Can mass shootings be prevented?

[Let's Get Free]

Given the recent rampage by an automatic weapon-bearing killer, who may or may not have been non compos mentis at the time he murdered 20 quite young children, calls have gone out to either make mental health treatment more available or, as a cheaper alternative, force people into care who are suspected of being mentally ill -- probably at the point of a gun.

While it seems obvious to me that someone who would kill total strangers by the score is probably deranged, that may or may not be true. And in any case, the vast majority of of gun-related deaths (many thousands) are carried out by people who are not mentally ill.

So my question is will any amount of legislation prevent something like this from happening?

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not sure if you're only talking about mental health legislation here or any sort of legislation, but, no, the point about things like this is they're by definition illegal, and therefore making laws won't prevent them ever happening. It's already illegal to shoot children.

So you must mean 'can laws make it more difficult for this to happen?' and the answer, obviously, is yes. If it's illegal to own assault weapons, for example, there will be fewer assault weapons around (there will still be some illegal ones, of course), so less opportunity for people to use assault weapons in mass killings. If everyone suspected of having mental health issues was locked in an asylum, that would mean that the very few people who commit mass killings who have previously been suspected of having mental health problems would not have the opportunity to do so.

Really though, should we be asking the state to protect us? Legislation (either on gun availability or mental health issues) effectively means giving the state more power. That's not really what we're about, is it?

[Psy]

So you must mean 'can laws make it more difficult for this to happen?' and the answer, obviously, is yes. If it's illegal to own assault weapons, for example, there will be fewer assault weapons around (there will still be some illegal ones, of course), so less opportunity for people to use assault weapons in mass killings.
Actually the banning alcohol and recreational drugs simply pushed them into the black market that made greater profits off them, same is true for weapons where even US occupation of Iraq and a total ban on all private firearms exists in Iraq doesn't stop the black market from flooding Iraq with cheap guns and making them easily available to anyone with the cash.

[l'Enfermé]

Really though, should we be asking the state to protect us? Legislation (either on gun availability or mental health issues) effectively means giving the state more power. That's not really what we're about, is it?
That's like saying we shouldn't call the police to report rapes because we're not "about" giving the police more power.

[Blake's Baby]

Is it very much like that? I don't really see the connection.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think Blake is right that there can be policies to mitgate or reduce the likelyhood of things of this scale - freely available counciling would be my perferred short-term suggestion, but even then didn't the movie-theater shooter see a campus counciler?

At any rate there are things that the state can do and things that people can push from below that might alievate some of this - obviosuly rates seem to be different in different regions, so that suggests that even within capitalism different conditions could make an impact one way or the other.

But ultimately (and more than other sensationalized and repeatedly occouring kinds of violence by induviduals in society, like serial murder, IMO) these kinds of crimes do seem to be connected to factors inherent in capitalist life. Who is it that apparently tends to do this in the US: alienated students on their campus, alienated workers at their jobs, military vets who feel abandoned and alienated. There's ideologically driven right-wing shooters too, but that's different than these others I think.

[Sam_b]

I really don't think this is that much of a mental health issue, to be honest, and it's a sad inditement on a society where things like this are the catalyst for taking mental health seriously.

I think a good start is looking at a culture in the US where it's normal to experience violence in everyday life - the US overseas killing people in Afghanistan, a culture of violence in a society, and one that divides the population by any means necessary - be it by ethnicity, gender, and so on. The idea that arms is a quick fix solution seems commonplace in US society, especially with regards to the right (rhetoric along the lines of 'who is going to protect you when a robber comes in - the federal government?!!!' so on etc etc), and thus having a heavily armed society is thus normalised, and almost encouraged.

We may hear the argument above about whether we want the state to protect us, but is this anywhere near as bad as the state killing us?

[ed miliband]

i think blake's baby's point is as communists we shouldn't be taking the position where we are actively calling for the state to pass legislation to "protect us" (and in turn, giving the state more power).

which is perfectly correct.

