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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEverything We Think We Know About Mass Shooters Is Wrong
...Trunk does, however, think often of the person who is out there right now feeling the way he used to feel. The person with a grievance. The person with a plan. The person with a gunhell, an arsenal. The person we feel powerless against, because we dont know who he is. All we know is what heor sheis going to do.
Can he or shetheybe stopped before they become what we in America call mass shooters? We are so convinced they cant be that we dont even know if anyone is trying to stop them. Can they be understood? We are so convinced the evil they represent is inexplicable that we dont try to explicate it. Mass shootings have become by now American ritualsblood sacrifices, propitiations to our angry American gods, made all the more terrible by our apparent acceptance of them. They have become a feature of American life, and we know very well what follows each one: the shock, the horror, the demonization of the guilty, the prayers for the innocent, the calls for action, the finger-pointing, the paralysis, and finally the forgetting. We know that they change everything only so that everything may remain unchanged.
But we are wrong about that. Mass shootings are not unstoppable, and there are people trying to stop them. They are not even inexplicable, because every time Trunk hears of one he understands why it happened and who did it. We have come to believe that mass shooters cant be stopped because we never know who they are until they make themselves known. But Trunk was almost one of them once. He was a heartbeat away. And what he understands is that shooters want to be known, not through the infamy of a massacre, but before they have to go through with it. They want to be known as much as he, years later, wants to remain unknown, walking to the bus stop in the rain
..
We tend to think of perpetrators of targeted violence as either psychopathscold, isolated, highly motivated, and consciencelessor troubled individuals who one day just snap. According to the tenets of threat assessment, they are neither. Indeed, according to the tenets of threat assessment, nobody just snaps; everybody follows an explicable course, even those intent on accomplishing the inexplicable. The people who carry out these attacks typically do them out of a sense of desperation, says Marisa Randazzo, a former Secret Service psychologist who collaborated with Fein and Vossekuil on several papers and is now a partner at Sigma Threat Management Associates. They typically have been of concern to people who know them for long periods of time. And when we did interviews with school shooters, they expressed a level of ambivalence that surprised me. Part of them felt they had to go through with it; part of them felt they didnt want to at all. Part of them looked for encouragement; part of them looked for someone to stop them. The national mind-set is that theyre determined to go through with it no matter what. That is absolutely not the case.
http://www.esquire.com/features/mass-shooters-1014
Can he or shetheybe stopped before they become what we in America call mass shooters? We are so convinced they cant be that we dont even know if anyone is trying to stop them. Can they be understood? We are so convinced the evil they represent is inexplicable that we dont try to explicate it. Mass shootings have become by now American ritualsblood sacrifices, propitiations to our angry American gods, made all the more terrible by our apparent acceptance of them. They have become a feature of American life, and we know very well what follows each one: the shock, the horror, the demonization of the guilty, the prayers for the innocent, the calls for action, the finger-pointing, the paralysis, and finally the forgetting. We know that they change everything only so that everything may remain unchanged.
But we are wrong about that. Mass shootings are not unstoppable, and there are people trying to stop them. They are not even inexplicable, because every time Trunk hears of one he understands why it happened and who did it. We have come to believe that mass shooters cant be stopped because we never know who they are until they make themselves known. But Trunk was almost one of them once. He was a heartbeat away. And what he understands is that shooters want to be known, not through the infamy of a massacre, but before they have to go through with it. They want to be known as much as he, years later, wants to remain unknown, walking to the bus stop in the rain
..
We tend to think of perpetrators of targeted violence as either psychopathscold, isolated, highly motivated, and consciencelessor troubled individuals who one day just snap. According to the tenets of threat assessment, they are neither. Indeed, according to the tenets of threat assessment, nobody just snaps; everybody follows an explicable course, even those intent on accomplishing the inexplicable. The people who carry out these attacks typically do them out of a sense of desperation, says Marisa Randazzo, a former Secret Service psychologist who collaborated with Fein and Vossekuil on several papers and is now a partner at Sigma Threat Management Associates. They typically have been of concern to people who know them for long periods of time. And when we did interviews with school shooters, they expressed a level of ambivalence that surprised me. Part of them felt they had to go through with it; part of them felt they didnt want to at all. Part of them looked for encouragement; part of them looked for someone to stop them. The national mind-set is that theyre determined to go through with it no matter what. That is absolutely not the case.
http://www.esquire.com/features/mass-shooters-1014
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Everything We Think We Know About Mass Shooters Is Wrong (Original Post)
phantom power
Sep 2014
OP
Why include the "she" pronoun when a female mass shooter is so devastatingly rare?
valerief
Sep 2014
#1
valerief
(53,235 posts)1. Why include the "she" pronoun when a female mass shooter is so devastatingly rare?
Barack_America
(28,876 posts)2. This information should be part of a public service announcement.
It seems that, when identified early, a real difference can be made. Many lives could be saved with this information.
Summary, if you have a son who isolates, intervene, and keep him away from guns. Also, the only way you can guarantee authorities will take your concerns seriously is to say you fear your son is getting involved in terrorism.