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Las Vegas: Worst Mass Shooting in US History

It's great that people are finally acknowledging that white People shooting up churches is all about mental health and has no link to religion or any philosophy, we as a society have to find these neglected souls and treat them better - we have failed these poor folks.



It's unfortunate that so many people however refuse to aknoweldge RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM when a brown person says 'god is great' in Arabic and commits violence. Why won't people just say it so these others, inherently evil dirty scums of society no longer are able to commit such acts. JUST SAY IT.

Why is this name so important to you? How does calling it by a religious name stop those who distort that religion from continuing to do so? It denigrates millions of peaceful adherents to that religion. We don't call out other murderers by their religions, even when religion plays a part in their mixed-up philosophies. And you are kidding yourself if you think that Christianity has not been a part of terrible distortions in some peoples' thinking. Have you read the Bible completely? There's some messed up philosophy in there. Yet we don't feel it is appropriate to paint all Christians with the same brush as those who commit terrible atrocities in its name.
 
It's great that people are finally acknowledging that white People shooting up churches is all about mental health and has no link to religion or any philosophy, we as a society have to find these neglected souls and treat them better - we have failed these poor folks.



It's unfortunate that so many people however refuse to aknoweldge RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM when a brown person says 'god is great' in Arabic and commits violence. Why won't people just say it so these others, inherently evil dirty scums of society no longer are able to commit such acts. JUST SAY IT.

You for real?
 
Sad but kind of true:
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I must be talking to different white people than I am. I hear dramatically different things.

For example I have heard the NYC, Vegas and TX shooters described as both terrorists and mentally ill (usually not mutually exclusive ) . Thoughts and prayers sent out to all three shootings. It’s not so divided based on the ethnicity or religion of the shooter as often portrayed.

Sure the above problem exists but it’s not one I hear regularly and I live in a fairly conservative area of the US.
 
To be clear I think all of these things, or at least the vast majority, have their roots in some form of mental illness, regardless of race, gender identity, religion, whatever. I do not harbor any delusions that if we had better mental health care we would avoid literally every single one, but to ignore the root cause, which lies most often in mental issues, is to cut off our noses to spite our faces. We can harp on controlling guns and everything else but we are doing ourselves as a society a grave disservice if we do nothing to address the looming mental health crisis in this country. Just my 2 cents.
 
I must be talking to different white people than I am. I hear dramatically different things.

For example I have heard the NYC, Vegas and TX shooters described as both terrorists and mentally ill (usually not mutually exclusive ) . Thoughts and prayers sent out to all three shootings. It’s not so divided based on the ethnicity or religion of the shooter as often portrayed.

Sure the above problem exists but it’s not one I hear regularly and I live in a fairly conservative area of the US.

I can't remember a single case of a non-white murderer that people excused for having mental illness. Similarly, I don't recall a single white shooter who apparently didn't have mental illness.
 
I can't remember a single case of a non-white murderer that people excused for having mental illness. Similarly, I don't recall a single white shooter who apparently didn't have mental illness.

Micah Xavier Johnson, Omar Mateen and Spencer Hight to name the ones off the top of my head.
 
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I can't remember a single case of a non-white murderer that people excused for having mental illness. Similarly, I don't recall a single white shooter who apparently didn't have mental illness.

I hear them condemned that way regularly. Oh well.

**** all of them and **** their reasons for murdering.
 
Micah Xavier Johnson and Spencer Hight.

Don't know them, and I was being rhetorical. What I'm saying is, whenever we have a mass shooting or some such act by a white person, people will automatically jump to the mental illness conclusion. And that's justified most of the time. People don't view similar crimes by non-whites the same way. It's always the ideology, violent culture, or maybe it's how these people are. That's why the Muslim guy in NYC is just an animal, while this new shooting shows the importance of mental health.

Even in cases where mental illness is clearly present, like the guy who shot up the gay bar, people still found it more comfortable to establish an ideological link.
 
Don't know them, and I was being rhetorical. What I'm saying is, whenever we have a mass shooting or some such act by a white person, people will automatically jump to the mental illness conclusion. And that's justified most of the time. People don't view similar crimes by non-whites the same way. It's always the ideology, violent culture, or maybe it's how these people are. That's why the Muslim guy in NYC is just an animal, while this new shooting shows the importance of mental health.

Even in cases where mental illness is clearly present, like the guy who shot up the gay bar, people still found it more comfortable to establish an ideological link.

