Something’s Happening Here

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

So, what is going on? There was a stopped shooter in Charleston West Virginia. And it’s tempting to go a little crazy and start wondering if the three letters are “activating” people way less stable than the ones that hang out on this blog, and getting them to go hot.

ON THE OTHER HAND, as I’ve mentioned 2020 and 2020 Won not to mention 2020 Too we’ve been driving the entire population insane. And the run away inflation and weird job market — look, yo, yes, I hear everyone is screaming for employees. And that seems to be true in retail and food service, but anyone above that level of specialization or skill, that I know is looking for a job, is meeting serious headwinds — aren’t helping people who are already economically marginal.

In any population, at any given time, there are any number of people who might decide to go out via suicide by cop or in a blaze of ignominy by killing a bunch of innocents. And by the way, this has nothing to do with the availability of guns. Mass killing happens in every culture, though the Portuguese guy a couple of decades back who killed an entire group of people (like 20) with knives is still a puzzle. What were they doing, while waiting to be killed? Never mind.

Yeah, the democrats are trying to bang the drum for “sensible gun control” because it is their last desperate hope. They know what they WANT to do to the population, and it doesn’t work if the population is armed. Sooner or later, the signal goes up, and then it’s Cathy bar the door and they lose. (Note I’m not saying someone will give a signal. I’m saying that something will happen that the majority of the population will interpret as a sign to cut loose Also note this is not a threat. It’s a prediction.) So they are trying to bang their little drum, which means those of you who work in the gun industry know overtime and crazy hours and price jumps are coming, right? Because every time “Sensible gun control” (We’re so far past sense it’s not even funny) is uttered, the national gun industry go brrrrrrrr and the air temperature heats a fraction, from all the factories working over time.

But that, just like their idiotic new boogieman of “White Supremacy” is just that. Idiotic. To call any of these crimes “white supremacy” or think it’s coherent, organized and from the right, you need to be from another planet. Also white needs to have a new, until now unexplored meaning when it’s black-on-Asian, leftist-on-human, Latin on Mostly Latin crimes.

The thing we do know about almost all of these shooters is that they were known wolves. Either they had had run ins with the police before or — frankly — they were screaming cases of mental instability.

Someone reminded me that the shooter years ago, in the navy yard while on a trip in DC called the police to report that the lamps in his room were talking and conspiring against him.

The murderer in Uvalde had an history of cutting his own face, and this didn’t trigger SERIOUS mental health measures. He posted he was going to kill his grandmother (who, on cursory reading MIGHT have been the only stable influence in his life) and no one did anything.

Look, this country has a raging, stomping around insanity issue.

Every country does, to be fair.

The problem in this country — and the West in general — is both the way the Soviet Union used mad houses, and Soviet propaganda corrupting psychiatric theory.

The Soviet Union put political dissidents in mad houses, because if you don’t like happy fun socialist paradise, you’re self-obviously insane.

At the same time it propagandized the west with the idea our crazy people weren’t actually crazy. They were just reacting to the “unnatural” state of capitalism (As opposed to the imaginary communitarian paradise in pre-history that universities have invented and flogged on for decades.)

Enter a serious anti-de-instutionalization drive, and eventually the shutting down of the mad houses, and the new fun “homeless” crisis.

Let me start by saying that in a democratic republic incarceration of the insane is a seriously mind-bending business, because who defines insane, and who gets to pick and extend it?

So, it needs to be approached with extreme care.

But what we’re doing also self-obviously isn’t working. The left — stop me when this sounds like their attempt to abolish the police — thought it could have “community care” for insane people.

But it doesn’t work like that. Even with people that can take a tablet and be “functionally normal” (A friend’s father was schizophrenic. His meds didn’t make him stop hearing voices. It’s just when he was off them, the voices told him to kill the neighbors and put the chopped pieces in a trash bag. When he was on them, the voices told him to clean the house, take his meds, have normal meals, go to work.) not only can they not take meds (and let’s not start putting trackers on meds, okay? DAVOS these are my middle fingers) but their meds needs MIGHT CHANGE. Almost for sure will change.

I don’t need anti-psychotics, but I do need endocrine medication (without which I get very fat, very forgetful, and will eventually die of a heart attack, likely.) and periodically, without my noticing, it needs adjusting. In fact, because the thinking meat is influenced by those meds, I am usually the last to realize I’ve gone hypo-thyroidal again.

Sure, in true “community care” your family, neighbors, etc would notice you’re tilting a bit out of true, rope you in, and confine the thing before it’s too bad.

The problem is that kind of community care doesn’t exist in the US and might not exist anywhere in the twentieth century.

I’m talking about the kind you had in the village, where all the old ladies were forever inventing a much more exciting life than the one I actually lived, and might/might not have had any contact with reality. (Hint, it usually didn’t.) Which btw also means it wouldn’t be super effective.

So, our way to deal with mental illness, is to let mental ill people do what they will, including living on the street, defecating on themselves and assaulting passerbyes, and episodically going on a rampage and killing a bunch of innocents.

And that’s not working for anyone.

Sure the other type of health care had miscarriages, though most of them are not as egregious as the leftist academics claim. Yes, I have read about Mrs. Lincoln, and let’s be fair, other than the fact they had no chemical means of treatment, she was nuts. I don’t care if it’s oppression of women or whatever. Marx needs to be chased out of the theory of mental care, with sticks, and pitchforks. People don’t go crazy because they’re oppressed. People don’t go crazy because the world is unfair. People don’t even go crazy because they’re abused. I’d be very shocked if all of us couldn’t name several friends who had all these problems, and who are fully functional, decent human beings.

People go crazy — regardless of external circumstances — because something goes wrong in their brain. Yes, living conditions, etc. might complicate or make it worse, but seriously, they are not the cause. No one has ever lived or will ever live in a perfect world where all their dreams are fulfilled. That’s just nonsense. And letting people die and kill others while waiting for perfection is bullshit.

(Though under not complicating lives for the susceptible, dear left, you can pick one thing: Either stop importing people from highly machista cultures, or stop in your drive to make males superfluous, guilty (of something) and ostracized. I have trouble dealing with your bullshit and I’m female and have lived here for most of my life. Recently or even second generation males from these cultures are going to go ape-shit. And there’s susceptible people in every population, who will break exactly wrong. Stop messing with people’s lives, and holding everyone guilty of what people who vaguely look like them did before they were born. K thanx bye.)

No amount of gun control is going to solve the problem. No amount of “poverty mitigation” is going to get rid of homelessness.

The problem is mental health. And what you’re doing is applying a bandaid to the pinkie of someone with a sucking chest wound. It won’t help, but I guess it makes you feel happy and give you a commission on selling bandaids.

In fact, because the left can’t resist piling on failed programs, they’re now pretty much turning entire cities over the the homeless, while making it harder to give anyone real mental health care. Obama care made it almost impossible to commit someone against their will.

I guess the left feels sympathy for the mentally ill and the criminals because it’s their people, kind of like I tend to attract Odds, because I am one.

But we have a serious mental health problem in this country. And we need to deal with it.

No, we’re not crazier than other cultures. We’ve just ignored the need for treatment for years.

It’s time to stop the stupid. Of course it won’t happen while under leftist “rule” so expect the crazy and the deaths to increase.

Until it can’t be ignore anymore.

What can’t go on, won’t. It might do so longer than we thought possible, but eventually it crashes.

And so many things are headed that way, I expect an Earth Shattering Kaboom.

Meanwhile look to your mental health and that of those near you. And get ready to take the weight when all this craziness implodes.

257 thoughts on “Something’s Happening Here”

  1. There’s a lot of free-ranging anxiety on the loose, especially after two years of the National Establishment Media doing their best to scare the snot out of the public over Covid. Plus overtly stolen elections, a crashing economy, military bungling in Afghanistan, and the certainty that there is one law for progs and another, harsher one, for conservatives of any stripe.
    It’s an effort, holding onto an even balance, sometimes, but for our own sake, we have to try…

    My daughter wonders if the Uvalde shooter was molested by one of his mother’s boyfriends, and that was one of those things sending him off the rails. We’ve never been to the place, but we know a lot of small towns very much like it in South Texas. I’d guess that everyone just assumed that “it couldn’t happen here” and managed to forget about the church massacre in Sutherland Springs a couple of years ago. (Which, interestingly enough, was stopped cold by a local resident with a firearm…)

    1. There were screenshots I think in Gateway of his FB account and all the trans nonsense Dressed I think as a cheerleader or something. Probably memory holed by now. I think that if you are not taught to deal with who and what you are in reality then it is easy to go off the rails. Apparently single drug addled mother without consistent male support and example. Gee what could go wrong with that picture?

    2. Stupid question- in small town Texas, why was no one in the school armed? Or does Texas forbid teacher carry?

      1. Texas doesn’t forbid it, but it’s left up to the individual school district. I believe Uvalde prohibited it.

    1. Neither would I. As a young man I never put much stock in demonic possession. But now I do. After all, if we believe in God, then we have to believe in the devil, that is, the existence of the devil.

      1. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not possession but whatever demons out there are watching the Junta… and taking notes. (“Ooo… why did I think of that. These humans….”) 😮

      2. Actually if the Resident, Nancy Pants, the Clintons and Mr. and Mr..Obama are not demon possessed I.would be surprised, very surprised.

  3. Many years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I worked for the Missouri Department of Family Services. I was a caseworker for mostly elderly people who had been released from mental institutions where they may have lived most of their adult lives. Carter was President. If I recall correctly, th ACLU had sued the government for denying the rights of these mentally ill people, and demanded they be released.
    So released they were.
    Many of them were preyed upon by people who would just take the money the govt. sent the mentally ill, promising to buy them groceries, but never returning with food or the money.
    It was awful.
    It never got better. I only lasted a couple of years at that job, because I couldn’t really do anything to help but call foodbanks and bring the poor dears food.

    It’s only gotten worse.

    3. My grandmother on Dads side was adjudged schizophrenic in the late 40s and institutionalized. Threw dad into a completely different orbit wherein he dropped out of high school, became a charter boat captain at 17 in the Carribean and only righted his boat with a couple of tours in the Navy during the Korean war. She had been released and had been living on her own for many years. Dad had had nothing to do with her for all those years. Mom introduced us after the divorce.
      In truth she was certainly a bit ‘odd’. but had an IQ in the mid 160s and was absolutely brilliant as a conversationalist. She maintained long term friendships with many of her and my Gpa’s friends from prior to her going over the bend several of whom were Professors and the like. The system certainly failed her in many ways and the family as well but different times. I still miss our talks.

    4. sat. Movee to Asbury Park just as de-institutionalization was in full swing. Still remember watching a man arguing with his invisible friend on thr Street.
      I felt mostly sorry for them.

  4. I agree that the big problem is “mental” but too many caring people keep thinking that we have to deal with the “tools” not with the people. 😦

    1. Too many people operate under the delusion that banning guns will magically make all crime and all evil in general disappear. As though nobody was ever robbed or murdered before the Chinese (?) invented gunpowder.

      1. Well, but it will stop mass killings, you see. (I wrote this in the Critical Drinker’s voice, if one can write in someone else’s voice.) No seriously, I’ve seen people say since people (supposedly) won’t be able to just walk into a room and spray bullets, it will be so much better.

        1. Which is why there are practically zero murders in Mexico, since it’s damn near impossible to buy guns in that country.

        2. The same way bans on fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, etc., have prevented people from being able to get and use those drugs? Whenever I hear someone say that banning guns would end shootings I just ask them in response “how is that heroin ban working out?”

              1. 3:1 advantage to American civilians over the world’s combined militaries. Plus, we fund ourselves and regularly take sniper practice each fall. 🙂

          2. Also never occurs to them that the local dealer would just expand his product line.
            A friend of my beloved was a retired DC narcotics cop. He told us he could get any weapon you’d like in less than 12 hours by putting word out on the street…and it would only take that long because he was a cop and the dealers would be wary.
            Of course then you could be treated with contempt by the Good People and told you’d proven your criminal nature by buying from a drug dealer…

            1. When I point out to anti-gun types that it’s actually easier for a felon to get an illegal firearm than it is for a law abiding citizen to buy a legal firearm the response I often get is “that’s nonsense. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to get an illegal gun.” To that, I reply: “You’re not a convicted felon, who has spent time in prison with other convicted felons of all stripes and who, therefore, knows exactly to to ask if you wanted an illegal gun.”