[hetz]

i think blake's baby's point is as communists we shouldn't be taking the position where we are actively calling for the state to pass legislation to "protect us" (and in turn, giving the state more power).That's what states do, protect you from...themselves. :lol:

But hey maybe we shouldn't be "actively calling for the state to pass legislation to protect us from, say, unscrupulous companies, let's test our own food for botulism and our own clothes for dangerous chemicals.
Whether the state has more ( Sweden ) or less ( Somalia ) power in this context has little to do with revolutionary working class struggle. In my opinion at least.

[Red Banana]

What really needs to be discussed is medication. Keeping people who already have a mental illness on mind altering drugs 24/7 is usually not a good idea. Many psychiatric drugs out today have been shown to cause violent outbursts and suicidal tendencies.

From what I've heard the shooter last week was taking large doses of psychiatric drugs regularly, which wouldn't be all too surprising given his condition.

In reference to guns, if you out law them, the only people who will have them will be cops and criminals, the two worst groups to have them. That being said, certain people should not be able to own guns, namely the mentally ill and mentally handicapped, as they in all likeliness will not be responsible enough to handle a fire arm.

[Os Cangaceiros]

That's what states do, protect you from...themselves. :lol:

But hey maybe we shouldn't be "actively calling for the state to pass legislation to protect us from, say, unscrupulous companies, let's test our own food for botulism and our own clothes for dangerous chemicals.
Whether the state has more ( Sweden ) or less ( Somalia ) power in this context has little to do with revolutionary working class struggle. In my opinion at least.

When states receive mandates to initiate massive social control measures in response to some perceived threat (like terrorism, mass murderers etc), that is something that's actually worrying for revolutionary working class struggle. When cameras record everything from every angle, when conversations are recorded on every public bus, when public protests are criminalized, when facial recognition technology combines with omnipresent survelliance, when courts mandate that everyone's DNA has to be on file etc....yeah, all that stuff puts up serious obstacles for those engaging in revolutionary (in the eyes of the state: criminal) organization.

None of what I just listed is some paranoid Orwellian fantasy, either...it's either already happened in certain areas, or is in the process of being implemented.

Admittedly that's more in response to terrorism than anything else, but the idea that increased state control is meaningless to revolutionary ambitions doesn't seem right to me.

[Rafiq]

The existing mechanisms which compel someone to go on a shooting spree may very well be less numerous, however I'm not so sure as to whether they can be prevented all together.

[Geiseric]

Well a thousand years ago, could they of stopped any drunken viking or medieval solder from killing or raping anybody, when they had only say an axe or sword if there were laws against it? Not really, passing sword control wouldn't of worked, and the same logic would probably apply with guns too. As long as people are alienated from society, or have their own problems which drive them nuts, which is the bigger issue, there will be sociopath mass shooters, insane or not, look at Breivik. Any laws they have in place are useful only when hey catch somebody after the fact. Unless you can somehow isolate potential wanton violent people in one place (the NRA\militia groups comes to mind) these things are more or less unavoidable.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING.
WHILE A LEGITIMATE QUESTION WHEN TAKEN A CERTAIN WAY, THIS POST IS PHRASED AS A DEEPLY PROBLEMATIC JOKE.
DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE EMOTIONALLY SENSITIVE AROUND THIS ISSUE.

Can mass shootings be detourned?

[blake 3:17]

Bring in proper gun control legislation. Ban private ownership of these insane weapons. Ban the production of these insane weapons.

The idea that a libertarian approach to the guns will somehow help usher in a proletarian revolution or workers militias or whatever is a completely goofball ultra-left fantasy.

I'd like to see a movement which challenges the profiteering from small arms manufacturing and sales. The weapons used in the Newtown shooting have no place in the world.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Bring in proper gun control legislation. Ban private ownership of these insane weapons. Ban the production of these insane weapons.

The idea that a libertarian approach to the guns will somehow help usher in a proletarian revolution or workers militias or whatever is a completely goofball ultra-left fantasy.

I'd like to see a movement which challenges the profiteering from small arms manufacturing and sales. The weapons used in the Newtown shooting have no place in the world.

