Well, here we are again. This time, the perpertrator's motives seem completely impossible to discern. No criminal history, no history of violence, no affiliation with terrorist organisations.

I wonder if there's any point in trying to 'make sense' of these actions. How do you rationalise something inherently irrational?

I wonder if it is something like a form of 'demonic possession' - a person becomes seized by an idea or a complex of ideas, so powerful it drives them to commit ghastly, unimaginably awful and irrational acts, and kill themselves after doing it. It really is as if a malevolent demon has possessed the body of an otherwise normal human. (Recall that sub-processes in UNIX computer systems used to be called 'daemons'.) It may not be remotely possible to ascertain whether that actually happened - but it sure seems like it.

Although I suppose the more mundane explanation is simply that the 'mass murder meme' has now become a template for a certain form of behaviour, and there will continue to be those in whom this idea hatches, and who will then carry it out. The saddening thing is, there is no practicable way to prevent these from continuing to occur in modern America; the world's most powerful and advanced political economy has somehow created a culture which is powerless to stop them occurring.

3k were killed on 9-11, by people who believed the act would plant them in heaven.

Well, here we are again. This time, the perpertrator's motives seem completely impossible to discern. No criminal history, no history of violence, no affiliation with terrorist organisations. — Wayfarer

Well, ISIS has claimed the attack actually, there's just no independent evidence linking him to ISIS yet.


However, the fact that he was a very wealthy old man (64 years old) with a girlfriend from the Philippines to whom he was sending many 10,000s of dollars makes it inherently suspect. I highly doubt that his girlfriend wasn't aware of what he was up to, regardless of what she says. She was probably out of the country on purpose.

In addition, you don't know what was going through his mind. He had a lot of guns acquired, so clearly I think there was something wrong with him psychologically... you don't acquire so much weaponry for no reason.

How do you rationalise something inherently irrational? — Wayfarer

I don't find it inherently irrational. I mean I can imagine someone who feels they are approaching the end of their life and are motivated by a dangerous evil ideology to engage in such crimes.

Alternatively, I can also imagine someone who just loses their capacity to feel empathy, care or love for any other people combined with approaching death and a feeling of inherent meaninglessness and total rejection of Truth which just drives them to do such a thing. I'd say they are so "numb" by that point that nothing short of doing something like this can make them feel anything.

What I find most horrifying is the idea that such evil can exist in someone's heart. It is almost a Satanic action.

I wonder if it is something like a form of 'demonic possession' - a person becomes seized by an idea or a complex of ideas, so powerful it drives them to commit ghastly, unimaginably awful and irrational acts, and kill themselves after doing it. It really is as if a malevolent demon has possessed the body of an otherwise normal human. — Wayfarer

An interesting hypothesis. But there certainly have to be some factors which make one susceptible to such demonic possession no? I mean could it just happen to anyone? Could me, or you, suddenly turn into mass killers?

There's also the fact that "psychotic episodes" and the like cannot explain such actions because they are clearly premeditated and take long-term planning. There was a case in my country of a police student in training who was just learning to shoot a gun, who suddenly turned around and shot his instructor and then killed himself. Such things can be interpreted as the person having a psychotic attack of some sorts and doing something terrible almost without realizing, and then once they realize what they've done they feel great fear and horror and kill themselves. But this clearly wasn't the case here.

Although I suppose the more mundane explanation is simply that the 'mass murder meme' has now become a template for a certain form of behaviour, and there will continue to be those in whom this idea hatches, and who will then carry it out. — Wayfarer

Yes, but why would they do that? I mean what's the chain of thoughts that leads someone to do such a thing?

the world's most powerful and advanced political economy has somehow created a culture which is powerless to stop them occurring. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree that it is in large aspects a cultural issue, and not only about gun laws. Somehow this form of mental illness propagates itself, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't understand it very well.

But there certainly have to be some factors which make one susceptible to such demonic possession no? I mean could it just happen to anyone? — Agustino

Empty minds, rootless minds, minds that have lost any intrinsic connection to reality, to other people, to meaning. 'Demons' can't act save for through the bodies of others.

I know of myself that I will never be a killer, but on a much more mundane scale, I also know in myself that I am still vulnerable to degenerate ideas. Not so different, in principle.