        3. Oh, yes, absolutely. Which is why the number of mass killings in Australia for the thirty years before the big Tasmanian shooting is almost exactly the same as the number for the thirty years after. Before, they were a mix of arson and shooting. After, almost entirely arson. So a fair question for the gun banners is, “Do you care about people being killed? Or just about people being killed by gunfire?”

          1. Ask them every time they talk about “gun violence.” It gets interesting results.

        4. 2014 Kunming, China, doesn’t seem too terribly long ago. I guess it just got tossed by the collective consciousness wayside. 😦

      2. It is not possible to ban guns. Any half vast machinist in a typical auto machine shop can make a functional equivalent of an AK-47. Even without 3d printing. They are really low tech items. And I can think of several ways to make functional cartridges. As easy and convenient as buying from the gun shop? No, but will get the job done.

  5. I am absolutely certain that the Xiden administration colluded with Beto in activating one of the feds’ medicated pets to shoot up the school in Texas in an attempt to help Beto’s campaign because they want to turn Texas blue.

  7. Well-Meaning Liberals (to borrow the term from Reagan) seem to be operating under the mistaken beliefs that 1) all of society’s ill and afflictions are ultimately caused by Cruelty and can be cured by Kindness, and b) forcing an afflicted individual to do anything that they don’t want to do constitutes Cruelty. Forcing mentally-ill people to be institutionalized is Cruel because the mentally-ill don’t have a choice of whether or not they want to be there (nevermind the fact that said individuals are incapable of functioning in society and/or are a danger to themselves or others). Likewise, telling homeless (sorry, unhoused individuals) to move along is Cruel because the homeless (sorry, unhoused individuals) don’t want to leave where they are.

    At the same time, I’m not unconvinced that the Puppetmasters don’t give a rat’s behind about Cruelty or Kindness: they just want to make things so hopelessly bad for Unwashed Masses that the Unwashed Masses will blindly cry out for Our Betters, The Liberal Elites to come save them and will do anything that Our Betters, The Liberal Elites will ask of them in return for “salvation,” up to an including ceding total, absolute control over every single aspect of their lives. Hence the doubling-down on gun control: they know that there are plenty of folks who won’t go along with the program and won’t go quietly into the night when Our Betters, The Liberal Elites decide that it’s time to break the last few eggs that are standing between them and the omelet that is their Utopia.

    1. And they are exquisitely educated fools if they think people will cede power to the same crew that sat around doing not much more that arresting parents while the gunman ran loose with their kids.

      Of course, many of them are exquisitely educated fools, so they probably do.

    2. Just to be clear, it’s cruel for us to chide homeless for peeing and pooping on the sidewalks.
      It’s cruel to expect anyone to show a photo ID in order to vote.
      But it’s kind to force us to give up fossil fuels, to create a situation where mothers cannot properly feed their infants, to welcome with open arms “refugees” carrying into our country a poison that is killing thousands of our people.
      OK, got it.
      As the saying goes, sometimes you just feel like hoisting the Jolly Roger and slitting a few throats.

      1. I don’t get it either. “It” being what constitutes cruel and what constitutes kind. I’ve given up trying to think how the Lefitist mind works (maryjane and a sh*tton of cognitive dissonance, maybe?)

        I do agree with Mr. Menken’s statement, though.

    3. Well-Meaning Liberals (to borrow the term from Reagan) seem to be operating under the mistaken beliefs that 1) all of society’s ill and afflictions are ultimately caused by Cruelty and can be cured by Kindness, and

      This comment really hit a nerve. Kindness is good, but it isn’t the highest good. After all, people kill suffering animals / pets out of kindness. During the Great Masking, someone was wearing a mask and had a t-shirt that said “spread kindness, not germs”. As if anyone who disagreed with what we were supposed to do was unkind. They actually managed to weaponize Kindness. And I’m sure the young woman who was wearing the t-shirt thought she was spreading kindness, not cruelty and division.

      1. They’ve been weaponizing kindness for decades in all sorts of areas.

        It’s unkind to expect a woman to marry before letting someone sire children on her, it’s unkind to expect a man to marry a woman just because he’s bedded her, it’s unkind to call bastard children “bastard children” (you’re supposed to call them “love children” instead, as though the legitimate kids couldn’t be sired out of love), it’s unkind to expect people to stay in an unhappy marriage (where the definition of “unhappy” is “one party feel that this is is not the best life they could have lived”, not “one party presents an immediate danger of death or great bodily harm to the other”), It’s unkind to expect a woman to allow the children she bears to live if she doesn’t feel like it, etc etc.

        You’ll notice the target audience for most of these appeals.

        1. I like the term, “natural child.” Yes, kids born in wedlock are natural, but that gives you a little information without taking things out on the kid.

    1. Well, For What It’s Worth, was pretty much accurate back then, too. I’m old. But there were all kinds of race riots, Vietnam, lots of drugs going on, horrible murders, much like what’s going on now. Heck, even the fashions are similar. I guess history does repeat itself when no one really cares enough to pay attention.

  9. I looked into mass murders with knives in the PRC a while back. These were first-page results on a DDG search just about a year ago, for “chinese man kills with knife”.

    Rampaging Chinese man kills 7 in ‘random’ knife attacks
    https://www.capitalpost.com.my/2020/12/28/rampaging-chinese-man-kills-7-in-random-knife-attacks/

    Chinese man attacks 22 children, 1 adult with knife outside primary school (same year as Sandy Hook, FWIW)
    https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-attacks-22-kids-knife-china-school-article-1.1220230

    Knife-wielding attackers kill 29, injure 130 at China train station
    https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/index.html

    Even communist people’s paradises (er, I mean, dictatorships) aren’t immune. The fact is that you can’t stop this sort of thing by disarming the public. If allowing an armed citizenry means your regime is imperiled, your regime sucks and needs to be overthrown. And I’m not sure I don’t mean our own, at this point.

    1. Actually, guns take third place as good ways to kill lots of people. Explosives are best, followed by arson.

      1. Have you considered poison? (I’m thinking of air-borne, specifically.)

        It’s got a higher kill-rate for well suited areas, though it ramps down faster; explosions and arson both require really well chosen spots to reach the same level of effect, but if you cut off the “absolutely perfectly designed for this weapon” situations both explosions and fire have a higher target survival rate that drops more slowly until you reach only killing one or two, while unless stopped a gun stays out at a much lower level of effectiveness, but loses kill-rate slower.

        Leaving out biologicals because that gets REALLY complicated.

          1. Only place I can remember was the sarin attacks in Japan, and that involved a subway.

            1. That’s the one I thought of, too.

              I looked it up. There were 6 separate gas attacks in about a week that killed 12 people and non-fatally poisoned almost 6,000 more. Not very effective, from a terrorist’s point of view. The Japanese authorities rounded up all the perps and executed some of them.

              John Ringo’s terrorists in ‘A Deeper Blue’ used VX, which he presents as much, much worse than Sarin.
              ———————————
              Only idiots believe they know how other people should live their lives. The stupider they are, the more blindly they believe it.

  10. Good article and, I can feel your pain (I don’t care that Clinton said it; I mean it.) I have two thoughts on this. One, I believe that ‘the gubmint,’ or ‘they’ are deliberately gaslighting us. There just seems to be one catastrophe after another. When one war stops (Afghanistan), another starts (Ukraine). I recall your other posts, I think it was yours, when you posited that perhaps the gubmint was just incompetent. Yeah, there’s incompetence, but I believe it is ‘allowed’ to happen.

    My other point is about mental illness. That is definitely the elephant in the press room. We’re awash in mental illness and it’s getting worse. I think this too, is being ‘allowed’ to happen. My big gripe with the whole ‘homeless’ scourge is that by calling all these people homeless, there is no effort to get in there and interview them and ascertain who is criminal, on the lam, who is an alcoholic and needs intervention, who is mentally ill and needs intervention. And yes, who, and it is the minority of them, who is just ‘down on their luck?’ Once you figure that out, you separate them and treat them accordinly.

    But no, we call them all ‘homeless’ and put them in homes that they trash. It’s nonsense and sane people know it.

  11. I suspect one of the other problems is that mental health is still a field in its infancy and still very much in the “experiments that kill people” phase of things. The tell is that each new generation of professionals seems to regard the previous generation as horrific barbarians that their newer enlightened version repudiates.

    This guy, it sounds like this was not his first go. At least some of the reports are that he got arrested at least once for telling everyone he was going to shoot up the school when he graduated.

    I suspect the reason we seem to be seeing more of these now are the people who were keeping these folks in check are sufficiently over stressed by events that they simply can’t anymore. The people who checked up on the marginal ones are working over time to keep their own heads above water, or have withdrawn so they don’t draw the mobs fire.

    Apparently that school had already gone through a lot of lock downs that year because of human smugglers, and the town police force was basically non-functional. And they aren’t the only ones. I think the Houston PD managed to run out of gas a couple weeks ago.

    The systems of society are coming apart, and its going to be rough for everyone.

    1. “The people who checked up on the marginal ones are working over time to keep their own heads above water, or have withdrawn so they don’t draw the mobs fire.”

      Not only that, but a lot of them were not allowed to help for long periods of time. They shut down all the associations where people got together: churches, restaurants, in-person schooling, sports events. I knew isolated people who had their only venues of in person social interaction shut down.

      And checker-inners weren’t always allowed to check in.

      1. Government: You’re not allowed to help people that way because it might cause harm to someone.

        Also government: No one is helping people so we have to do it.

  12. The only thing “sensible gun control” gets you is a more totalitarian state. Australia now being the newest example with Canada not far behind. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are stirring in their sleep and might be waking up soon.

    2. “We’ve been trying sensible and reasonable gun control for 60 years and it didn’t work! The obvious solution is nonsensical and unreasonable gun control! Now hand ’em over!”
      ———————————
      The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

        1. I’m pretty sure that’s what our Well Meaning Liberal Friends think when we espouse the 2nd Amendment and decry gun control. I remember a goofy episode from a 90s TV show (I wanna say it was that Superman show that starred Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane) where, in a “dystopian alternate reality,” the 2nd Amendment was absolute and everyone was required to own guns, and you couldn’t take guns away from anybody for any reason (even if they’d just shot somebody, or were drunk and waving the gun around endangering everybody in the room), so everybody was murdering the sh*t out of everybody because guns or something.

        3. I’d like to see Beto try and take mine. But then he’s one of those abject cowards that can’t do anything himself, and has to send his stooges to do it for him.

      2. The National Firearms Act controlling silencers, machine guns, and short barreled rifles and shotguns was passed in 1934. But long before that there were laws forbidding possession of firearms from colonists in rebellion of the crown and of course slaves as both classes were obviously threats against the rule of their masters. The Democrats are apparently of that same mind set. They are the benevolent rulers and we are all their dutiful subjects, at least in the progressive left bubble universe their minds live in.
        The problem with mass shootings, in schools in particular, is that they are both exceedingly rare and incredibly horrible when they do happen. Place armed guards in key locations and when nothing happens after a few years they get complacent or get reassigned to some more productive work and again in very rare occasions an evil and malicious individual or small group will find some flaw in security and exploit it in order to rack up a high body count and instant fame and glory in their sick minds.
        One practical way of protecting against the mass shooter that has worked in Israel and in some churches here is to select certain staff, vet them rigorously, then authorize them as armed response to outside attackers. Best would probably be to have the local sheriff deputize them. give them a modified LEO course in defensive gun usage, and offer a small pay bump for extra duties. And NEVER EVER let anyone outside of administration know who they are. Personally I would advise either concealed on body carry or biometric safe access only, absolutely no purse or desk drawer guns available for misuse.
        And in the very unlikely case that such a solution be adopted be braced widely be braced for the inevitable accidents, negligent discharges, and such events that occur rarely yet predictably in our current law enforcement organizations.

        1. The Democrats love to say that we’re the only nation in the world that allows or even tries to protect gun ownership, and that we should adopt the same kinds of gun policies that other nations have.

