. Just as people no longer ignore nihilistic scribblings of troubled teens with authority fixations, because we understand that sometimes they actually mean what they say, we need to understand the social stressors on the disenfranchised - and when a major in the US Army is not accorded the respect of his rank by his subordinates because of his race and religion, he IS disenfranchised.

And when a psychiatrist says "I'm in no fit condition to go to war" somebody should fucking LISTEN.

[EFerrari]

28. People tru tp understand acts of violence because their own thoughts

are something they can feel in control of, imo. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." -- Didion.

[HipChick]

3. I don't think you can understand unstable or what triggers someone

[Dora]

10. Understanding the cause will make it easier to keep these events from happening.

It's about learning from our communal experience in order to successfully - and helpfully - intervene when a person is experiencing a crisis and needs help.

[timeforpeace]

43. No it won't. It will always be something you cannot anticipate.

[timeforpeace]

46. Navel Gazing 101 isn't for everyone. The victims and their families deserve more thought than him.

[EFerrari]

27. I do. We need more people trained in crisis prediction, prevention

and containment or mitigation. I hope yesterday isn't some kind of indication of how the military runs its mental health units because a group of trained people should have felt that something was wrong with this doctor.

[jaksavage]

35. Exactly

He was exhibiting inappropriate bahaviors for more than a year before this incident. One report had him lecturing his colleages about rightiousness and going to hell for their support of the war, in a setting where he was supposed to be lecturing on psych stuff. He was a time bomb and nobody cared. Tim Mcvey was one too, plenty of others out there. We just don't care, until it is too late.

[EFerrari]

40. I don't have television right now but am I right in thinking

the media is going with the "Muslim jihadi" angle and not the for shit military mental health care angle?

[Caliman73]

38. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.

It was an extremely dramatic incident so it got a lot of press coverage, but Rolling Stone's last article talks about a murder spree committed by soldiers at Fort Carson which might be tied to PTSD. The scenario is the same, an overworked military, band aid mental health care, and snap!

From the article:

In the six years since combat operations began in Iraq, Fort Carson — the country's third-largest Army base, with 22,000 active soldiers on duty — has become its own kind of killing field. Before Kevin Shields was gunned down, at least three other Iraq War veterans from the base had been arrested for murder, and a fourth had committed suicide after killing his wife. Since then, at least five more GIs at Fort Carson have been arrested in connection with murders, attempted murders or manslaughter. All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson_murder_spree/1

[EFerrari]

39. I don't know about the military systems

but I helped my ex through the world's largest provider after them, L.A. County Mental Health Services. I concluded they were dangerous and should be shut down before they get someone killed. Their awareness is in the toilet and apart from pushing poorly monitored medication, what they do there can't really be called "therapy". :(

[Caliman73]

49. I worked for a contracted agency in Los Angeles in the 90's

Part of my job was going to hospitals to assess people for admission into our program. I always had the urge to take anyone who wanted out of the hospital because they looked so horrible. Then I worked for an agency in a smaller county in California. Much better conditions, but the problem is that mental health is always one of the first programs to get cut whenever there are budget problems. The agencies I worked for literally did not know whether they would be operating from year to year. Mental Health is truly the unwanted step child of the Social Services system and it is sad and disgusting the way the system is funded as good mental health services are vital to a community.

[laconicsax]

4. Stop excusing these violent acts!

[elocs]

21. "It is not to give the shooter cover or make excuses for them..."

Did you miss that part of the OP or are you being sarcastic? It's hard to tell.

[laconicsax]

33. It's pretty hard to miss both subject line and message.

If you read just the subject lines you have:

tekisui: Trying to understand a shooter's motivation is not to excuse their actions.
laconicsax: Stop excusing these violent acts!

I'm again reminded that the more obvious I think it is, the more I need to add :sarcasm:

[Nikki Stone1]

5. K & R

And thank you.

[tabatha]

6. Yep, I too have been reading what I can

and when correcting an untruthful statement, was jumped on as if I condoned the killings.

Anyone who has the compassion to understand why people do things, also has the compassion to feel for people who have been wronged and killed.

[Bozita]

7. Amen! ... Recommended

[Bonobo]

8. To say he "flipped out" is to say nothing at all.

I agree that it needs to be understood.

The problem is we don't want to understand.

We are afraid to consider the possibility that he wasn't "crazy" in the sense everyone understands the word.

The thing is, that to him, he had reasons.

Now you can either try to see and understand those reasons -which requires going to some pretty dark places -or you can pretend that they don't exist -which allows you to continue to remain inside your warm, comfortable bubble.

I'd say this site is about 50/50.

[TwilightGardener]

9. There's "trying to understand", and then there's "making shit up".

Some people have an agenda, or like to use their imaginations a little too much.

[Bonobo]

14. True! Both exist. nt

[timeforpeace]

42. And they're working overtime with this Hasan thing. Try understanding the victims and their families

for just a split second if possible.

[HipChick]

12. "nothing excuses his actions..." but..

If Muslims are being mis-treated in the uniformed services, they need to look into it...because if not,it will happen again...

[Codeine]

13. Except the most obvious motivation is immediately

ruled out here. Had he been a teabagger/Bible thumper one doubts that would be the case.