"ultra-left fantasy"? Where has the "ultra-left" promoted this idea you speak of?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Bring in proper gun control legislation. Ban private ownership of these insane weapons. Ban the production of these insane weapons.

The idea that a libertarian approach to the guns will somehow help usher in a proletarian revolution or workers militias or whatever is a completely goofball ultra-left fantasy.

I'd like to see a movement which challenges the profiteering from small arms manufacturing and sales. The weapons used in the Newtown shooting have no place in the world.

I feel like guns are a weird sidestepping of the issue (both of revolution, and of mass shootings). While I'm definitely "in" to end to their manufacture, I don't feel like their presence is the defining factor enabling antisocial male violence. I also feel like mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg - for every mass shooting there is doubtless a Robert Pickton, and doubtless "lesser" male violences. To divorce this particular method from the rapes and assaults that constitute patriarchal violence in the day-to-day is necessarily, I think, to misunderstand it.

[Geiseric]

Yeah let's make sure basic gun safety is applied on a national scale, with laws that somebody who has an intention of not being in danger can come up with, such as no dangerous psychotics or sociopaths should be able to buy guns. We need to realize that not all psychotics are dangerous, because that is ignorant, a misconception based on secondhand knowege, Breivk wasn't insane though, nor was Hitler, george bush, or any other mass murderer who has "politics," but the media likes to pin everything on mentally handicapped people, it's a scapegoat for our fucked up culture which unavoidably creates killers, because there isn't a difference in their minds between soldiers shooting civilians in iraq and them shooting kids in the U.S. If soldiers weren't celebrated as much as they are for being monsters all around the world, with the fucking news filming them bombing children, maybe americans wouldn't be so messed up.

[l'Enfermé]

Is it very much like that? I don't really see the connection.



i think blake's baby's point is as communists we shouldn't be taking the position where we are actively calling for the state to pass legislation to "protect us" (and in turn, giving the state more power).

which is perfectly correct.
Nobody has a problem with the State protecting us from rapists but the State protecting us from child-shooters is a no-no? How does that even make sense?

[Sea]

I feel like guns are a weird sidestepping of the issue (both of revolution, and of mass shootings). While I'm definitely "in" to end to their manufacture, I don't feel like their presence is the defining factor enabling antisocial male violence. I also feel like mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg - for every mass shooting there is doubtless a Robert Pickton, and doubtless "lesser" male violences. To divorce this particular method from the rapes and assaults that constitute patriarchal violence in the day-to-day is necessarily, I think, to misunderstand it.I hope I don't sound like a misogynist when I ask this...

Am I supposed to be reading this as a satire?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I hope I don't sound like a misogynist when I ask this..

No, I'm quite serious. I don't believe it's a coincidence that, with the exception of Brenda Ann Spencer (who, not coincidentally, was bought a gun by her shitty father), all of the mass shooters in the United States over the past twenty-odd years have been men. I sincerely think mass shootings are just another manifestation of patriarchal rule of "public space". I think trying to understand these events in terms of "gun control" is skirting the more fundamental issue of masculinized violence.

[Sea]

No, I'm quite serious. I don't believe it's a coincidence that, with the exception of Brenda Ann Spencer (who, not coincidentally, was bought a gun by her shitty father), all of the mass shooters in the United States over the past twenty-odd years have been men. I sincerely think mass shootings are just another manifestation of patriarchal rule of "public space". I think trying to understand these events in terms of "gun control" is skirting the more fundamental issue of masculinized violence.If gender rolls in society were reversed in every way, females would be the majority perpetrators. To call such violence patriarchal referring to the division of social purpose by the sexes is completely accurate. What bothers me is how you phrase it as "male violence" or "masculinized violence". Such violence is not inherent to being male but rather it is inherent to the position in society that males are placed in. These mass-murderers being males is no more masculine in nature than were such a reversal to take place their actions would be feminine in nature.

And I agree that putting skirts on the issue won't help. :cool:

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Bring in proper gun control legislation. Ban private ownership of these insane weapons. Ban the production of these insane weapons.

Disarm the proletariat, while the State and private companies get to keep their weapons. I thought you were a communist?