          What they failed to learn, failed to understand, or deliberately, criminally, try to hide; is that no other nation on the planet was founded with the concept that government derives from the people, and exists as their servant. All the other nations on this planet are founded and run on the concept that the people exist for, and to serve, the government. Some may be rather benevolent and lenient most of the time, while others are totalitarian hellholes. But the control of which they are lies with the government and the elites running it, not the people.

          1. It would take more than 7500 years for criminal homicides of all types in the US, not just those with guns, but all of them, to equal the number of people killed by their own governments in the 20th century.

            Then there’s what’s been going on in places like the UK and Australia the last few years (particularly the insane COVID response in the latter case).

            I’ll take my chances with an armed citizenry.

        2. Lars, biometric safe isn’t a good idea. You don’t want to keep the firearms on premises. Have the bearers carry concealed from home. Otherwise, someone casing the place will notice their traffic patterns of the same few going to a particular room, and returning there after activities. An enterprising murderer preplanning would simply arrive earlier and ambush the people coming in to get their guns, prior to going on their general rampage, or they would sabotage the safe locking mechanism – a few squirts of superglue should suffice in cracks of the keypad, the reader, or the tumblers. Or just some plain old salt in water to short out an electronic one.

          2. Was not my first choice obviously, just a nod towards the fact that some schools have already started keeping firearms under lock and key accessible to only a few senior staff. I agree not a good idea, but better than this bull pucky left wing garbage that somehow gun free zones actually work. Hell, anybody believes that would believe that a cloth or paper mask would stop a virus.
            Oh, never mind.

        3. biometric safe access

          NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

          Biometric gun safes are one of the worst ideas humans have ever come up with. Even communism requires less ignoring of how humans work.

          1. I have only minor complaints about the biometric system on mine, but the beeping! The lock release should be silent. Arguably, biometric failure should be silent, too – at least until it’s down to no false negatives.

        4. “The first thing most emergency procedures leave out is the emergency.”

          How many things can go wrong that make it difficult or impossible to access that ‘biometric gun safe’? Especially when fleeing from an armed wacko? Will that biometric lock open for you when your hand is covered with blood? Yours, or somebody else’s. Can the wacko use somebody’s dead hand to open it?

          Such procedures are guaranteed to be a pain in the ass all the time, and a probable failure when they are most desperately needed.

    3. Australia and Canada are the poster children for why the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution. The fundamental purpose was to recognize that people have an inherent right to be armed so that they can defend themselves, including and particularly from government tyranny.

  13. Is a law of thermodynamics: things get worse under pressure.

    An issue we have, is that treatment of mental issues isn’t very good at best, and can actively aggravate the problems at worst. (Shrug) My young’uns we’re subjected to a wide assortment of recreational pharmaceuticals in utero, so I have some years experience dealing with the system we have.
    There’s actually quite a lot in place. For people who understand something’s gone wrong with them, and who want to get better, anyway. With the rest… There’s a lot of repeating things that don’t work, in the hope that the individual will have an epiphany and want to change.

    2. People under stress snap. Stress kills. We all break under the “right” circumstances.

      I have way too much personal experience with mental illness. My mother in 1957 died of depression. She did not kill herself, her system shut down from depression. My father did not understand why she died. It was only when our son suffered with depression, that someone told me you could die of depression. My son survived, but living in/through the hell, brought me closer to God. Coming to understand his underlying OCD taught me much. OCD, the fear disease.

      We don’t understand the brain, mind, soul, life. To see your son dead from cancer that did kill him, cannot be described. Yet, I had offered my grief to God as a gift, as we started the journey of “treatment”. You do what you can do, but don’t try to do it in your own strength, you will break. We don’t have to walk that lonesome valley by ourselves.

    3. For people who want to change there are plenty of opportunities to change in various, positive ways. For those that don’t want to, the do-gooders are laying bricks to someplace that most of us are trying to avoid even driving by.

  14. This is a very profound post, Ms. Sarah. And I have nothing else to add. But sharing the Gospel with people who know and trust us is a means of potentially reducing the crazy in our immediate vicinity.

    That is not, of course the reason to do it; but it’s more possible (at least in my case) than borrowing a shotgun from our barber and racing into a school to rescue family from a well-armed demoniac.

  15. I’m also the only one who thinks that so many mass shootings in such a short time may not be random coincidence or bad luck, especially since Texas happened the day before confirmation hearings for Xiden’s latest pick for ATF Director were set to begin.

    1. *I’m also glad that I’m not the only one. Dammit! And WordPress didn’t eat half the comment either! I gotta stop working on five things at the same time!

      2. But this particular murderer was (reportedly) arrested at 14 y.o. for threatening to kill a then-classmate, and stated then that he was looking forward to age 18, when he could buy a gun and shoot up a school.
        But the narrative is in place. Don’t confuse me with facts, dammit.
        Thanks, Sarah, and commenters.
        You all give me (some) hope for the future.
        John in Indy

        1. Children who are violent criminals rarely stop being violent criminals when they turn 18. Hundreds of years ago, we were turning out responsible, largely law-abiding adults basically when they became teenagers. None of this woke pseudo-psychology about brain formation not being complete until age 25 and their not knowing right from wrong until then. Brain formation is irrelevant, brain programming is everything. And programming children to not being adults until half their lives are over is, insane.

          1. :nod:

            The nonsense for brain formation is that it correlates to being “grown up” or “mature.”

            And now I’m wondering if part of brain formation age going up is related to failure to form family before that point….

            1. That, and being denied responsibility. “You can’t work.” “You can’t have a serious relationship.” “You can’t learn X because you have to finish high school first.” “You must have fun with your peers.” Society seems to force young people to stay children for too long, so they don’t mature emotionally and mentally as well as physically. But that’s just my theory, and I’m not a child development specialist.

              1. Our second daughter is pissed she can’t get a job as a cashier. She’s familiar with what it would involve, and for that matter she could stock most of the stuff at a grocery store, too. (all of it, with a stepladder)

                She’s 10.

                1. And that kind of job was done by littles in the past. Now, we know their limits and maybe 2 to 3 hours a day is a lot for them, but they can be useful. And learn self respect.

                  1. And a take-home of like $70 a week is wonderful to a little kid. Covering the lunch break for some cashiers, or even just helping with really busy times while they wait for mom/dad/sibling to get off work after school? TOTALLY WORTH IT.

                    For adults? … not so much.

                    1. This is why I personally am an advocate of separating “These are the chores we do because we all have a responsibility to each other as a family” and “these are the chores you can do to earn a bit of extra money”. It lets kids be useful, learn how to do things, and figure out how to earn and manage money. And it separates general household responsibility chores from “earn money” chores, just like as an adult, when you have to keep your own house but you generally work elsewhere to earn money.

                      But the overhead with hiring someone not yet out of high school is ridiculous, not to mention all the “stay in school!” initiatives that keep high school kids from being hired.

                      It’s possible I might have views on the matter. 😛

                    2. “These are the chores we do because we all have a responsibility to each other as a family” and “these are the chores you can do to earn a bit of extra money”. It lets kids be useful, learn how to do things, and figure out how to earn and manage money. And it separates general household responsibility chores from “earn money” chores

                      –
                      Exactly what we did. While we expected our son to help with unloading, splitting, and stacking, wood. But we didn’t expect him to do the entire seasonal 4 chord, by himself. He got paid. There are other home “chores” that came under this. While we didn’t give him an “allowance” exactly, he did get spare change and the money for returning cans. Believe that that added up fast into his savings account. Home chores. I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t done his laundry since he was 11 (when he did his home & finance merit badge). Other chores were expected too. He was able to earn scouting money through troop earning methods (mostly annual Christmas tree pickup), but TPTB have taken that *incentive away from current scouts. There was one company who would hire scouts during Christmas tree sales, and “donate” their earnings to the scouting account. The latter could still be done, because individual scout (15 or older) wouldn’t have to pool their earnings.

                      * The hours scouts put in were tracked. 50% of net earnings were parsed by total hours worked, and paid into accounts. I know one year it was almost $16/hour, tax free. Not bad for 12 – 20 year olds (Venturing is until they turn 21). The change now is this type of “group” earning, can’t be parsed out based on participation. Or so we have been told (change occurred after we stopped volunteering). There are always families who were always crying about funding their scouts participation (dues, summer camp). Thing is if their scout participated in the fund raiser, after the first year, and even had methods to get that covered, the scout paid their own way, and pay for their own equipment. Our son was even able to partly pay for his trip to Philmont, and two trips to National Jamboree. But guess which families found excuses to NOT participate in the not-fun-stuff … I know the excuse that was made to justify the change. It isn’t like the troop didn’t provide help. I can’t help but wonder if the change is one reason why the troop revenue from the main fund raiser has dived (other reasons, fewer Christmas Trees sold, it makes $$$ so other not-youth groups gotten involved, it has to be treated like a business).

                2. In times past she’d be working in the fields, cleaning the stable, milking cows, collecting eggs, etc. for up to 14 hours a day in the summertime. Less in winter only because there’s less daylight.

                  Subsistence farming was brutal. Is it any wonder kids flocked to the cities to do easier work in nice warm factories?

                  1. Non-subsistance farming can be brutal.

                    Satisfying, though.

                    At her age I was helping any time they needed basically a dog* that speaks English and has opposable thumbs, or someone to drive one of the old vehicles on the property.

                    our cowdogs were focused on shooing the animals, not nipping

                    1. At HER age I was trusted to go up on the ladder to the top of the henhouses and the workshop, to pick grapes.
                      Before that I could only pick at my eye level and weed the vegetable beds.

                    2. Cousins parents were grass seed farmers. The cousins were running combines as soon as they could sit in the seat, run the controls, AND see out the windows. For younger brother that was age 10, sisters had to wait until older … like most the women on that side of the family, they are both vertically challenged.

            2. That’s probably part of it. “Society” seems determined to deny young people the ability to take responsibility and contribute. “You must have fun with your peers until you turn eighteen.” “You can’t work until you are 16/18/21 and so have to depend on others.” “You can’t get married – enjoy being young!” Physical maturity comes before mental and emotional, instead of all three flowing and growing together.

              NOTE: I’m not a developmental specialist, I’m just a historian who writes fiction and reads a lot of old books.

              1. And you still built an explanation that would cover the “person joins the military/leaves home/leaves comfort due to OH MY GOSH BABY!! and Grows Up” effect.

            3. Yes!!! That makes so much sense. The last part of brain development would happen when someone starts a family. Maybe not even just sex, but maybe bonding through pregnancy and playing with the very young child. Was reading some stuff about how men also bond with a pregnant woman, and with their young children.

              1. The only men I’ve ever encountered who didn’t want to bond with their kids and wives were rather disturbed individuals in other areas as well.

                1. What I found interesting, though, was that there’s also a hormonal aspect. I found an article from 2010 about research that shows that when men interact with their infants in the first few months, their oxytocin levels are as high as for the mothers. (and continue to go up over time for both)

                  But the fascinating thing to me was that the style of interaction that increased oxytocin levels the most was different for men and women. “But the highest levels were noted in women who showed a more affectionate style and in men who engaged in more stimulating play with their babies compared with other parents.”

                  Biological Psychiatry, Aug. 15, cited in 2010 on bostom.com website.

          2. None of this woke pseudo-psychology about brain formation not being complete until age 25 and their not knowing right from wrong until then. Brain formation is irrelevant, brain programming is everything.

            You’re both wrong.

            “Brain doesn’t finish till 25” doesn’t mean you can’t hold the responsible. It means you have to bring them to full adulthood before then so they can get accustomed to it while still hyper-pliable.

            That isn’t to say that someone can’t become an adult late. It just means that it will be much harder and won’t feel quite right.

          3. I think that if anything, one would want to have good patterns ingrained well before brain maturation completes.

    3. Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether there are actually more mass shootings, or whether there’s just more attention being paid to the ones that are happening.

      1. Or how the number of mass murders of innocent people compares to the number of deaths of criminals caused by other criminals?

        But yes, the mass murder of innocents are shouted about while there’s no real talk about how few they actually are compared to the size of US population. IE They aren’t a common day event.

        Of course, the West Virginia story where One Good Woman With A Gun prevented a mass killing isn’t being widely pushed by the National Media.