3k were killed on 9-11, by people who believed the act would plant them in heaven. — praxis

Have a read of this - Terror in the God-Shaped Hole - A Buddhist Perspective on Modernity's Identity Crisis. Long read, but well worth the effort in my opinion.

minds that have lost any intrinsic connection to reality — Wayfarer

Yes, I think this is on the right track. But how does it happen that someone loses their intrinsic connection to reality?

I think understanding this is of fundamental importance in preventing or stopping such attacks from occurring. I mean if we always say they're irrational that's basically like throwing our hands up in the air and saying there's nothing we can do to stop them. But there surely is if we can understand what brings them about and what puts people in such frames of mind.

Also it's interesting to note that the intensity and death toll of such attacks is only rising with time. I think it is clear that violence is on the rise and will probably continue to rise as we enter in the coming dark age.

He might as well have been on some powerful adulterants like drugs, sex, and money. I don't know if places like Las Vegas brings out the best or worst in people; but, being in such an environment could encourage the said behavior. I mean, people do act irrationally by gambling, despite knowing how little chance they have at beating the house.

Did anyone watch The Hangover? There's already a third installment of the film, in the works.

how does it happen that someone loses their intrinsic connection to reality? — Agustino

Reality ain't what it used to be ;-)

it's always men... — Wayfarer

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goleta_postal_facility_shootings

OK - nearly always men....

I don't find it inherently irrational. I mean I can imagine someone who feels they are approaching the end of their life and are motivated by a dangerous evil ideology to engage in such crimes. — Agustino

What do you believe the difference is between irrational and evil?

Reality ain't what it used to be ;-) — Wayfarer

violence is on the rise and will probably continue to rise as we enter in the coming dark age — Agustino

But how does it happen that someone loses their intrinsic connection to reality? — Agustino

Agustino -- what makes you think he lost his connection to reality?

I don't know. I could not care less whether he was in touch with reality or not, whether he was a relatively normal seeming guy (as a relative reported), or what motive he might have had.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Oklahoma City federal courthouse in April of 1995. 168 people were killed and several hundred injured. What motivated this act? They were angry about Federal actions at Ruby Ridge, Idaho--the August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his Idaho cabin, in which Weaver’s wife and son were killed, and the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, in which 75 members of a Branch Davidian religious sect were burnt to death in their compound (which may or may not have been caused by federal agents).

Nichols and McVeigh viewed the Federal government as Public Enemy #1. Blowing up a courthouse seemed like a reasonable way to even the score.

Were McVeigh and Nichols demented? No. Within their frame of reference, they were fighting a guerrilla war. Within that frame of reference, their actions were rational. Please note: I'm not searching for an excuse for what they did, just assessing their sanity. They were evil, but not crazy.

Was Stephen Paddock fighting some sort of war? I would not be surprised if evidence turned up that suggested he was. Again, he was totally evil whatever the reasoning, but he probably was not insane. (Many people reach for insanity as an explanation in lieu of evil. One doesn't have to be a conservative theist to identify evil.)

We have waaaay too many guns--300 million and adding more all the time. Actually, the owners of all these guns have shown a remarkable degree of restraint, in that less than 1000 people have been killed in mass shootings since 1966, when Charles Whitman, a former Marine, killed his mother and wife and then climbed to the top of a tower and killed 15 and injured 31 more with a rifle.

All terrorism is evil, but it is often carried out for some purpose - establishment of the Caliphate, the destruction of the 'satanic' US, or some other pretext. But many of these mass shootings are totally irrational, insofar as they are not in support of any apparent cause, and the perpetrator usually suicides. Totally, completely irrational behaviour, along a template that is now being copied by people who have no grip whatever on what is real. The only question standing after any of these is, horrible to say, when will the next one be.

The banality of [the shooter's] existence makes the Las Vegas massacre even more frightening than even the record-breaking death toll would suggest. The lack of any obvious motivation makes the terror of a random act of violence even deeper and more random. If an ordinary guy, with no obvious ties to extremists groups, no ideological motivations, an apparently placid personal life, stable finances, and no psychological abnormalities—the kind of guy who eats burritos, has a couple beers at the karaoke bar, waves to his neighbors, but largely keeps to himself—can emerge as the deadliest shooter in modern U.S. history, what hope can there be to identify suspects like him before they attack?

