Guess what, another school shooting

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I'm one of those, too. I was bullied and beaten constantly when I was younger. Didn't really push back but a few times. Those times, however, I pushed rather hard. But hitting back never really made me feel better. It just helped for a moment, and then I felt worse than before. But I still had many moments when I thought that perhaps, just perhaps, I should just show them all, grab a knife or something. Once or twice I even entertained the thought of using a rock or a pencil. I usually had a pencil at hand. And I wasn't a small guy, either, I was among the biggest in my class. I could have done some serious damage.
Fortunately, they were only thoughts and I knew that even back then. But still, they were there. Perhaps, had I gotter too angry or desperate to end it all... Well, I'm just glad I never had to see if I would have gone too far.

Sadly, there are countless people like this. Just today they published answers to some research. Turns out that here in Finland, one out of ten youths has no friends. And much more are bullied constantly, despite the efforts of schools.

 

This isn't inexplicable, unbelievable, unexpected or even apparently horribly sad - at least according to the majority of Finns.

Instead of actually doing something about it, the politicians, the media and a whole lot of people (like Trellheim) try to find scapegoats - and most often the blame falls on the guns, the internet or the police, none of which have a bit of relevance. Vanhanen, a member of the Idiotic Fascists (Keskusta), goes as far as to blame the parents - even if this guy was 22.

The facts? The shooter was 22, legally owned a Walther P22 - which is a .22 caliber gun, and you can't really get your first gun permit for anything else than a .22 caliber. The police were doing their job - and aren't really to blame for anything. The parents are no longer in the picture, given this was a 22-year-old man. And blaming the internet for someone shooting up a school is plain stupid - not that plain stupid differs a bit from the modus operandi of Keskusta.

And the media stalwartly refuses to mention that this man - like so many alike him - simply have no motive not to go out with a bang. Once alienated from the society, getting back is very difficult, and the psychiatric treatment desperately needed is scarce - for mental health institutions in Finland are severely understaffed and underfunded, leading to two months of wait time between visits even for patients requiring serious treatment.

The system for "supporting" those who have fallen out of society is built on forcing them to try different treatments, schools, workplaces until they're far beyond exhausted. If they get too tired to try anything anymore - the reaction by the system is "sucks to be you".

Insufficient psychiatric treatment, and a system designed around forcing you to try again until - and far beyond - the point where you'd kill to get out of it. And a society very unforgiving towards those who don't live up to it's standards. And the end result is simple.

And to anyone who thinks that controlling guns more helps with this problem, I have a single name. Myyrmanni.

 

My heart aches for the families who lost loved ones in what seems a senseless killing.

Now for confession time. I was not abused at home or at school. I had friends although no close friend and I was part of a social group. However I was repressed. I wasn't allowed to lose my temper, I wasn't allowed to fight. I was not taught how handle feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, any of those natural but negative feelings. I simply was not supposed to have them. Teachers at school reinforced this because even if I was nosy in just playing they commented. No screaming, yelling or acting out for me.

I ended up throwing temper tantrums from time to time. As I grew up the tantrums changed to what I call berserk er rage. Interesting, at least to me, these rages were usually set off by some perceived injustice to someone else. I guess I couldn't admit to myself that anything could bother me simply because it was done to me. Fortunately I never injured anyone and certainly didn't take a gun or any other type of weapon and even threaten someone with it.

I took me seven (7) years of therapy to learn how to express my feelings and how to control my rage and even use it in a positive way. I am small not more than 5ft 4inches and currently weigh about 118 pounds. I can still scare people both men and women when I get angry. It is truly controlled anger now but others don't know that. In my imagination I have slowly and gruesomely tortured someone I hated to death. There is a term for that but I don't recall it. Passive something.

About the young man who did the killing I know only what I read here or heard on the news. There may have been symptoms but society in general is happy if you are willing to sit quietly in the back row. The class clown or cut-up gets the attention. The squeaking wheel, well one day you decided you want to be that squeaking wheel. It isn't right but it happens and will continue to happen.

I do blame the ease of getting guns for extreme situations such as this one. Guns are not a necessity to the general population and few people are trained in their use. Military and law enforcement officers are but not the kid down the block. I believe and believe very strongly that no one should be allowed a gun until they can pass a written test and a practical test showing that they know what a gun is for and how to use.