        1. National Media is doing everything they can to ignore/bury/cancel that story. That never happens! Even when it does!
          ———————————
          If you call 9-1-1 and tell them that somebody with a gun is breaking into your house, they will send two cops in 10 or 15 minutes. If you tell them that somebody is breaking into your house and YOU have a gun, they will send 10 or 15 cops in two minutes.

      2. There are a few more, BECAUSE of more attention being paid to the ones that are happening. There’s a reason why they tend to happen in clusters. And that spree killings are the ones being paid attention to, and not the more common gang-related mass killings. Even the ones that involve innocent bystanders being shot, including children.

  16. I believe its a consequence of our non-judgemental anything goes culture … the problem is that for some sickos “anything goes” means kill as many as possible … in the good old days this deranged kid would have been locked away … at a minimum, he would have been flagged as not eligible to own a gun …

  17. Shoot, after several years of therapy I know I’m not right in the head. But it’s workable.

    Very true on the job market–doesn’t matter how much skill you have, you won’t get hired even if it’s a job you did yesterday. That’s why, rather than starve, I went to work for the local Walmart. Every time I interviewed for a “real” job, it was a real fun interview and then the “wow, yeah, that was great but we’re going to hire Mr. Intersectionality.”

    1. Did something very similar, given family mess I’d been out of the workforce a decade and finding a job in ecology with courses that old… yeah, right.

      My feet may hurt, but at least I’m paying my bills. If I were less sane, that would not be possible.

      1. Amen.
        You still hope for a good opportunity but are glad the bills are getting paid.
        And my feet tingle they hurt so much at the end of the day.
        Won’t kill me.

        1. Back when I was working two full times jobs (my youth seems so long ago now) my trick was to change footwear in the middle. Rotating between running shoes, cowboy boots, and hiking boots was what kept my legs/feet fresh.

          1. That’s a great idea actually. Be easy to keep several pairs of footwear in the car. Yes.

            1. I think part of it was the change in heel, along with the change in shoe, as it offered different pressure points.

      2. Amen.
        You still hope for a good opportunity but are glad the bills are getting paid.
        And my feet tingle they hurt so much at the end of the day.
        Won’t kill me.

        1. Try the Dr. Scholls insoles that have circular bumps on them, if you get pain all across the bottom of your feet. (You really don’t want plantar fascitis.) Otherwise, there are other kinds of padding shapes in insoles. Concrete floors, you need them.

          The nice thing is that the insoles sometimes last longer than pairs of gymshoes do, and then you can switch them to a new pair.

          1. I generally walk about five miles a day, on concrete and asphalt. I’ve been using insoles made by Red Wing for about twenty years now, that are made to be thermoformed to your feet, you warm them in the oven then stand on em as they cool. Ive been replacing them on average about every six or seven years, so the $50-60 cost of them averages out to much cheaper than the aforementiond Scholls.

          2. Re heel spur pain and/or plantar fasciitis:

            There’s a stretching exercise that frees the Achilles tendon from being tied at the heel. I had PF, with only moderate help from custom orthotics. My current poditrist gave me a sheet of the exercises, and after 6 weeks (two sets; one stretching straight leg (foot flat, lean against wall), one bent knee. 30 seconds each way, both legs, three times a day at first), the pain went away.

            A search on “plantar fasciitis stretches” will show a bunch. I like the ones that don’t need any accessories.

            I can go with or without the orthotics; I’ll wear them in the shoes, but not in the house or when I’m wearing boots.

          3. Thanks, I’ll grab some today when I go in to the store.
            I made the mistake of wearing a pair of tennis shoes the day before my days off. Won’t do that again.

    2. My checkout clerk at the Walmart here in town the other day was 80 if she was a day. That woman should not be working, and definitely should not have to be working a job where she is on her feet in one spot eight hours a day.

      1. Lots of reasons why people who are over 65 are still working. Some because they believed SS would be enough, or it was (SS x 2) until their spouse passed. It isn’t. Some believed that their SS x 2 + at least one pension would be enough. Wags hands. There are others who just have to get out of the house. SIL is that way.

        1. There’s “over 65” and there’s “80 years old”. I suspect there will be a lot more 80 year olds at Walmart and McDonald’s if inflation doesn’t get smacked down.

      2. Oh heck … last month when the daughter and I went to Ft. Sam for some retiree-related business, we went to the BX food court for lunch … and there was an elderly employee tottering around the foot court tables, cleaning them up and setting things right again. She was older than my mom, easily in her 80s, and I was thinking and hoping – that she was working because she liked it, and it helped her feel connected, useful and active … not because she HAD to work.

      3. Most of us in that situation HAVE to work for a living and Walmart hires anyone.
        She’d probably be the first person to tell you she’d rather be home.
        The old people we see here are in many cases scared because they don’t know if they have enough cash to stay in retirement.

  21. There would have already been an Earth-shattering kaboom if that rabbit hadn’t stolen my PU-37 Explosive Space Modulator.

  22. I think that you (we/us?) are all correct. There is something happing here and it’s got roots in mental issues. A long time back a very good and serious mental health professional told me that we’re all crazy and it is just a matter of degree.

    Even if we’re all really crazy – the violent ones we used to “put away” or at least require some sort of treatment for have been kicked out into the world and it’s not working. Solutions? Well, I don’t have any magic or perfect ideas – but, what is being done doesn’t work so something else has to be tried. As someone else said, it ain’t the tools it is the people.

  23. Old trainer, the way I’ve always put it is that everyone is weird. It’s just that with some of us the weirdness is closer to the surface than it is with others.

    1. Stupid question- in small town Texas, why was no one in the school armed? Or does Texas forbid teacher carry?

        1. Texas leaves that up to the individual school district. Any state universities are supposed to allow it, but their resistance is usually multi-layered.

  24. I know there have been hospitals, or warehouses, for the mentally ill. Sometimes little more than prisons. But also, who hasn’t heard of the aunt, or grandmother, mother, regulated to the attic? Or other family members fostered off on younger generations? Latter is what happened to one grandmother. Her and grandpa were “provided” the services of an cousin/aunt (?) to help grandmother with household chores and their children (oldest two at that time). In grandma’s memoir she allowed she could trust her with household cleaning, but not anything to do with the cooking OR care of her then 3 and 2 year olds. Grandma was raising turnkeys at that time. She said she setup high safety spots for her to perch the two because it was safer for them to be with her despite the turkeys than left at the house with the relative sent to “help”. Turkeys and toddlers are NOT a good combination. Turkeys will harm anything their size or smaller, or even bigger if they get a chance. Turkeys are mean. I remember the story because when I read it, one reaction was, of her youngest then, “That is dad!”

    1. Indeed there were often Relations that were a little off in families. One Paternal side aunt (Referred to as Cissy) had a pretty heavy psychotic break. My dad came home late from work and then a bit of carousing and came in the door to the house he shared with his mother and younger sister. Sister thought he was some kind of monster and attacked him with a pair of scissors used for cutting cloth. There was a lovely 4″ scar from it that was still visible when I was a kid nearly 20 years later. They explained it away as an accident while he was getting the stitches. Cissy was schizophrenic and was in an out of homes and institutions through out the 60’s and 70’s. Late 80’s and into the 90s a combination of group homes and far better medication for the condition, brought her to a point where she could at least function. It was not something that was talked about, I only knew because at about 10 I saw the scar and had had enough little run ins with things to know that was a real beaut, and dad told me the whole story. Similarly a maternal side great uncle was danged odd although he was a WWI veteran and had been shelled and gassed several times, in that case I’d suspect PTSD mixed with just being a cranky kind of personality in general. Again not really mentioned why a gent lived alone on a farm after his twin passed in the early 50’s and neither had married although both were handsome gents (but for the unfortunate familial honker of a nose…).

      1. Yes. My great-grandmother (same above post grandmother who had to deal with an aunt’s “help”) mother was hospitalized in Salem multiple times. From reported symptoms, she was depressive and obsessive. Whether she deserved to be committed, I have no idea. Grandma said the signs would come when her mother would start obsessing about food and famine. Not helping was great-great-grandpa, her father, who by family report, was an controlling SOB. You’d think it would have been great-grandpa, you know her husband, who committed her, each time. Nope, from all reports, her father.

        I have mentioned that an Uncle, who died in ’87, would have been homeless under the current rules, and dead long before the age he died. He went into a group home in his early-mid-20s because that was when grandma couldn’t handle his episodes anymore. None of his siblings could offer him a home either, wouldn’t have been safe for any of us children living in their homes. Not that Uncle would have deliberately hurt us kids (scare the hell out of us, yes, again not intent). He still couldn’t manage the “looked like” rages, and then grand-mal-siezures, and accidental injury was 100% possible. That he never hurt anyone is a tribute to grandma and grandpa (until he died), his male siblings and sister’s husbands. But it got to the point where it would take 3 or more of them to handle him physically to protect him and anyone around him.

        Group home lead to full on nursing home. Medication, if there was any (not like us kids were told), didn’t help. By the time he was in the nursing home he didn’t have the ability to leave. But the group home, he’d just walk away from. He did not want to be there, at least initially. But 60’s and 70’s it was still possible to force him to. Everyone understood. He wanted to be home. It isn’t like he was warehoused there. Grandma visited every day. Either she was taken over by someone or she rode the bus over. Grandma continued doing this until the day she died even after he was in a nursing home and lunch meant she was feeding him lunch. Seizures started when he was three. By the time he went into group home, he had extensive brain damage from falling, and pounding of his head from the seizures.

  25. One thing that I think has not helped is the “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea and the related desire to not blame people for doing things because they were mentally ill.

    This does not help.

    Many mentally disturbed people are smart enough to react to incentives and to (mis)judging what they can get away with based on observation. Right now in America up until the moment you start shooting people in job lots there are very few incentives to stop misbehaving and to a degree a fair amount of incentive to continue to misbehave because the worst that happens is that the police arrest you and give you 3 hots and a cot for a few days. You probably won’t starve to death, you won’t be shunned by businesses (and if you shop lift not much will happen to you) etc.

    If it were generally understood that no matter your mental state if you act out in public you get arrested, suffer some kind of painful punishment and if you are declared insane you get mandatory in patient therapy until you present as cured then I suspect a fair few would attempt to stay out of trouble.

    1. As I recall, Wisconsin’s version of that “Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect” and that meant the one getting that DID go to a care facility of some sort. It was not a “get out of jail FREE” card. As to how well it was followed and how well it work{-ed,-s}, I cannot say.

      1. Washington State has a nasty habit of doing stuff like taking the guys who made insanity pleas on, if I remember correctly, murder– but it may have been just assault including rape– out on day trips to the fair. And being shocked when one doesn’t come back in.

        (That was some 15 years ago, so a lot of details lost.)

      2. It’s not supposed to be in California, either. You get sent to a mental health care facility, and the people in charge at the facility can hold you there until they judge that you’re better – even if that means you end up staying there longer than you would have stayed in prison had you been found guilty.

        The problem is people who get put there who don’t really belong there.

        1. At first “guilty by insanity” could go either way. Get released when judged “sane”. Which could result in staying longer than a prison sentence. But also could result in release well before a prison sentence, and often did, when it was faked. One of the reasons a change was made. If “guilty by insanity” and sent to hospital, cured means being sent to prison to serve that sentence. Is that what actually happens? I don’t know.

          1. Are there any consequences when their ‘cured’ psychopath goes on another killing spree? Of course not, any more than when a paroled murderer kills again. The whole parole board should be charged as accomplices.

            The whole parole process is utterly fucking evil. The family, and the victim (if still alive), have to report for a hearing every year and go through the whole crime again. If they’re not convincing enough, if they don’t cry hard enough, the walking piece of crap that destroyed their lives gets set free to do whatever. Who are they punishing, again?
            ———————————
            When police arrest violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are Jackbooted Fascist Stormtroopers.

            When police arrest innocent people at the behest of corrupt politicians, they are National Heroes.

            1. Agreed. Or the “no way to prove drunk” who hit and run, caught 3 days later, killed a pedestrian, who gets the first DUI 11 years after killing someone. First time driving DUI? Not a snowball chance in fiery H*.

    2. A rabid dog isn’t guilty because he has the disease of rabies. He’s can’t be cured, is still dangerous, and has to be destroyed.