The idea that a libertarian approach to the guns will somehow help usher in a proletarian revolution or workers militias or whatever is a completely goofball ultra-left fantasy.

Good thing that's not why I support personal firearms ownership. Lovely strawman, by the way, did you make it yourself?


I'd like to see a movement which challenges the profiteering from small arms manufacturing and sales. The weapons used in the Newtown shooting have no place in the world.

Weapons have a place in the world, whether you recognise that fact or not. That place being mostly in the hands of the ruling classes and their guard labour, actually. Which makes your insistence that the relatively tiny portion of weapons remaining in the hands of private individuals should be removed all the more disconcerting.

[Jimmie Higgins]

But hey maybe we shouldn't be "actively calling for the state to pass legislation to protect us from, say, unscrupulous companies, let's test our own food for botulism and our own clothes for dangerous chemicals.Well this is a bit different isn't it?


Nobody has a problem with the State protecting us from rapists but the State protecting us from child-shooters is a no-no? How does that even make sense?

I hear what you are both saying in the above quotes, but I think to look at it another way, the state doesn't actually protect us on any of these counts.

FDA and other regulatory agencies regularly look the other way and are in bed with the companies and industries they are supposed to be protecting us from. Rapes that don't involve assaults (by strangers, ands even then usually only if it's a strager from an "undesireable" population like homesless people or youth from oppressed groups) are often ignored and downplayed by police. There are common stories about police convincing female rape victims to not press charges or even blaming the victims.

Secondly, the only reason industry has health and safty requirements by the state is from the legacy of past popular pressure (of some sort) and movements. There were real problems for capitalism itself from unregulated food and medical production, but it still took a push from below by workers (for safer job conditions) and middle class reformers to have the "state" do anything. And for these reforms to mean anything, that pressure and organization has to be there otherwise it's barely any protection from these sorts of agencies.

But in this specific case, I'm not sure what demanding that the "state protect people" even means? Levaving the demands there guarentees that the state will only respond with lip service and self-service. So police agencies might capitalize on this fear by mandating more police at schools (which will end up justifying more kids being locked up for fighting or drugs than would ever stop someone who wanted to shoot-up or blow up a school or other public place). The Democrats and Republicans will ignore any in-depth look at this (because they can't do anything about the real underlying reasons for random induvidual violence in this society) and just try and blame guns on the one hand and "culture" on the other.

The politicians and middle class organizations IMO are not simply and cynically capitalizing on this though (well some are no doubt) it's a real problem even for them on a level but it's a problem that can not be solved under capitalist logic - especailly as there is a bi-partisan agreement on things that probably contribute to this sort of violence: cutting and privitizing schools (causing more competition and stress and debt), pushing down working class living standards, wages, benifits, union power (such as it is), and social reforms, increasing repression, war, etc. So in this context, "state protection" just isn't oing to protect much as far as we are concerned anyway.

People could build an alternative strategy and create a movement to make some changes which I think could help in these problems (as well as help people organize politically), but state action by itself will be empty at best, an excuse for unrelated state repression at worst.

As far a gun control goes, I personally take a neutral position on it for the most part. While I hear what people are saying about the "monopolization of violence by the state" they largely do this through legal means anyway. I'd be totally opposed to overt attempts to use gun control as a means to repress struggle: like Regan's ban of guns in urban areas in California (the agricultural bosses could arm themselves against strikers, but black people couldn't arm themselves against cops!) which was directed at the Black Panthers basically. But other than that, it's largely here nor there as a real issue for the class struggle at this point.

At some point, armed struggle will be a factor and in past strikes workers armed themselves with weapons they scrounged from their communities to form make-shift militias. On a practicle level, I think people will need to arm themselves against fascist and quasi-fascist vigilante gun thugs when class struggle picks up IMO long before serious armed repression by the state itself (beyond what we have now). Armed conflict with the state probably isn't going to be determined by people's personal guns. In most insurrections people tend to take over or loot weapons stockpiled by the state itself! In modern times this will be even more important in a revolution - if there is armed confrontation, I hope we have some tanks and motars and shit after we disoriented the military and overran some military bases and police stations, not just a bunch of random assault-weapons.