The Atlantic

All the better argument for gun laws, although doubtlessly it will fall on deaf ears.

Another dreadful mass-shooting, with an alienated man murdering nine strangers then killing himself. This time in Germany - but the world is a global village.

I can't help but think that this has become a meme; and that for a certain type of mentality, the behaviour has become normalised. So at any given time, there are probably many thousands of men - it's always men - who will be thinking 'I could do that'. Presumably, their lives are full of sufficient inner torment and self-hatred to provide the impetus for such terrible crimes.

The Nice truck-murderer told an acquaintance 'you wait, soon everyone will know about me'.

And then, when they occur, they trigger world-wide media coverage, and inspire (if that is the right word) the next hideous example.

It's a pity society doesn't believe in hell any more. As it is, these people believe, among other things, that as they will take themselves out with their final, despicable act, they will never have to suffer the consequences. So I can't see any way to prevent these acts from regularly occuring from now on. I think it is an extreme manifestation of the attitude that nothing matters, and that everything is simply a spectacle - a complete disassociation from reality. — Wayfarer

Why can't we just be honest?

We don't really know why these mass murders are happening.

Every explanation I have heard amounts to speculation.

One thing is for sure: they are highly politicized.

Haven't we always had epidemic levels of violence in the U.S.? In the Old West it was...well, you know. I'll never forget a photograph I saw in Guthrie, OK: people standing around and looking at a bullet-ridden body in a store window. I guess film and TV have replaced the store window. Then there was the violence of the Prohibition era; the violence of the '60's; Kent State (the mass murder that nobody ever seems to bring up); the War On Drugs; and all of the gang violence in inner cities.

I do not believe that what I am about to say is speculation. I understand this to be sociological fact: the violence always afflicted low-income urban areas and was mostly ignored, but now that it has leached into affluent suburbs suddenly it is considered a cultural and moral crisis.

It now appears in strange, unpredictable patterns. It now inspires ideological passion about public health vs. the Second Amendment. It now has FOX News, CNN and MSNBC to milk every ounce of political capital and TV/radio ratings they can from it. But it has been there all along.

I don't think the question we should be asking is what philosophical, religious, political, psychological and sociological variables it can be reduced to. I think the question we should be asking is who we want to be, and how.

If we want to be people who tolerate senseless, preventable violence, there is probably not much any academic, legislator, clergy, social activist, etc. can do to stop the mass murders.

If we want to be people who tolerate senseless, preventable violence, there is probably not much any academic, legislator, clergy, social activist, etc. can do to stop the mass murders. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

There is a complete 'disconnect' between guns and consequences. I'm not talking about squirrel, duck, and deer hunters.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday referred to the gunman, Stephen Paddock, as “disturbed,” but said that much of the past 10 years of his life was a mystery. “What we know is Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” he said.

“Don’t you think the concealment of his history, of his life, was well-thought-out?” the sheriff asked. “It’s incumbent upon us as professionals to dig that up.” — New York Times

"Disturbed"? You think?

"Mystery"? What mystery?

"Secret life"? What secret life?.

The pile of guns and ammunition that Paddock had in his hotel room were legally obtained, presumably, on the open gun market. It's all for sale--semi-automatic guns and 'bump stock' devices to enable the automatics to overcome the deficiency of being merely 'semi' automatics. The only "disturbed" Paddock (instead of the stark raving mad Paddock) had further equipped his rifles with enhanced sites that enabled him to target individuals from a distance of 1200 feet. In addition he had enough ammunition to fire away for what, 9 minutes?

The deployment of his arsenal in Las Vegas follows the logic of the legally sold product: A large share of the 300 millions guns in private hands are designed to kill people--mostly one, two, or three at a time, but more complicated and entirely legal guns are on sale that are designed to kill dozens, and injure a few hundred in just a few minutes more.

At this very moment, Thursday, 12:30, p.m., central time zone, potential killers are browsing the legal, public, socially accepted displays of guns, ammunition, and accessories and are opening their wallets to buy.

Are to suppose that Stephen Paddock is the last person who will follow the logic of the product and that no one else will ever fulfill the purpose for which the (in effect) machine guns are designed--killing lots of people? No.