    3. “If it were generally understood that no matter your mental state if you act out in public you get arrested, suffer some kind of painful punishment and if you are declared insane you get mandatory in patient therapy until you present as cured then I suspect a fair few would attempt to stay out of trouble.”

      THIS is truth!

    4. You can be committed long before you can plead not guilty. Commitment requires that you can not control your actions and pose a danger to yourself or others; the plea requires that you not understand the nature of your acts or that they were wrong.

      True, there is confusion. I once was in a discussion on legal issues in comics, and pointed out, in the case of a man who had escaped a mental hospital, that different definitions or no, I really didn’t want to be the lawyer who got to argue that the man was sane and knew it was wrong of him to escape the hospital because he was insane.

        1. It’s also almost impossible to plead. It is used rarely and overwhelmingly a failure.

        2. It’s almost impossible to get the hospital to hold someone after admitting to law enforcement and/or the doctor that they want to harm themselves or others.

          1. I was witness to a sad sequence online.

            A man posted something that someone interpreted as a suicide note, the police were called, he spent three days in the hospital, was released, posted an indignant complaint including lies, luxuriated in the sympathy, and then killed himself in a way that endangered other lives.

    5. I’ve always felt it should be guilty by reason of insanity. The person did the deed after all. The only reasons you should be not guilty are 1) you didn’t do the deed 2) prosecution jumped the gun and can’t prove you did the deed 3) you did the deed to avoid a more serious consequence happening to you/other people.

      1. Minor nit, I think it should be “guilty while insane”.

        In any case, if you killed people insanely believing that you were actually killing monsters, then you belong in the looney bin. 😉

        1. In the Monster Hunter universe, when you kill a werewolf it reverts to human form. How can you be sure the accused murderer wasn’t killing monsters? 😛

          Then again, most of the other monsters don’t have a human form, or their human form is something obviously wrong (zombies and wights).
          ———————————
          The original builders had been sufficiently alien that their rubble couldn’t even lie in a heap right.

  26. Also the overpresecription of SSRIs, Ritalin and other mental health medicines doesn’t help. All medicines have side-effects, mental health ones have many such. In many cases they also turn out to be effectively addictive in that it is hard to be safely weaned off them (and going cold turkey is a recipe for disaster)

    1. And now I’m seeing ads for new drugs to layer on top of your original mental health meds, to treat side-effects of the meds.

    2. Almost all psychiatric medication is prescribed symptomatically. Problem is that different root causes can cause the same symptoms. For example there is a variant of Bipolar disease that presents with symptoms identical to general depression. But the SSRI’s have little effect on that and in some cases deepen the depression. Similarly some people have very different responses to the SSRI’s (especially teens/preteens) and can become suicidal or go into psychotic breaks. On top of that we don’t fully understand the workings of many psychiatric drugs thus the lovely “Is thought to work by” statements in the little pamphlets everyone throws away. At this point we’re slightly past leeches and theories of imbalance in the four basic fluids in psychiatric medicine, but the hopes for precision (FMRI et alia) have so far failed us.

      1. we’re not much beyond leeches and imbalance in the humours with regard to all medicine. How many medical experiments can’t be properly reproduced?

      2. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty includes discussions of the subtleties of treating bipolar and epilepsy, two diseases that present similarly and require different drugs and are also prevalent among writers.

      3. . For example there is a variant of Bipolar disease that presents with symptoms identical to general depression. But the SSRI’s have little effect on that and in some cases deepen the depression.

        …

        :looks at mother, whos mother was a mostly controlled bipolar, and who had depression and tried medication in her 40s but stopped because it just made a kind of depressed fog:

        Now I’m wondering if the “depressed Irish” (it’s a known tendency, sometimes called melancholy and a bunch of other stuff) aren’t actually depressed, they’re very high levels of coping for a flavor of bi-polar.

        It would definitely match the “smack yourself, get reved up, and do this” type thing, too.

    3. There’s also the problem of “fixed me enough to be able to start planning my suicide/ murder-suicide but not enough for me to not want to do it anymore.” Dose makes the poison, but it can be super hard to gauge, especially when you start messing with brain chemistry.

    4. It also doesn’t help when normal active children are prescribed psychoactive drugs, usually in schools, because the teachers and admin are incompetent hacks and simply want everything to be “calm”. The Ed Biz drug version of the electronic babysitter (“Now With Giant Flatscreen!”) used by “parents” to avoid parenting.

      Sorry ’bout that. Rant over (so many hotbuttons…) 😦

  27. Optimists >:-)

    Poul Anderson won a themed story
    competition *fifty years ago” based
    on the US going bankrupt trying to
    normalize and mainstream madness.

    There is a post by a 4chan Redditor
    claiming that the Uvalde shooter
    (who should not be named) and one
    before him both frequented a forum
    on Discord the moderator of which
    glowed in the dark.

    Pleasant dreams.

  28. “People don’t even go crazy because they’re abused.”

    Not sure what you mean here. I’ve known people who were fine, then gang raped, and then terribly emotionally messed up afterwards, for years. Hospitalized, even.

    We know how to give anyone schizophrenia: long-term (decades) torture, sexual abuse, physical abuse, solitary confinement for months. Do this to the strongest person on Earth and eventually he or she will break and become one of those homeless people muttering to themselves that we dismiss as ‘being born with something wrong in the brain’.

    I’ve known a crazed woman had two children – adopted from two other families, so no genetics – and everyone predicted the kids would be crazy. I watched her, year after year, destroy their self-esteem, crush their spirits, take away their laughter, keep them friendless by convincing them everyone is out to get them. The kids are crazy now.

    I’ve seen people deeply abused who were “fine”, which supposedly proves emotional disturbances must be genetic as opposed to receiving some sort of emotional soothing or support. But I’ve then seen that “fine” person absolutely fall apart later in life when the repression and denial can no longer be suppressed. Or, the terribly abused young man or young woman who is “fine”, emotionally collapses when they first escape their house and go to college.

    What I haven’t seen is any conclusive evidence of a brain abnormality causing ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. They point to markers, and argue it’s conclusive proof, but the psychiatrists and phama activists are exaggerating the importance of what they found. It’s not conclusive in any way, humans are poly-genetic and there are always commonalities, and anyway no one in real life uses ‘markers’ to diagnose (if they did, it would become a disease, and not a “disorder”). Disturbed emotional upbringing is the common denominator.

    1. What I haven’t seen is any conclusive evidence of a brain abnormality causing ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.

      –

      You say that, but you’re ignoring the largest evidence of all: that there are effective medications for many of those conditions, which work by rebalancing the chemistry of the patient’s brain. If the cause of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is not malfunctioning brain chemistry, then why does changing the brain’s chemistry help reduce those problems?

      Decades-long emotional abuse will mess almost anyone up, sure. But your theory is seriously flawed, because if all the problems you mentioned are solely caused by emotional abuse then there’s no good explanation for why the medications work.

      2. Prolonged abuse physically rewires neural pathways. In particular, it can induce a permanent state of hyper-arousal in the sympathetic nervous system, with a corresponding decrease in the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. There’s your good explanation right there. The medications, to put it very shortly and nontechnically, restore the balance.

        1. I’ll assume you’re correct about that since I’m no expert, but there’s still a large number of people for whom that explanation is either impossible or hugely improbable: people raised in loving homes (where it’s extremely unlikely that abuse happened without anyone else knowing about it and stopping it) who nevertheless ended up with one of those conditions. Just to name two, my ADHD was clearly not caused by childhood abuse, since I experienced none. (And ADHD was one of the conditions that LARedOne cited as an example, so I’m not moving any goalposts here). And my friend who is bipolar knows exactly what caused it: physical damage to his brain from when he fell down some stairs at age two. He, too, had a loving home; I know, because I’ve seen his interactions with his parents as an adult. Both of these cases are data points against the theory presented by LARedOne that such conditions are either solely or primarily caused by long-term abuse.

          1. The diagnosis of most mental problems is based off of inability to function fairly normally. (Giving wiggle room for basically political edges.)

            It’s explicitly known that coping mechanisms can help someone who is borderline from being diagnosable– from needing outside help.

            So, reasonably, the appearance of ‘causing’ could be triggered by forcibly removing the coping mechanisms.

          2. My high-school boyfriend was in a serious auto accident and became bipolar afterwards. Spectacularly so: his first depressive episode he swallowed a bunch of pills and went outside and recited poetry. Yes, he was an actor.
            I realize now he was also gay and using me as a cover. He was still a good friend.
            (He survived that episode).

      3. That is seriously begging the question. The fact that drugs can change behavior DOES NOT EQUAL rebalancing the brain chemistry.

        “Brain Chemistry?” Really? What a vague, catch-all term. At this point, we are incapable of documenting and categorizing all of the chemicals in the brain, let alone understand how they interact. And we will likely never be able to do that such that we can be sure, on an individual basis, what effects tweaking the “brain chemistry” will have.

        Dealing with mentally ill people will always be very difficult. But I think we could make great strides in dealing with a “mentally ill” society. Why are such a large percentage of women on anti-depressants? Is it possible that the majority of “mentally ill” or addicted homeless are that way because society is so whacked and they have less tolerance or ability to adapt?

        Not to mention that the psychiatric profession was founded (and currently populated) by weirdos with their own addictions, sexual perversions, and strange occult philosophies.

        If you want someone tweaking your brain chemistry because your behavior does not align with their personal, possibly strange, preferences, have at it. Just remember, these are the same people who change the DSM by popular vote and/or politics, and they are the same people who are pushing transgenderism and normalizing pedophilia.

        1. Except there is REAL mental illness. Denying it does NOT make it go away. And the “talking cure” mostly handles neurosis that don’t make people dysfunctional to the point of standing on the corner peeing themselves and attacking strangers.

          1. Bingo.

            The current APA is nothing like a map to and from sanity.

            Some folks naturally have something seriously wrong with their thinking.

            And some people are in trouble because of terrible mental health interventions, or because of recreational drug use.

          2. Piggybacking. I take medications to help with the function of my heart, my arteries, my prostate, and my bladder, more general medications that help with multiple organs at once. Why is it that some people have difficulty with the idea that there are also medications that help with the function of the brain, that the brain can have operational issues that medication can help?

            You wouldn’t prescribe talk therapy for episodes of sinus tachycardia? Why assume that it’s the proper treatment for bipolar disorder?

          3. I think we really have to embrace the healing power of “and.” Chemistry affects behavior and behavior affects chemistry.

            So of course mental illness exists. And it does appear that the APA is worse than useless about dealing with mental illness. They can’t even admit that it is mental illness for a boy to think he’s a girl and vice versa.

            But as has been pointed out, everybody can be broken and some people are more vulnerable to breaking in certain ways. And yes, the way society is structured affects the way some people break. Some people are broken by school systems that only teach in one, factory-derived, female-dominated way. Some people are broken by not getting the necessary socialization of a male relative, preferably the father, in the home. Many women are broken by the social normalization of sexual promiscuity. (Men are too, but I think that tends to be a knock on effect because it makes it harder for average men to get any woman at all.)

            So in the meantime, yes, at least get the people who are dangerous to themselves and others off the street. But that scares me, too, because the regime is does not approve of me, and I could see me or mine being sent to an institution to “protect” us or society.

        2. That was some impressive baffle-gab in support of what boils down to “we can’t live-time scan each specific chemical in the brain, so we don’t know that alcohol makes people drunk.”

          Science doesn’t require a specific, known mechanism. Science requires predictive power, generally that which is strong enough to be useful.

            1. Yep.

              This is especially obvious if you’re reading physical problem names and then realize they’re literally the symptom in Latin.

              Of course there’s no shock that same symptom from different cause will respond to different things!

        3. “Brain chemistry” is a catch-all term, because it takes a long time to type “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors”* and “dopamine reuptake inhibitors”** and so on, so a catch-all term is useful for discussing a broad category. Don’t think that just because I use a catch-all term, doesn’t mean I have no understanding of what serotonin and dopamine are. It’s just easier to type, because I don’t intend to write a five-page essay with every comment.

          And the fact that we cannot document all of the chemicals in the brain, nor understand their every single interaction, does not mean that we do not have some understanding of some of them. See my footnote below about Ritalin for more details.