But I don't support gun control as a means to preventing violence in our daily lives. Guns don't cause people to kill people, social-relations in capitalism does!#anticapitalistNRA

LOL, well anyway, I don't think it's an actual solution and it might make it harder for some people to flip out, but we had bomb threats at my school long before mass-shootings became as common at schools. Sure, there should be some kind of qualifications to have guns, but I don't see how it relates to class struggle much. ANd ultimately, IMO people organizing and winning back some power and control for their lives (even in limited short-term struggles) will likely reduce the stress and hopelessness that causes some random violence in the population than any kind of legislative measure about gun waiting-periods or whatnot would.

[Blake's Baby]

"ultra-left fantasy"? Where has the "ultra-left" promoted this idea you speak of?

I think he might mean the Proletarian Military Policy.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

If gender rolls in society were reversed in every way, females would be the majority perpetrators.

See, the thing is that, even if it's true, that whole assertion is pots and pans. One could also say, "If proletarians were capitalists, proletarians would act like capitalists!" - it's silly whoever, since proletarians are defined in relation to capital, just as women are defined in relation to patriarchy. What we actually need to grapple with are deeply ingrained structures, constructed by centuries of violence, that create men-as-such.

[Killer Enigma]

Return to the Source published an article about the Marxist position on gun control yesterday that you all might find interesting. It argues against gun control as a liberal solution, but it also argues against left-second amendment proponents. Check it out here (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/three-positions-on-gun-control/).

[Blake's Baby]

See, the thing is that, even if it's true, that whole assertion is pots and pans. One could also say, "If proletarians were capitalists, proletarians would act like capitalists!" - it's silly whoever, since proletarians are defined in relation to capital, just as women are defined in relation to patriarchy. What we actually need to grapple with are deeply ingrained structures, constructed by centuries of violence, that create men-as-such.

But you see, Sea was arguing against biological essentialism ('men do this because they have gonads and testosterone, women do that because they have wombs and oestrogen') rather than cultural structures ('men do this because society tells them that's what being masculine is, women do that because society tells them that's what being feminine is').

Sea's argument is that wombs and gonads, testosterone and oestrogen notwithstanding, if women were socialised like men, they'd act like men, and vice versa.

[blake 3:17]

I just hate Amerika.

[Art Vandelay]

It is a sad reflection on the state of the revolutionary left when communists are openly calling for increased state protection, as opposed to community organizing. I feel like we could learn a lesson from the black panthers when it comes to issues like these. All calls for increased state protection do (as if the bourgeois state could protect us anyways), is legitimize the bourgeois state.

[ed miliband]

Nobody has a problem with the State protecting us from rapists but the State protecting us from child-shooters is a no-no? How does that even make sense?

not quite the same thing as actively calling for legislation that gives the state more power, is it?

[blake 3:17]

In the balance of fairness, here's a link to my friend and comrade Steve D'Arcy's call for community control over gun control: http://www.zcommunications.org/a-radical-left-perspective-on-the-gun-control-debate-by-steve-darcy

For 15 years I supported the Orthodox Trotskyist position against gun control & over the past couple of years realized it's kind of a bunch of BS.

I do believe the oppressed and exploited have the right to resist the violence of the state, of the bosses, and the fascists with equal force. Can somebody show me an example where the proliferation of hand guns won a social victory?

Some people on this thread have made distinctions between criminals and oppressed people. From the perspective of the police state, they are the same.

The two countries outside the US that are often pointed out as having looser better gun laws are Switzerland and Israel. Are there any three countries further from socialist revolution than these?

[Comrade Bong]

I am also neutral on the gun control issue. First of all, any gun control laws that will be passed will probably be only on automatic weapons. Therefore, I believe such mass killings will still happen but it will be less violent. However, I do not want the proletariat to be disarmed although that will not matter that much right now.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I feel like people in favor of a gun ban are really underestimating the amount of guns people already own in this country. Even if you did ban assault weapons, the people who already own them would not be required to hand them in anyway. This is a problem the state cannot solve, because it is responsible for a fair portion of the problem in the first place.