There is a complete 'disconnect' between guns and consequences. I'm not talking about squirrel, duck, and deer hunters.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday referred to the gunman, Stephen Paddock, as “disturbed,” but said that much of the past 10 years of his life was a mystery. “What we know is Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” he said.

“Don’t you think the concealment of his history, of his life, was well-thought-out?” the sheriff asked. “It’s incumbent upon us as professionals to dig that up.”
— New York Times

"Disturbed"? You think?

"Mystery"? What mystery?

"Secret life"? What secret life?.

The pile of guns and ammunition that Paddock had in his hotel room were legally obtained, presumably, on the open gun market. It's all for sale--semi-automatic guns and 'bump stock' devices to enable the automatics to overcome the deficiency of being merely 'semi' automatics. The only "disturbed" Paddock (instead of the stark raving mad Paddock) had further equipped his rifles with enhanced sites that enabled him to target individuals from a distance of 1200 feet. In addition he had enough ammunition to fire away for what, 9 minutes?

The deployment of his arsenal in Las Vegas follows the logic of the legally sold product: A large share of the 300 millions guns in private hands are designed to kill people--mostly one, two, or three at a time, but more complicated and entirely legal guns are on sale that are designed to kill dozens, and injure a few hundred in just a few minutes more.

At this very moment, Thursday, 12:30, p.m., central time zone, potential killers are browsing the legal, public, socially accepted displays of guns, ammunition, and accessories and are opening their wallets to buy.

Are to suppose that Stephen Paddock is the last person who will follow the logic of the product and that no one else will ever fulfill the purpose for which the (in effect) machine guns are designed--killing lots of people? No. — Bitter Crank

What scientific evidence is there that supports your thesis?

I would take a close look at any reliable scientific evidence--any research paper, journal article, etc.-- you know of.

For which statement do you want scientific proof?

History tells us that the National Rifle Association has, since 1977, sought to normalize guns in public and private settings, by seeking to have laws that limit the use of guns struck down or repealed. They have been really very successful. The NRA has been spending up to $100,000,000 per year on selected conservative candidates (they don't bother supporting democrats). This has had concrete results in national and state legislation. weakening -- or eliminating -- controls on gun usage.

There are, according to informed reports a range of 1 gun for every American to 1 gun for every two Americans. Neither all, nor 1/2 of Americans hunt game. Most of these guns are for target practice, collections, or for defensive or offensive purposes. This is a matter of extensive public record. So also is the rate of death from gun violence. There isn't a strict correlation of 1.0 between guns and gun deaths, but there is some correlation. And we know that if one doesn't have a gun in one's hand, one can not shoot somebody with it.

My thesis -- that the number of guns in circulation, and the slight control on who buys all kinds of guns and accessories contributes to gun violence is supported by public health researchers. Naturally, there are other factors besides the guns themselves. There is the price of guns and ammunition; there are the social factors of lax law enforcement in ghettos which allows multiple-killers to get away with their crimes; there is the history of social deprivation and abuse.

If we want to be people who tolerate senseless, preventable violence, there is probably not much any academic, legislator, clergy, social activist, etc. can do to stop the mass murders. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Are you sure that you do not have this statement backward? What can we actually do to stop such massmurders? Do you sentence the massmurderers to death? Clearly that doesn't work. The question of why these things occur will never be answered, and therefore the cause cannot be addressed. There is really no rational option but the painfully obvious ... to tolerate.

It's an illusion.

Globally, 151,000 people die every day. That's a hard fact. It's objective. [Going back to the recent objective/subjective discussion].

Now people overlay their cultural biases on it. The overwhelming majority die of heart disease. They don't make the news. 21,000 children die of malnutrition and disease secondary to poverty. They don't make the news. Just in the US, 100 people die every day in automobile accidents, most involving alcohol. They make the local news but not the national or international news. They're just as dead and their deaths were just as unexpected and tragic and horrifying as those 59 in Las Vegas, but they don't have the same cultural resonance.

Suppose that objective facts stay the same but the cultural emphasis changes. So we ignore the 59 dead in Las Vegas because crazy gun nuts are actually a statistical anomaly. Perhaps the news focuses on the the automobile deaths. We show the 100 daily dead on the evening news, show the grieving relatives, find the bartenders and liquor store clerks who sold the perpetrators their booze. Something might be done.