          And yes, there are a lot of weirdoes in the psychiatric profession. That does not in the slightest bit change the fact that certain medications have a mechanism of action that changes the balance of certain hormones in the brain, such as by blocking their reuptake so that they stick around longer (though that’s not the only mechanism of action). Which was the topic under discussion. If you want to introduce another topic of debate, go ahead, but I don’t want to argue two different things at once in a single comment so I’m going to stick to the topic of “brain chemistry” for this one. I’ll just say that the psychiatrists I consulted over the years about medication to help me manage my ADHD were all sane, stuck to the topic at hand (whether I really did have ADHD or just needed to learn better coping skills), and once they concluded that I really would benefit from medication, helped me find the right dosage that would have the desired effect without side-effects. Precisely because they were fully aware of what you said, that we can never be sure, on an individual basis, what precise effects tweaking someone’s brain chemistry will have. So they started me on a very low dose, increasing it slowly as I reported nothing more than the most common side-effect (inability to sleep if taking it too late in the evening, which makes sense as it was originally developed as a treatment for narcolepsy and its effects on ADHD were only discovered later). In other words, there might be crazies out there, but there are also sane and helpful doctors, too; it helps to do your own research beforehand. Don’t trust blindly: verify, then trust.

          * Usually known as anti-depressants. Widely overprescribed and overhyped, and not nearly as effective as claimed, but still effective for some people.

          ** One of the famous ones is Ritalin. Also widely, even wildly overprescribed, but seriously effective at helping people who really have ADHD. Which, again, is wildly overdiagnosed in children, especially boys. But I can personally attest that Ritalin is highly effective for some people. When I started taking it around age 30 or so, for the first time in my life I could actually choose what to focus on, instead of having my brain wander off chasing every passing thought with little ability to control the process. It meant I could actually complete an entire load of laundry in a couple of hours, instead of getting halfway through folding my clothes and then wandering off because I remembered the book I was reading. If you’ve never experienced anything like that, you might find it hard to believe how debilitating ADHD can be to your ability to tackle normal, common, day-to-day tasks. I didn’t choose to rebalance my brain chemistry “because [my] behavior does not align with [psychiatrists’] personal, possibly strange, preferences”. I chose to rebalance my brain chemistry because my behavior did not align with my own preferences of being able to actually finish tasks that I started. And that’s the thing you were missing in your comment: the fact that some of the people taking these drugs are not doing so under any pressure from others, but rather because they realize perfectly well what the drug will do and how it will help them, and they themselves want that effect.

    2. There is susceptibility to mental illness. But yeah, extreme abuse from infancy/childhood CAN make someone nuts. NOTE CAN. Most of the time it DOESN’T.
      It’s not society/the environment. Some people just crack.

        1. But intense for one person isn’t for the other. And again, not all people who go crazy were abused. There seems to be physical susceptibility.
          Same way psychopathy seems to be one or a set of mental “differences.” And most psychopaths aren’t law breaking monsters and a lot are self-consciously decent people.

          1. In Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (book, not the movie) the Tin Man didn’t have a heart. Therefore he made an extra special effort to consciously be kind at all times because he couldn’t rely on his heart to guide him. (In like wise, the Cowardly Lion had to put up a front of bravery all the time because he couldn’t count on native bravery to provide it–but that metaphor is not as relevant at the moment.)

          2. ” And most psychopaths aren’t law breaking monsters and a lot are self-consciously decent people.”

            Interesting way to put it. Just as some people don’t absorb social norms (not talking about morality here — a psychopath has the same problem with morality I think?) through osmosis and have to learn them and consciously chose which to follow.

      2. The best simple example I’ve seen is the old willow vs oak.

        Each are strong against certain strains; each are weak against others.

        Now have every single person being an entire tree nursery with an improbable range of tree-ages…..

  29. Based on the evidence at hand, you’d almost think that humanity was a fallen race in need of a savior.

    I know that’s crazy talk and we can fix ourselves… if only the right people were in charge.

    But still, it’s almost as if someone who said that back in the day knew what they were talking about. Things like “the poor will always be with us” and whatnot.

    Yeah. Crazy.

    1. Not as crazy as someone coming up with an Economic Theory of Everything and then governments latching onto that and declaring “We can fix All The Things!!!”

      THAT there is weapons-grade crazy.

      1. You missed, after Economic Theory of Everything, “which didn’t work for anything”…

      2. Especially since it’s “We can fix All The Things!!!” with the same methods that have never worked before.

        If your $NEW_THEORY tells you to try again what has been repeatedly proven not to work, and expect different results this time because $NEW_THEORY, your $NEW_THEORY is a steaming pile of crap.

        Socialism/communism/fascism has been tried dozens of times, in every possible way, for more than 100 years. The results are indisputable, the causes are obvious, and it takes a really special kind of stupid not to understand.
        ———————————
        It takes a LOT of education to make somebody that stupid.

  30. Perhaps the increased incidence of mental health problems is the result of Woke and the oppressive administrative state, as could be predicted by the classic work of sociology, Emile Durkheim’s “Suicide.” All the types he describes can be seen to be more likely in modern American society. The Woke have done there utmost to impose upon America an ever-changing and never-codified social rules, prone to change at the whim of the Woke. This can induce anomie. The oppressive institutions of the Woke and the administrative state (to such extent as they are separate) can induce fatalism. Woke has also driven family and friends apart, increasing societal disintegration, and hence egotism. I’m not sure I completely buy Durkheim’s ideas, so I won’t insist that this is the correct or complete explanation – but it does seem plausible.

  31. Yeah. Senator Maggot Hassan really torqued my jaws today. She sent out an e-mail to constituents screaming we need gun control! I decided to write her back

    Dear Ms. Hassan:
    You sent me an e-mail today titled, “It’s Past Time We Address Gun Violence.” You spent five paragraphs bemoaning how horrible those Uvalde murders were; such a fine job rubbing our noses once again in a tragedy we’ve all heard more than enough hyperbole about, yet precious little fact.
    You did all of that as a prelude to your real goal, to attack legal gun ownership in this country. You claim Republican Senators block meaningful, commonsense gun safety reform that could help save lives. You completely ignore that NONE of those proposed reforms would have had any impact on stopping a mentally unstable teenager. You completely ignore that those alleged reforms are neither meaningful, nor commonsense. In fact, those “reforms” would be added on top of the hundreds of gun laws already in place, and only enforced when law enforcement feels a need to terrorize otherwise law abiding citizens. Sure, give the police, whom you and your party have done their best to defund and disempower their ability to fairly and equally enforce existing laws, another tool to abuse.
    You claim universal background checks would be a solution? How’s that work when you expunge juvenile records once they turn 18? That must be how the Uvalde shooter was able to legally purchase his weapons and pass an NCIS background check.
    You claim red flag laws would be a solution? When such laws invariably deny the accused the right of due process; when they assume guilt merely based on the word of their accuser. No Red Flag law ever stopped someone from running their victim over with a car, stabbing them with a knife, strangling them with a cord, or beating them with a baseball bat.
    So much for your oath to support and defend the Constitution.
    Guns don’t kill people. Bad, sick people kill people; and they do it with whatever is at hand. Yet I just checked your website, https://www.hassan.senate.gov/contact/email, to make this comment, and one thing conspicuously is absent as a topic of importance, Mental Health.
    Have a nice day, Senator. And keep your hands off the guns of the People of New Hampshire, and the United States of America.

    1. Very well said. And from what I hear today, the border patrol agent who actually stopped this was off duty and used a shotgun he borrowed from the barber who was supposed to be cutting his hair but loaned him the gun when duty called.

      Good thing there was a weapon available from a civilian, right?

      We are all on our own EXCEPT for the friends and neighbors whom we can trust when the worst happens.

      The government can never be trusted. Ever.

      1. I am not sure that the Border Patrol agent from the barber shop was the one who stopped the murderer.
        The report I read had the barber shop agent going into another wing of the school (through another open door?) with a couple of non-coward cops and getting several classrooms full of kids out.
        This did include one of his own kids, and possibly his wife as well, but he kept going in after his ownnkid was safe. (Wife may have been a teacher there. She called him in directly, by phone).
        Agree that mental illness is a major and unaddressed (especially by Progs) problem, though I personally think that actual, measureable, stupidity follows closely behind.

      2. Under one of the provisions that the gun banner/controllers keep trying to get enacted is a supposed closure of a “loophole” (it isn’t) that allows private citizens to gift, buy, and sell between each other. If it had been in place, the barber would have committed a felony loaning that shotgun to the off-duty cop.

        Yeah, how’s that work?

      3. The off duty border patrol agent who showed up and worked with a team of cops to help evacuate the school.
        I haven’t seen it made clear if he was on the undermanned shield team that got the key and went through the door or not– if he was, that would also explain why the “border patrol breaching team” was “delayed by officials on site.” (since that’s only be stated unsourced, it’s also possible folks flat made it up) Since explaining that the doors were reinforced, did they have breaching ability, hey we have one guy who’s trained in the same tactics you’d use we think you can successfully open the room, would take time.

        All while avoiding the guy live-streaming this, incidentally. Which couldn’t have helped issues. I wish he’d just recorded it.

        The off duty guy also wrote a facebook post saying we should stop disarming people who go on school grounds, because yes, it IS bad that it’s a free-fire zone whose defenses can be short circuited by someone propping open a door for seemingly innocent reasons.

      4. Okay, so Joe doesn’t have his finger on the pulse, he never will! He is, however, pissed that this chaos is happening on his watch, on his presidency because it diverts from his grand utopia plan.

        Big government has no solution. Never will!

        Institutions can’t fix a fabric problem. We will hit bedrock and ‘we the people’ will need to right the ship.

            1. I am definitely stealing that one! Perfect, even better than “Hunter’s dad”, and has the advantage of being demonstrably true. 😉

  32. I know the only reason why I got my job is that I was cheap, it’s a small local firm, and I had enough odd quirks to show up when I did my internship.

    But, to get a job these days in the big cities? I’d have to be a literal wizard of my profession in most “normal” jobs because they have to hire for the diversity and inclusion quotas. There’s no obvious, openly-stated requirement in this regard, but it’s intimidating. The Parents want me to get a job with the State of California, but every job interview that I’ve gone in for, I’m usually the only male and the only white male at the interviews. And the only one that appears to be heterosexual.

    I know I have malfunctioning brain meat. Just switching over from the adderal to an anxiety reducer has made me so much better to live with and able to handle things. But, I also know there are people that have issues with their brain meat that need more care than I need. Sometimes, even long-term warehousing. It’s tragic as hell, but it has to be done.

    Yet…

    1. Ah! You need earrings, a nose ring, dye your hair purple, and wear a loud pink shirt to your job interviews in Woke areas. Clown shoes would be a bonus; although bunny slippers might be a more conservative left signal.

      1. Show up with Kitty or Bunny ears. Soon enough furries will be a protected class.

  33. 2020 saw maybe the most concentrated domestic terrorism campaign in perhaps forty years.

    Directed fairly explicitly against any police based constraint on junkies wandering the streets posing a danger to others.

    And spree killers have long copycatted, and gotten excited about media coverage.

    So, an unusual string of spree shooting could be plausible without a security service stirring the pot.

  34. I am not sure that the Border Patrol agent from the barber shop was the one who stopped the murderer.
    The report I read had the barber shop agent going into another wing of the school (through another open door?) with a couple of non-coward cops and getting several classrooms full of kids out.
    This did include one of his own kids, and possibly his wife as well, but he kept going in after his ownnkid was safe. (Wife may have been a teacher there. She called him in directly, by phone).
    Agree that mental illness is a major and unaddressed (especially by Progs) problem, though I personally think that actual, measureable, stupidity follows closely behind.

  35. I figure that there is some hereditary aspect to mental illness and some nurture aspect. If someone is raised by someone else with mental illness, that could make for a rotten childhood that could make someone more prone to mental illness. So was that genetic or upbringing? (Either one of which could go back generations.) At the same time, there were a couple of guys (“identical” twins) I knew in second grade. I didn’t keep up with them but heard that at about age 19 or 20, one of them suddenly became schizophrenic and the other seemed to be fine. You just don’t know.

  36. Hey, if you’ve not explored Combo therapy for hypo-thyroid, you owe it to yourself to look into it. Combo = T3 + T4. Works waaayyyy better that T4 alone!