[blake 3:17]

I feel like people in favor of a gun ban are really underestimating the amount of guns people already own in this country. Even if you did ban assault weapons, the people who already own them would not be required to hand them in anyway. This is a problem the state cannot solve, because it is responsible for a fair portion of the problem in the first place.

So it's a social disaster already in place. Fair enough.

There've been tensions within the anti-war and global justice movements in Canada about focusing on US imperialism, focusing on US-Canadian imperialism, and focusing Canada's particular role in arms manufacture and resource extraction.

What if we did really start challenging the arms manufacturers? Acting independently of the state, could we force a crisis on these dirt bags?

[Os Cangaceiros]

It is a sad reflection on the state of the revolutionary left when communists are openly calling for increased state protection, as opposed to community organizing. I feel like we could learn a lesson from the black panthers when it comes to issues like these. All calls for increased state protection do (as if the bourgeois state could protect us anyways), is legitimize the bourgeois state.

It's in response to a "crisis" that's existed for about 30 years, too. There hasn't really been any increase in the rate of these instances since the 80's, despite the perception of that in the media.

It's the same with crime in general. Even though crime has consistently gone down since the mid-90's, most Americans think that crime keeps getting worse (http://www.gallup.com/poll/150464/americans-believe-crime-worsening.aspx). The amount of stupid fear and hysteria in this country is unbelievable.

[blake 3:17]

The amount of stupid fear and hysteria in this country is unbelievable.

What needs to end is the stupid culture of stupid fear -- the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the wars on women, children, workers, indigenous peoples, migrants, water, earth, air.

North America isn't just xenophobic. It's afraid of itself.

[Sea]

See, the thing is that, even if it's true, that whole assertion is pots and pans. One could also say, "If proletarians were capitalists, proletarians would act like capitalists!" - it's silly whoever, since proletarians are defined in relation to capital, just as women are defined in relation to patriarchy. What we actually need to grapple with are deeply ingrained structures, constructed by centuries of violence, that create men-as-such.That's not a valid comparison. To oppress is part of being a capitalist. To go on a killing spree is not part of being a male.

And you say "even if it's true". Do you really think that if is so far fetched, comrade?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Regarding the issue of gender, I don't think that this is a sort of "patriarchal violence" but I do think think there is clearly a link to gender. But I think where it fits in is that these shooters typically are shooting workplaces where they feel debased (postal workers, the black guy who shot up his workplace because the managers ignored his complaints about causal racism on the job) and for men particularly in capitalist society, to have a job is fulfilling your "role" - not being good at your job or being fired means "failure" sub-textually. The analogous female gender pressure is on "being a good mother" and - incidentally - we see young mothers often "flip-out" in sensationalized media stories of mothers abandoning their kids or going into a sort of catatonic trance and killing their kids.

Anyway, and school shootings are similarly, it seems to me, due to the pressures and stress at "failing" at your supposed role assigned to you by this society. And so grad students who become depressed and alienated or picked-on loners in high school, or jilted high school lovers seem to typically be the ones doing this.

But back to job-loss as "emasculation" for men: I've read arguments this is why macho movies were popular in the 1980s - because the workforce, particularly blue collar jobs were under attack, black people - particularly men - began to loose more ground in the workforce and so on. This is also when, in the late 1980s, that there is a whole string of workplace shootings by people who got fired or felt powerless on the job.

But if you can't work and have "worth" as a man that way... what's the other option that this society supports for men to prove their worth as men...


http://media.salon.com/2012/12/man_card.jpg

[Futility Personified]

The idea that guns should be purchased is, i'm sorry, ludicrous. Yes, it does mean the state has a monopoly on violence, but realistically, has the right to bear arms resulted in the US being free from tyranny? If anything, the opposite. Arms corporations actively profit from the deaths of the working class, by protecting the right to bear arms you protect the right of arms manufacturers to disseminate murder weapons amongst the dispossessed.