After mass shootings, I think people want to know why they did it, and will something like this happen again so we can prevent it. That's why, again for me, the focus turns to religion, nationality, mental illness, medication, guns, etc.
I personally don't see people just saying **** like thoughts and prayers outside of Facebook posts (I don't judge those who say that either and I'm not religious.) In real life, I hear people disgusted, angry, worried and saddened - regardless of who the shooter was. They just want answers and I think that's fair.
The media, however, will politicize and click-bait the **** out of it. Almost like their job or bias depended on it.
 
I get it and it truly is an issue and it needs to be addressed but the whole mental illness issue, and perhaps the way the media covers it, might be giving future idiots an open door to commit such acts, them rationalizing their behavior because hey, they know America empathizes with their "affliction." I should be better at explaining myself, given I am a teacher, and I'm sure no one will agree with me, and I have no proof to suggest this, and I have no background in psychology, but I feel like it's just the way the human mind works.

My brother committed suicide. At his service, there were probably about 500 current or former students. I didn't cry and was very thankful and pretty positive as I stood in line and greeted them as they offered their condolences. Sorry, but there was no way I was going to cry and be broken up up there in front of kids. My brother made a very poor choice. End of story. I didn't want any impressionable and misguided minds seeing weeping family members, feeling sorry for him, taking similarly stupid future actions down the line.
 
Micah Xavier Johnson, Omar Mateen and Spencer Hight to name the ones off the top of my head.

Interesting article on "american assassins" found by googling Micah Johnson.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/micah-xavier-johnson-assassin_us_578936ede4b08608d3347fa8

After the shooting spree that lasted for several hours, Johnson was mortally wounded by a robot wielding an explosive. His final act was to write a note in blood ― “RB”. The desire to tie him to a black nationalist movement is so strong that there’s been serious speculation that he was trying to write “RBG,” which stands for “red, black and green,” the colors of the Pan-African flag. But in looking for meaning in the message, the media has missed the meaning in the act. The very act of writing in that moment places Johnson in the tradition not of the black militant, but of the American assassin.

While he looked different, both politically and physically, from most well-known assassins, in the pantheon of American assassins, there was nothing unusual about Micah Xavier Johnson.
 
I get it and it truly is an issue and it needs to be addressed but the whole mental illness issue, and perhaps the way the media covers it, might be giving future idiots an open door to commit such acts, them rationalizing their behavior because hey, they know America empathizes with their "affliction." I should be better at explaining myself, given I am a teacher, and I'm sure no one will agree with me, and I have no proof to suggest this, and I have no background in psychology, but I feel like it's just the way the human mind works.

My brother committed suicide. At his service, there were probably about 500 current or former students. I didn't cry and was very thankful and pretty positive as I stood in line and greeted them as they offered their condolences. Sorry, but there was no way I was going to cry and be broken up up there in front of kids. My brother made a very poor choice. End of story. I didn't want any impressionable and misguided minds seeing weeping family members, feeling sorry for him, taking similarly stupid future actions down the line.

Yeah I think we need to clearly delineate the difference between facing and fixing our cultural response to mental illness and aggrandizing it. I think your concern was very valid, copycatting happens, especially given our current cultural atmosphere. "13 reasons", for example, shows how we view this and how certain segments of our population have taken to almost showing respect and admiration for it.

I also express my sincerest condolences. No one should ever have to lose a family member that way.
 
Yeah I think we need to clearly delineate the difference between facing and fixing our cultural response to mental illness and aggrandizing it. I think your concern was very valid, copycatting happens, especially given our current cultural atmosphere. "13 reasons", for example, shows how we view this and how certain segments of our population have taken to almost showing respect and admiration for it.

I also express my sincerest condolences. No one should ever have to lose a family member that way.

Thanks. It's been seven years. We had had a falling out, primarily because of his volatile behavior. He was a great human being. Very hard-working, passionate, caring, driven, and self-accomplished. But I knew I shouldn't be around him. A sort of perfect storm happened.

While in college, he'd been robbed at gunpoint, had to get down, face down on the ground, gun to the back of his head, like that, and thus bought a gun years later and went to the range relatively often. Hunted some. Had that never happened, I doubt he'd have ever owned a gun. Around the time of his suicide (he was 39 y/o, he was running on fumes, dating a girl who lived across the river in Philly (getting like 3-4 hours of sleep way too often which is bad in my family--my dad and I have spoken about this--we become very moody and short when tired like this), and then she broke up with him. He was never whipped over a girl but when this girl broke up with him, he was crushed. Add in debt (I have no idea if this added to his stress--probably not but I've speculated), a recent injury which totally prohibited him from working out (we in my family seem to need those endorphins), and maybe most importantly, too much alcohol (and he wasn't a drinker like me at all), and his natural behavioral tendencies, and a bad night ensued. It's sad but it was tough for me to be saddened by it.
 
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