  37. their idiotic new boogieman of “White Supremacy”
    I’ve noticed for some time now that they’ve switched over from ‘racism/racist’ to ‘White Supremacy/ist’. I’m sure the memo went out that the racist card was maxxed out, time to switch up the language. It’s what they do.

  38. Sarah: “What were they doing, while waiting to be killed?”

    Waiting for the authorities to stop the criminal probably.

    Raptor: “so many mass shootings in such a short time”

    Actually there haven’t been. The stats are padded by the media and other anti-gun organizations to include incidents that don’t even come close to qualifying as “mass shootings”. Sort of like including “man commits suicide in his car in a school parking lot late Saturday night” in a tally of “school shootings”. (Actual thing). Mass shooting are still very rare and the number of people killed in non-gang related and non-domestic violence firearm murders is relatively small compared to just about any cause of death. The stat “27 so far this year” is a flat out lie.

    1. And what about the other 35 people murdered that day? Don’t they deserve some recognition? They are just as dead.

      Based on my ‘Total U.S. murders 2021’ search, there were an average of 54 murders every day. About half of those were committed with guns. More than 80% were committed by known violent criminals.

      So why do the media never cover the daily murders? The random shootings, stabbings and beatings that take place in ones and twos every day and night?

      It’s almost like murders don’t matter unless they are useful to the political elitists. Oh, wait…
      ———————————
      Terrorists and wacko nut jobs can’t threaten our way of life, or change who we are. Only we can do that. If we surrender to fear, if we give up our freedom for an illusion of safety, we do to ourselves what all the wackos and terrorists in the world can only dream of doing to us.

      1. For one, if it’s in Chicago or St. Louis, it doesn’t count. Even if a dozen people are shot during one drive-by, “that’s different.” If it’s in NYC, unless it is a prominent person, it doesn’t count. I’m not sure what the status is for the greater LA metro area.

  39. How is it that the shooter who is so poor he had to sleep on the floor afford $6,000 worth of gear?

    How is it that the shooter crashed his truck at 11:40 police show up at the scene 4 minutes later, and the shooter was outside shooting for 12 minutes before entering the building, why didn’t the police who responded to the crash stop him?I

    How did the shooter carry two ARs and a bag full of fully loaded mags climb over a 8 foot fence, while the police were there?
    How was it that the shooter picked the very time that the School safety officer was awol, and then find the one un attended door that “happened” to be propped open?
    Why were there federal marshals there?
    Why did the fully tacked out police stand down?
    The police were afraid of one mentally ill teen?
    Why would 19 police wait outside the classroom while children were being killed?

    At what point do people realize that this story stinks like old fish.

    1. This one we went through and roughed out. Shooter had been 17 and so basically quit High school. Worked at Wendy’s near full time for a year. First approximation is at least 14K gross income, easily 7K after taxes, probably more like 12K. Didn’t help mom or grandparents (hey he was a self serving asshole unsurprisingly). So in this case (less so Buffalo) income stream is known and likely sufficient to known purchases.

      1. Two Daniel Defense ARs, with holographic sites, level 2 body armor. You’re talking 6-8k worth of gear. Paid with cash. Not a credit card.
        If he had 12 k net income he would have had to save 3/4 of it for gear, and bought gear that is basically unav.
        Pretty unlikely. As unlikely as a teacher propping out a door a minute before the truck arrived at that part of the school.
        Or a school that has lockdown drills but failed to do so the one day that a person is shooting outside the school.
        Not plausible, none of it

    2. Warren,
      Maybe this bit of information will help answer your questions…

      BUSTED: Parents catch FBI in Plot to force mentally ill son
      to be a right wing terrorist
      https://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi-groom-mentally-ill-right-wing-terrorist/

      The faking bogus instigators HAVE been caught doing the above; they
      don’t stop ‘terrorism’…they CREATE false flag events proclaimed by
      them (and the compliant regime controlled media..’Project Mockingbird’
      anyone??..newsflash, it’s STILL in use by cia, fbi, etc and every regime to
      inhabit ‘Mordor on the Potomac’) as ‘terrorism’ to secure their continued existence
      budget wise (atf ginning up the whole ‘Waco Threat’ during the mid 1990’s
      because they were facing SERIOUS scrutiny/budget reduction).

      Funny how they weren’t so active against either ‘burn-loot-murder’ or
      antifa during the ‘mostly peaceful protests’ across the country in 2019
      and 2020…oh that’s right…they ‘didn’t fit the narrative’ as pushed by
      Pelosi, AOC and others in ‘MotP’….

      And people STILL believe what they’re told by ‘the shiny box’…..

      The late George Carlin warned us about both gov and the media
      as well as stupid people.

      And NPC’s/normies are still wearing their face panties..afraid of
      a common cold..and now media driven fear porn over monkeypox…
      when there was an ‘outbreak’ in 2003 with 70+ cases, which
      no one died..and no one lost their shit in public over, at all!

      If ‘authority’ is claiming ‘gloom & doom’; 99% they’re fook’n lying to your face!

      Proceed on that knowledge and lead your own life as you see fit.

      And don’t forget to tell them BFYTW!!! if they try to try bs again!

      NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

  40. Here’s the one thing that NO ONE has thought of here in
    regard to this situation…

    Why does ANYONE send ANY of their children (especially under
    13 or 14) to ANY bolshevist controlled/operated “public school”?!!?

    Ken Royce was absolutely on the mark with his thoughts (via his character,
    Jim Preston, Gov of Wyoming) in one of the ‘Playboy Interviews’ in, “Molon
    Labe!” of exactly how toxic and destructive the environment of any “public
    school” is..especially since that moralistic mouthbreather, Woodrow Wilson
    when he addressed a group of businessmen just prior to World War 1:

    “We want one class to have liberal education. We want another
    class, a much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege
    of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific,
    difficult manual tasks.”
    — Woodrow Wilson (‘Molon Labe!’ pg. 283)

    “After 30-odd years of “progressive” government schooling, America
    has raised two whole generations of emotionally hollow automatons whose
    “political opinions” are based on what teacher said and which opinions
    get applauded or booed on Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer and Dan
    Rather’s CBS News.
    How did the pod people take over while you weren’t looking?
    It’s the government schools, stupid.”
    — Vin Suprynowicz, “The Ballad of Carl Drega” (2002), pg. 532

    Also recommend all the works of ‘former educator’ the late
    John Taylor Gatto for the unvarnished truth of ‘public education’.

    Not just ’emotionally hollow’..far more dangerously intellectually
    hollow and apathetic; it’s the rank emotionalism that is fueled/
    driven by the ‘outrage porn’ that children and young adults are
    daily submitted to via both government schools and ‘the shiny box’
    (remember all the bolshevist crap pushed in the name of ‘environmentalism’
    via the ‘Captain Planet’ show among other delivered indoctrination as but
    one putrid example).

    Continued in ‘Homeschooling – and why’ Pt. 2

      1. Mary,

        First Rule: ‘Assume’ nothing where the parasite class and it’s
        enablers, supporters and leg breaking enforcement
        thugs are concerned. Their only driving principle is
        to advance THEIR own power, control and enrichment
        in that order.

        ‘Public Education’ is created to allow all three to succeed; that’s
        WHY they hate Homeschooling with a frenzied rabid response.
        For every child successfully homeschooled, it removes one more
        individual freed from their indoctrination/servitude mind prison.

        NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s Own Defense!

          1. Mary,

            Then such parents shouldn’t bitch, moan, cry and complain
            because they obviously are so apathetic, lazy and possibly
            downright stupid that they don’t want to exercise ANY personal
            effort, let alone responsibility where the safety and proper raising
            of their children is concerned and bad things happen to them by
            their choosing to let strangers rear their children via ‘public education’.

            Such people must absolutely love the ‘customer service’ quality
            that is delivered via ‘public education’…same as the ‘customer
            service’ delivered on a daily basis by either the post office or the
            local motor vehicle department.

            They obviously put more effort and thought into the 15 to 20 minutes
            of condomless or iud-less sexual activity for the mere sake of ‘insert
            Tab A into Slut B’.

            My thoughts on homeschooling is NOT put forth for such NPC’s;
            they’re not going to be the one’s who are stepping up to the plate
            to be the most self-disciplined as to NOT be a part of the ‘mentally
            cud-chewing NPC herd’ and live their lives not determined by what
            either narcissistic sociopaths and their idiots on ‘the shiny box’ try
            to push every hour of every day.

            If the NPC’s who identify as leftists..or dare we say..bolshevists
            want to expose their progeny to trannies via ‘Drag Time Story Hour’,
            push their progeny to be ‘Jennifer’ instead of Thomas (‘DesmondisAmazing’
            or ‘Lactatia’ anyone?…) or choose to abort their unborn children ‘to save the
            planet from ‘Climate Change”, do I expend any energy or effort to stop them?…

            Absolutely not.

            Let them destroy themselves in the most personal fashion possible;
            less potential targets that I have to possibly expend ammo on in the
            possible critical social shit hits the fan destructive future (which btw,
            I DON’T wish to see come to pass, as everyone across the FUSA
            would be suffering through to maintain daily survival – NOT fun!!).

            As William Shatner said in a Star Trek movie regarding the Klingon’s,
            “Let them die!”

            No, it’s NOT for the ‘masses’ that I offer my thoughts on homeschooling.
            It’s for those who DO care about their children..ideally the kind of people
            that visit this site, WRSA, BCE’s and Cold Fury’s and Robert Gore’s SLL
            and similar websites who do have children that they love and care for.

            People who aren’t afraid to think for themselves and live self-disciplined,
            responsible lives.

            NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

    2. Here’s the one thing that NO ONE has thought of here in
      regard to this situation…

      Why does ANYONE send ANY of their children (especially under
      13 or 14) to ANY bolshevist controlled/operated “public school”?!!?

      Well, no, just nobody asked.

      Not only have I thought of it, I’ve talked to folks about it.

      The parents, if you actually talk to them instead of jumping down their throats, will explain how they want their kids to get a good education, and that’s why they are both working their rumps off, both at paid work and to get their kids to all their activities that will Grow Them properly.

      They have their kids in daycare when they’re not at school, because heaven forbid that the parents who dumped them into daycare public schools, and had parents, siblings, cousins, etc support– and also didn’t give them the siblings to have any kind of sibling support– watch the kids, and they stay in daycare for more years because gosh we can’t allow THESE kids to be latchkey kids like in the 80s, no, that won’t do for the precious grandchildren that WE cannot be bothered to watch.

      When and/or if it becomes obvious that their “good school district”– for which the mother has sacrificed years of being with her babies so she has a “real job”, the “good school district” for which a solid chunk of the father’s income goes even after that– is trash, they’re trapped.

      They don’t know how to home school, they’ve been assured they’re too stupid to home school, and if they so much as whisper the thought there’s a very good chance that the same family and friends that won’t lift a finger to ACTUALLY HELP THEM will leap to the defense of public schools.

      And they are still paying through the nose for the best of a bad lot of schools.

      But hey, let’s get to quoting a bunch of fiction that couldn’t be bothered to actually do anything useful, by by gum it made folks feel better when they read it, it affirmed them in their distain and told them it Was Not Their Fault.

      Want to look for outrage pr0n? Look how many fingers are pointing back at you, when you make that accusation.

        1. So Sarah,
          Did you have a response or comment based in logic, reason
          or critical thought to this discussion?…

          Virtually dealing yourself in and ready to toss a few chips
          on the table, so to speak?..

          Or were you just virtually ‘flicking peanut shells’ from
          the back of the peanut gallery?….

          Haven’t heard you mention anything in the way of support
          or defense of homeschooling and those parents who want
          to save their children from the leviathan’s brain gulags for
          childhood slavery and indoctrination.

          Just a casual thought on my end….

          NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

            1. Listen: he’s under the impression I’ve never criticized public schooling.
              I don’t know what parallel world he comes from, but reminds me of the guy who accused me of being eGOP, and that one, frankly, was one of Chlamydia’s many incarnations.
              It’s not a good look.