Let's face it, even if groups of revolutionaries can arm themselves legally, what good will it do? It'll just set up that group to be blown to pieces by the army, then afterwards vilified for attacking soldiers or being terrorists. Historically, when revolutions become serious, arms are seized from the army, re appropriated from military depots and then used in conflict. I think any intelligence operative worth his salt would notice a group of anti-state individuals stockpiling a shitload of weapons.

In the meantime, the legality of firearms just means that more of the damned things are being made, more workers are being killed, lumpen-proles are being empowered and more people are snapping and going off shooting people. Maybe in a post-capitalist society, militias would have licence to exist to preserve the revolution, but under capitalism, should weapons be legal? Of course not! And yes, social relations are determined by capitalism, but it is also worth remembering that psychotic episodes sometimes have a basis in chemical imbalances besides social conditions, some people are just born to snap. An egalitarian society should do all it can to ameliorate the pressures of life to make it better for all, but it should also protect it's constituents from deranged individuals.

[Blake's Baby]

The tyranny America is free from, is the tyranny of Americans being told by their government that they aren't allowed to have guns. That's why Americans need guns, to stop the government taking their guns. What are you, some kind of commie?

[ed miliband]

something mark ames, who wrote the book 'going postal', sent to doug henwood re: the idea spree killings are a 'white male' problem:


"I know, the false profile is of a white male loner 25-40. But I can give you numerous examples of workplace massacres carried out by African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, and even some women. As for school shootings of the type I wrote about - profiling was impossible as the Secret Service found because it was just about any kid not in the very top cliques, including some examples of girl school shooters (females fewer of course, but then they're a small percentage of murderers overall). The type of rampage school shootings I covered is much more white and Asian, because most black school violence takes place in poorer areas and everyone generally accepts there's a socio-economic element to their "gang" violence. It's middle-class white (and Asian) kids who weren't supposed to shoot up their schools. [Raises an interesting question about how our public schools may be less diversified than the workplace that I hadn't thought about.]"

[Soomie]

Men are more prone to violence, due to testosterone levels. However, other factors come into play as well, such as socioeconomics, genetics, and mental health status.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Men are more prone to violence, due to testosterone levels. However, other factors come into play as well, such as socioeconomics, genetics, and mental health status.

I'm pretty sure the testosterone thing is pretty week. A tendency toward aggression might be biologically linked to testosterone, but the premediated buy-guns-and-go-on-killing-spree is a far cry from "aggression". I think it's totally weird to reduce "patriarchy" to a not-worth-mentioning subcategory of "socioeconomics".

Re: ed miliband

I think the "women commit public mass violence too!" thing comes off pretty hollow, analogous to the "women also commit rape!" line of argumentation. While it's certainly true, its relative (I'd even go so far as to say extreme) rarity isn't purely incidental. Rather, it's intentional at the level that any structural phenomenon (exploitation, racism, whatever) can be understood as intentional (which, given, is a muddy matter when we're talking about the "intentions" of systems and not individuals).

Re: Jimmy Higgins

Regarding the issue of gender, I don't think that this is a sort of "patriarchal violence" but I do think think there is clearly a link to gender.

I think your post points quite accurately to some very real and pertinent elements of the underlying causes of this sort of violence. I think the first line of your post needs to be deconstructed though -


[. . .] I don't think that this is a sort of "patriarchal violence" but I do think think there is clearly a link to gender.

So, if not the operation of patriarchy, what is the "link" to gender? How do we name the social arrangement that binds people to existing gendered identities? I think that maybe there is a certain degree of misunderstanding of what I'm trying to put forward. I'm not saying that "mass shooters are misogynists", subjectively, but that it's patriarchal structures that underwrite their behaviour (norms of gender like the things listed in your post). I would extend this to your example of violence that is coded feminine - when mothers murder their children, or otherwise "fail" at their coded role of "good mother" they are failing vis-a-vis a patriarchal construction of women.

[Luís Henrique]

No, I'm quite serious. I don't believe it's a coincidence that, with the exception of Brenda Ann Spencer (who, not coincidentally, was bought a gun by her shitty father), all of the mass shooters in the United States over the past twenty-odd years have been men.