The 151,000 deaths are objective. Which deaths we regard as newsworthy and culturally meaningful is purely cultural. It's an illusion. The deaths are real. The horror over this 59 and not the 21,000 dead children is cultural and political.

You want to ban butt stocks? Why? Why not ban drunk driving? First offense, 30 days in the slam. Second offense, a year in the slam. No excuses, no picking up trash on weekends, no slaps on the wrist, no suspended sentence because you play golf with the local police chief or contribute to the mayors reelection fund. Drive drunk, go to jail that night.

You'd save a Las Vegas worth of lives every single day of the year.

Why are you worked up about the 59 and not the 151,000 or the 21,000 or the hundred a day? Why are you emotionally troubled by the number 59 and not bothered in the slightest by 151,000?

It's the same phenomenon as plane crashes. A hundred people die in a plane crash and it makes the national news. That same hundred die in geographically dispersed car crashes and nobody except the friends and relatives even hear about it.

Death is objective. What makes the news is cultural and political. One is real and the other's an illusion.

The 151,000 deaths are objective. Which deaths we regard as newsworthy and culturally meaningful is purely cultural. It's an illusion. The deaths are real. The horror over this 59 and not the 21,000 dead children is cultural and political. — fishfry

Tripe. There is no 'moral equivalence' between deaths by natural causes and catastrophes, and homicides caused by deranged gunmen for no conceivable reason. It's astonishing how easily these rationalisations are wielded - perhaps it is one of the reasons that it keeps happening. 'Just an illusion, folks, nothing to see here, move along.

We don't really know why these mass murders are happening. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Sure we do, it's abundantly obvious. Very high numbers of guns in culture, frequent depictions of killings in movies and video games, and imitative behaviour on the part of alienated or psychologically unbalanced individuals. It's a problem almost unique to the USA, although it does happen in other countries, but with nowhere near the same frequency.

I have to admit, I have a kind of sick fascination with the rationalizations offered in the face of gun attacks in the US. Fascination because they are so impossible to take seriously that the only way to approach them are as anthropological exhibits of the powers of human self-delusion. It would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly horrific. After all, the fact is that the US has a problem with guns. And it is specifically a gun problem, specific to the US:



source



source

The US is literally in a class of it's own. You have to extend every chart just to fit the US in when it comes to death by gun. Yet at every point will you find attempts to diffuse, deny, disperse or downplay the specificity of the problem. One will find it assimilated to 'human nature', or 'deaths in general' or 'we don't know what the problem really is'. Anything to deny that this is a problem whose scale is exclusive to the US, and is specifically to do with gun deaths which cannot be simply assimilated other other kinds of death, violent or otherwise.

More guns, less gun violence. As long as people are tossing around charts.



http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/

Even liberal HuffPo gets it. "We Are More Afraid Than Ever of Gun Violence, But the Truth Is the Murder Rate Is at a 50-Year Low"

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/we-are-more-afraid-than-e_b_8740750.html

There's a lot of emotionalism in the air but this is a philosophy forum. Another 59 people got murdered today by drunks. Their deaths were every bit as horrifying as the deaths in Las Vegas, their loved ones just as devastated. They just didn't all die in one place, and the media aren't jerking our chains about it. Someone called that point "tripe." I call it perspective.

doesn't include suicides and accidental shootings.

accidental shootings — Wayfarer

Oh now you care about accidents. An hour ago you couldn't be bothered. The 59 killed by drunks today are joined by another 41 who died in accidents not related to alcohol. Texting, fatigue, inattention. Another 100 tomorrow. You are making my point for me. Those 59 in Las Vegas are 59 out of 151,000 that day and another 151,000 every day since. Why do you only care about the 59? It's emotionalism whipped up by the media and the circumstances. If you can pull yourself away from your melodrama for a moment, grieve for the others as well. Please.

not difficult when it's such a meaningless point.

it's depressing, the 'business as usual' attitude toward atrocity.

Only the 59 have meaning.

In all seriousness I would like you to explain this point to me.

that intentional murder carries moral implications that accidental death or death by natural causes do not. But if you can't comprehend that distinction then indeed discussion is pointless.