          2. Are you actually joking? Or do you have very selective reading abilities?
            I’ve written extensively both here and on insty about the mess in schools and that EVERYONE WHO CAN should homeschool
            Foxfier, btw — not that it’s any of your business — has homeschooled for half her life.
            Your point fucking is? Pardon my French.
            Do you have anything to contribute beyond bombast and demanding we dance to your tune?
            Foxfier expressed empathy for parents caught in the state school trap. There are many.
            I think at this point 18th century factories might be better places to raise kids than our so called schools. And?
            I have said that the dept of education should be abolished, the Earth salted and education returned to the smallest possible localities. AND?
            Do you mistake me for someone who is in charge of something? Or did you forget to take your meds this morning?
            Talk is cheap. “Let’s you and him fight” is even cheaper.
            The type of change we need needs a hell of a lot more buy-in from our culture than we have. That’s increasing at a rapid pace, but nowhere near where it’s needed.
            Y’all should remember “Democracy imposed from outside is the greatest tyranny.”
            Ain’t no one going to dance to your tune, dude.
            We have lives. And you’re ridiculously aggressive and insulting and demanding, when you’re neither our boss nor our parent.

          4. Did you have a response or comment based in logic, reason
            or critical thought to this discussion?…

            Do you have a comment based on any of those?

      2. Foxfier,
        “The parents, if you actually talk to them instead of jumping down their throats, will explain how they want their kids to get a good education, and that’s why they are both working their rumps off, both at paid work and to get their kids to all their activities that will Grow Them properly.”

        First of all, I never stated to approach this subject by ‘jumping down their throats’.
        All that will accomplish is to put folks immediately on the defensive – and into a
        ‘react by emotional state’ which means that any meaningful discussion is nigh
        on impossible.

        Second, kids will NOT ‘receive’ a “good education” from any government school.
        Go back and read what I posted as quotes from both Woodrow Wilson (possibly
        the WORST president with the exception of FDR and Lincoln) and Vin Suprinowicz.
        If that’s not enough, please take time to read, “Dumbing Us Down” by the late John
        Taylor Gatto (and his other books about the truth of ‘public education’; he was a teacher
        and knew the truth about it from the inside).

        Third, the reason that ‘they are both working their rumps off’ is because the parasite
        class has, over multiple decades has created via both the ‘fed’ and it’s related agency
        the irs, a dual functioning financial/debt pump system..pumping in intrinsically worthless
        ‘fed reserve notes’ via the fed..and syphoning off excess liquidity via the irs (see ‘A Review
        of Federal Tyranny’ by Kenneth Royce, pg 376 “Molon Labe!” where this is discussed).
        The real world effect of such is to intentionally create a situation where, due to predatory
        theft of personal wealth from individuals, euphemistically called ‘taxation'(and enforced
        by a cadre of leg breaking enforcers..who are numerically tiny compared to the general
        population) to pay for ‘welfare’, it’s no longer possible for a man to retain enough financial
        wealth to support a family on his own efforts, since the mid 1960’s onwards..this was done
        intentionally to destabilize the family and subtly set the stage for the gov to be seen as
        a ersatz ‘parent’.

        “They don’t know how to home school, they’ve been assured they’re too stupid to home school, and if they so much as whisper the thought there’s a very good chance that the same family and friends that won’t lift a finger to ACTUALLY HELP THEM will leap to the defense of public schools.”

        Oh, are you possibly claiming that such parents are ‘too stupid’ to due their
        own due diligence and education on their own effort to learn what homeschooling
        is and what is needed at a minimum to make it a successful effort. Also, who’s
        the one or one’s that are ‘assuring’ them that they’re ‘too stupid to homeschool’?

        If the family and friends ‘who won’t lift a finger’ to help them in an effort to homeschool
        instead leap to the defense of public schools in response, those people should be
        immediately be seen as nothing more than NPC statist moron apologists that one
        should no longer choose to involve themselves with..let alone expose their children
        to as they obviously don’t have the children’s best interest at heart.

        To get a clearer understanding on what ‘public education’ is and has ‘accomplished’
        and no, growing them properly isn’t at all part of that, take a few moments to read pp 320
        thru 324 of Ken’s book listed above.

        And while Ken’s book is a work of fiction, he does state in it several things that
        have happened and are part of history.

        “Outrage Porn” it is not.

        NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

        1. First of all, I never stated to approach this subject by ‘jumping down their throats’.
          All that will accomplish is to put folks immediately on the defensive – and into a
          ‘react by emotional state’ which means that any meaningful discussion is nigh
          on impossible.

          :eyebrow raise:

          Pull the other one. It has bells on.

          You did nothing but attempt to invoke an emotional response.

          As did your response, notably avoiding answering specific arguments, and additionally ignoring where the actual costs are.

          What, do you rent?

          1. Foxfier,

            “You did nothing but attempt to invoke an emotional response.”

            Obviously, you don’t understand the psychological response
            of projection..which is what you just did.

            Do you always approach every discussion based in critical
            thought, reason or common sense with acting out emotionally?

            That’s what children, those with mental retardation and those
            who’ve never pushed past puberty fall back on when confronted
            with reality, especially the reality that there is no such thing as
            equality or even fairness in the real world.

            I won’t take the time to discuss why neither equality nor fairness
            exist in reality at this time, as it’s something that deserves it’s own
            discussion for another day and time and isn’t immediately germane
            to the discussion of why homeschooling is superior/better than the
            gov run mental indoctrination slave camps euphemistically called
            ‘public schools’.

            Actually the only direct question you asked is, ‘do you rent?’

            My response is: Maybe I do, maybe I don’t ~ in any case it’s NOYDB
            and has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of homeschooling
            vs. multi-year internment in gov run mental gulags meant to strip every
            bit of independence and critical thinking ability from it’s young inmates.

            For what it’s worth, I’m not obligated to ‘do your homework’ for you
            in showing the difference between homeschooling and gov gulag kid camps.
            I’ve listed both John Taylor Gatto and Kenneth Royce/’Boston T.Party’ as
            authors to read regarding just how deplorable ‘gov schooling’ is (and on
            purpose). You are welcome to avail yourself of their combined wisdom
            and experience on the subject…either you will or you won’t.

            Either way,..not my problem.

            NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

            1. Obviously, you don’t understand the psychological response
              of projection..which is what you just did.

              :laughs: Oh, grow up.

              I’m not a pre-teen, that tactic won’t work.

              Do you always approach every discussion based in critical
              thought, reason or common sense with acting out emotionally?

              I approached you primarily on the terms you chose, and secondarily on the basis of basic reason.

              That’s what children, those with mental retardation and those
              who’ve never pushed past puberty fall back on when confronted
              with reality, especially the reality that there is no such thing as
              equality or even fairness in the real world.

              If you so self diagnose, well, insufficient data on this side.

              I won’t take the time to discuss why neither equality nor fairness
              exist in reality at this time, as it’s something that deserves it’s own
              discussion for another day and time and isn’t immediately germane
              to the discussion of why homeschooling is superior/better than the
              gov run mental indoctrination slave camps euphemistically called
              ‘public schools’.

              Oh…..kay…..
              Why would those come up?
              Because I didn’t bring them up.

              Why are you wishing to bring them up?

              Actually the only direct question you asked is, ‘do you rent?’

              You asserted that nobody had thought of a specific thing.
              You followed it with a string of assertions.
              Those assertions were answered.

              My response is: Maybe I do, maybe I don’t ~ in any case it’s NOYDB
              and has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of homeschooling
              vs. multi-year internment in gov run mental gulags meant to strip every
              bit of independence and critical thinking ability from it’s young inmates.

              Possessive plural.

              Oh, sorry.
              {sarcasm drips}
              Basic “actually doing the work you are demanding of others” reflex.

              Look, while you’ve been busy doing pseudo-intellectual preening, I have been actually homeschooling, actual outreach, and actual trying to solve issues.

              I’ve homeschooled in three states, helped folks in three additional states, and am open to giving mom-consultation to anybody looking for tactics for help in figuring out “how to get my kid to learn the thing.”

              You, on the other hand, are preening on the internet, shilling books, and making an attack on basic rational argument.

  41. Homeschooling – and why? Pt. 2

    If one wants any hope of fighting against any of the above, one
    MUST immediately pull ALL their children from any ‘government
    [propaganda gulags] schools’ and teach them at home via homeschooling.

    Bu..bu..NorthGunner, I can’t teach my kids at home..I have a job!!

    One’s most critical ‘job’ IS to PERSONALLY teach and uplift their own
    children – not suborn that duty to often what are nothing more than
    narcissistic sociopathic grifters on the ‘gov dole’ as “teachers”..a
    euphemism for AA/diversity hires fulfilling a gov quota so you can
    earn 5+ figures while your progeny’s minds are ravaged by outright
    bolshevists and deviant shitweasels in gov service.

    Bu..bu..NorthGunner, I’m not trained to teach my kids..that’s what
    teachers and public schools are for!!

    No! ‘gov schools’ are NOT for teaching your kids how to be independent
    thinking people who are skilled in how to use critical thought and
    logic – go back and read what Wilson said. There is absolutely NO
    benefit to the parasite class for your children to be both independent
    thinking and able to cogitate on a matter or issue and figure it out
    via both logic and common sense on their own…’gov’ doesn’t want that,
    corporations don’t want that..the parasite class that controls from
    above doesn’t want that..it’s completely opposite of their goals and
    desires.

    One can find already created full lesson plans available for
    K thru 12th grade available and there’s likely other parents
    who are already homeschooling their children in you area who
    if approached properly may be willing to help or at least
    share what they know in their efforts.

    At the most basic, one should foster a love and appreciation
    for the skill of reading, and the discipline of being able
    to note what’s worth reading in the first place.

    One’s children are their most important legacy, stop giving
    them over to the ‘gov’ via their dangerous bolshevist
    indoctrination gulags.

    Take back your power to protect and raise your children
    on your own!

    If it means you have to quit your job..quit your job!!
    If it means that you have to move to a better place
    where you can homeschool them…move there and start
    homeschooling them!!

    And, if the government sends it’s agents for your kids…
    Do what you have to do to protect your kids from them..and
    don’t forget to pick up their ‘dropped useful items’ afterwards.

    Of course them ‘coming for you or your kids’ totally dispels
    any previous notions of ‘gov works for us/gov is our friend/protector’
    but that’s just reality proving that dangerous human predators still
    exist..uniformed or not.

    NorthGunner – The Truth Is It’s OWN Defense!

    1. Hey NorthGunner.
      Is your actual issue the fact that Sarah fails to genuflect at the altar of your chosen peeve before she says anything?
      I didn’t see you once make any point or protest against the ruthless and heartless exploitation of poor innocent Naugas to produce the Naugahide seats in your car! You must be in favor of Nauga slaughter! Now I must embark on a crusade against windmills to prove myself right and ask you heretics as Insufficiently Pure in the fight against Nauga slavery!
      Seriously, dude, grow up. You may be trying to show everyone how ideologically pure you are, but you’re being a donkey’s backside. Or you’re trying. Don’t know. Don’t care. I quit reading your wall o text once it was evident you were only speaking to hear your own words.
      Get off your cross and go build something useful with the wood instead.

  42. }}} In any population, at any given time, there are any number of people who might decide to go out via suicide by cop or in a blaze of ignominy by killing a bunch of innocents.

    What I don’t get is — why is it that NO ONE who decides it’s time to end it ever goes after politicians. Sure, some try for the PotUS, but it’s remarkably notable that NO ONE — REPEAT NO ONE — seems to go after politicians and bureaucrats.

    The only exception I can recall is the one that went after the GOP x-ball practice some years back.

    I suppose you can include McVeigh, but…. somehow that was “magically” scheduled for the ONE DAY that no one was in that government office…

    2. What I don’t get is — why is it that NO ONE who decides it’s time to end it ever goes after politicians.

      Politicians usually aren’t soft targets, at least not anywhere with a lot of people around (for a headline-catching body count).

      1. I figure most congresscritters would be relatively unprotected, especially state level ones.

          1. Fair – the only time they really gather in large numbers is at the legislature buildings, where one imagines security would be heavy.

        2. Compared to what is the problem– vs the president, yes.
          Vs “nobody is allowed to have guns except security, which are outnumbered by the number of campuses that they have to work at, and they are really poorly secured” like schools.

      2. ^This.^

        If you’re after numbers, you want a soft target.
        If you just want to get shot, you won’t even kill anybody you’ll just be threatening.

Comments are closed.