Jennifer San Marco?


I sincerely think mass shootings are just another manifestation of patriarchal rule of "public space". I think trying to understand these events in terms of "gun control" is skirting the more fundamental issue of masculinized violence.

Violence has been masculinised since time immemorial. This doesn't mean that there is anything such as "male violence". Just as Andrea Yates wasn't a case of "female violence", nor Adam Lanza is a case of "young violence"; violence is committed by males for a whole array of causes, among which insanity has a prominent place (and the social causes of insanity would have to be discussed here). The "patriarchal rule of public space", in case it means anything, dispenses with such episodes, in the same way capitalist extortion of surplus value dispenses with the use of lash and cuffs; it is the normal, "non-violent" way things happen everyday. Otherwise we would shootings like these happening in a daily basis. Moreover, the "patriarchal rule of public space" isn't an American phenomenon, in the way mass shootings are.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Return to the Source published an article about the Marxist position on gun control yesterday that you all might find interesting. It argues against gun control as a liberal solution, but it also argues against left-second amendment proponents. Check it out here (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/three-positions-on-gun-control/).

Return to the Source has Marxist positions? Moreover, the Marxist position?

Sorry, I very much doubt it.

From them:


The Marxist position on gun control is unequivocally upholding the right of workers and oppressed nationalities to bear arms.

In direct refutation of the Left-Second Amendment position, which upholds the right to bear arms as an abstract constitutional right, the Marxist position upholds gun ownership as a class right. Similarly, class rights directly confront the liberal belief that the state should be the predominant or sole trustee of firearms.


Right. We are going to seriously demand the bourgeois State passes legislation reserving the right of keeping and bearing arms to workers and oppressed nationalities.

Or perhaps we consider "rights" as something god-given, to which State legislation is immaterial?

Poor old Karl, the things people are saying in your name.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

The two countries outside the US that are often pointed out as having looser better gun laws are Switzerland and Israel. Are there any three countries further from socialist revolution than these?

Switzerland's legislation is completely different; it does not entail private gun ownership.

Luís Henrique

[Geiseric]

What's the difference between being psychotic and having extreme mental illness? Do both infer a chemical inbalance?

[Cyclone1776]

Things like mass shootings are gonna be extremely difficult to prevent IMHO.

[Fnord]

What's the difference between being psychotic and having extreme mental illness? Do both infer a chemical inbalance?

As someone who has had extensive experience with mental illness in the past, I'm going to try to help clarify something for everyone.
I'll be quoting from a few professional websites which I'll provide the link to, if you want to check them, Look up the sites posted here and add com, www, and http in the missing spots where c, w, and h are because I cannot post full links.
h://w.medterms.c/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=5110

"Psychosis: In the general sense, a mental illness that markedly interferes with a person's capacity to meet life's everyday demands. In a specific sense, it refers to a thought disorder in which reality testing is grossly impaired."

"Symptoms can include seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting things that are not there; paranoia; and delusional thoughts. Depending on the condition underlying the psychotic symptoms, symptoms may be constant or they may come and go. Psychosis can occur as a result of brain injury or disease, and is seen particularly in schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Psychotic symptoms can occur as a result of drug use, but this is not true psychosis. Diagnosis is by observation and interview."

This is the most widely accepted definition of "psychosis" at the very least in the USA to the best of my knowledge, in conclusion, "extreme mental illness" is a very loaded word, and very vague. What someone else considers extreme may be completely "normal" for someone else. "Extreme" is basically often used simply as a word to express something is not usually seen or taken to a higher level that isn't normally used, this is in a general sense, or "taken in the farthest possible direction or degree".
This means that "Extreme mental illness" is completely subjective and is purely for the individual's discretion to decide at what "point" does it become "Extreme".
Hope I helped. :)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Violence has been masculinised since time immemorial.

Not only is this untrue, any statement about "time immemorial" is, implicitly, speculation. But, really, patriarchy/masculinized violence are by no means ubiquitous.

[MarxArchist]

The NSA would have you think so.

[MarxSchmarx]

Not sure why this thread got necroed. Closed.