[Bonobo]

16. I don't rule it out.

But things are complex often. It is probably a combination of things.

[whathehell]

19. What is the "most obvious" motivation? n/t

[timeforpeace]

44. His own words about hating the US and the war on terror and suicide bombers being like the guys who

throw themselves on hand grenades. It's been in all the news.

[whathehell]

48. Yes, I understand you now...Although I think he was a nut case, anyway

As Rachel and others have said, there are like 3200 muslims serving in the armed forces now.

[billyoc]

15. Nice post, Zawahiri.

:evilgrin:

[Bonobo]

17. LOL!

[TexasObserver]

24. First time I've laughed since this thing happened yesterday.

Because it so completely captures the insane manner some use to argue against discussing the role abuse of this guy played in his unraveling.

[The Straight Story]

18. Well, to hear some the only reason a person kills is that they own a gun

Or that the US wronged them somehow, or that they told people they were part of some religion or other.

Never mind meds that they were on, etc. Either it is guns, religion, or we had it coming for how we treated others.

[pitohui]

20. if we've learned anything we've learned we haven't learned anything

we took mohammed and malvo alive in 2002, 7 years ago, and mohammed won't be executed until i think tues or wed, malvo will never be executed

has 7 years of seeking for answers from these guys found any that prevented future shooting? or have shootings continued pretty much unabated on a regular schedule?

did the capture of macveigh and nichols ever provide any real answer or explanation that prevented anything? (i use them as an example so i won't just be focused on guns and "shooters," there are lots of mass killers out there of course not just gun nuts)

sure, we need to try to understand, i guess, but we've been trying to understand human psychology since AT LEAST the time of freud, and it doesn't seem to make any difference does it?

i think we try to understand, not because it helps prevent future incidents -- it doesn't -- but because it's let's face it a form of entertainment that gives the illusion that we're doing something

no one wants to admit that we know fuck all about why some go batshit and some don't

[Igel]

26. No.

I think the justification posted above misstated things. It seemed reasonable, but only given the proper assumptions.

It's not that we *will* learn something that might be useful. It's that we *might* learn something. We've been studying psychology since before Freud, but we have learned some things. (Sometimes the psychologists are convinced that now, at last, we--meaning they--finally understand everything, but delusions of grandeur are common among academics.)

But I also find it interesting to do. You can call it entertaining, but just trying to stretch my mind to understand others is, I think, helpful to how I relate to the rest of the universe. (Or at least the speck that I routinely come across.)

Sometimes "whacko" doesn't mean "insane," it just means "having a radically different set of value rankings or assumptions," and sometimes "having accepted different things as true." Once you put things in those terms, it becomes possible to actually talk to people from other ideological points of view as though they were regular humans instead of mentally ill.

The "something" I do here is almost entirely between me and myself. Sometimes I learn things. Sometimes I'm taught things.

[me b zola]

36. +1

[EFerrari]

41. My ex was quietly in and out of psychosis only Gawd knows how many years

before I noticed something was up about 6 months after we got married. We didn't date for very long, having known each other as friends in our early college years.

That was when he was 37.

So that means, his onset was likely sometime in his early 20s after I went to a different school and we lost touch -- what is that, twenty years? And nobody noticed. Not his girlfriends, not his family, not his whole big tribe of friends or any of the comedians or bookers he worked with. He was headlining so I guess the only thing anyone looked at was the house and what he put up his nose and if he was going to share. Amazing.

So, maybe I shouldn't be too surprised that even a group of mental health workers living and working in somewhat close quarters didn't give this one doctor a hair cut.

[timeforpeace]

45. Did he ever get better? Did you ever understand his motivation?

[EFerrari]

47. Yes and yes. And it was a lot of work.

[elocs]

22. One lesson that should be learned: if a soldier desperately want to get out of the service,

and does not to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and has expressed opposition to those wars, it's probably not the best idea to teach that soldier a lesson by sending him to Iraq or Afghanistan.

[Karenina]

29. Just for starters...

[slackmaster]

31. The easiest way to get out when they won't let you is to smoke a joint before your readiness exam

Or get caught committing sodomy as defined in the UCMJ (which includes many things that heterosexuals often do).

[slackmaster]

32. Double-tap

:nuke:

[TexasObserver]

23. There you go being rational again.

[Duncan]

30. Well put.

It would be nice to know all the contributing factors. That said, it seems very likely his personal interpretation of his religion is a major part of what drove him to do it, especially if, as is alleged, he commented that there is moral equivalence between being a suicide bomber and jumping on a grenade to save those around you. He was also reported to be saying a Muslim prayer while shooting and I think he was wearing religious garb, which I doubt was his normal attire on the base. There were certainly other contributing factors, but it seems reasonable to hypothesize that his own twisted religious belief is a large part of the picture here. At any rate, the killer is Islamic and committed an act of terrorism, hence it was an act of Islamic terrorism simply by definition, regardless of how his motivations are parsed. It was also an act of Hokie terrorism and an act of Virginian terrorism.

[jmondine]

34. Exactly. Understanding in this case isn't about sympathy...

... I don't "sympathize" with a new cell phone. I understand it so I can work its features, and prevent it from doing things that will give me problems.

[me b zola]

37. K&R