What is a gun for? It is a weapon just as is a bow and arrows, a sword, a bomb and it was developed for the purpose of killing either animals or people. Sure you can use it for target practice just as you can use a bow and arrow or a fencer uses a rapier (?). I am not opposed to controlled hunting or hobbyists as long as they know and can prove that they know what they are doing. I am opposed to anyone of any age or gender being able to walk into a store and buy a gun even with a waiting period to check to see if they have any record of any kind. Just as a driver needs to pass a test to get a license I believe a gun owner should too. Maybe it won't stop all these senseless, depressing, devastating incidents but it might make people think twice.

Children should be taught how to deal with frustration, anger, hostility not made to feel there is something wrong with them because they have them.

And that is what I think.

 

You need to have a permit, complete with the police examining your data for a gun in Finland. The reason why he had a .22 caliber is because he hadn't had a gun permit for long enough to qualify for other weapons. You need to have a valid reason for getting a gun and you need to know the basics.

None of these stopped this man from killing 10 innocent people and himself. And even if he hadn't had a gun, he could still have caused a lot of damage - he had Molotov cocktails with him, and the school was significantly damaged in the incident.

 

There's nothing unusual about having these feelings, I'm sure most people have experienced boundless hormone-fueled anger when they were teenagers. But there's a world of difference between thinking it and acting upon it. It's only when we grow up that we cease to see our peers as a gang of sociopathic monkeys, and learn to deal with these emotions properly (no disrespect meant to Nakia, that was an interesting story).
The saddest thing is that this occurrence can't be prevented nor predicted, and people feel the need to lash out at something, in moral outrage. Personally I'd lash out at gun laws: It wouldn't have prevented his thoughts and actions, but would have considerably reduced his ability to kill people.

 

Coin, first of all, I'm sick of hearing about 'hormone rushes' and the like. The fact is, while hormones spike at puberty, they don't really go down much until you die for guys and menopause for girls. I basically still have the same hormone levels I did when I was 16. On top of that, the problem here isn't not knowing the solution. People like this, and people like me, try every other alternative available to them. I was lucky in that my oppression and isolation ended before I became too desperate. I guess I could take 7 years, even though I did try some pretty extreme options in that time. This guy's obviously continued beyond mine if he did this at age 22. People that do these things have been backed into a corner. They really only have two options: endure an apparently unending and more-or-less continuous torture of a level used or banned by the US military, or end it one way or another. That basically falls to suicide or extreme acts of rage like this.

If anyone is to blame, it is those who promote a society of elite cliques bent on belittling anyone and everyone outside of them, and those that allow it to run willy-nilly through the fragile social order of pubescent and pre-pubescent teens.

 

To quickly elaborate on this point: I studied biology, so I know this about hormones. But a teenager isn't used to these levels of hormones in his/her blood (though when talking about shooting incidents, it's always a HE), and changes in his body and brain make him susceptible to strong emotions. The guy in question was 22 already, but it's possible that he never got out of a negative spiral that started in his teens. "Emotion: Despair" or "Symbol of Hopelessness" there should be like a 10% chance to kill(=suicide) with these spells
Until I hear of an 8-year-old, a woman, or a geriatric going on a school shooting rampage, I'll stick with my male hormone connection. Even a 35-year-old at a school reunion would disprove it.

 

First of all, Coin, that joke was really, really not funny. No offense, but someone who's actually involved on a personal level in this might be seriously offended. Humor isn't going to help this matter any.
Second, there haven't been school shootings by 8-year olds or geriatrics, and for geriatrics that pretty understandable. They don't go to schools. If they want to suddenly start shooting, they have other targets that they choose. No, I'm not implying that geriatrics go around guns blazing all the time, but neither do they sit home and always stay content with their lives. Some are unhappy and bitter. And those feelings don't look to age.
As for women, it's true that I can find absolutely no school shootings with them. I do, however, still find a hefty bit of killings in cold blood, suicides and other such things. So while women might not go out in a "blaze of glory" like that, they certainly aren't much stabler either when provoked.
As for children, I'm going to simply show the general direction of Japan. No sprees for them, but many, many horrible incidents with small children. For example, the "Nevada girl", who asked her classmate to a storage room and cut her with a box cutter multiple times, slitting her throat in the end. Collapsed crying to the floor afterwards, begging forgiveness from teacher. No outside provokation. Age 8 unless I recall wrong. And that's only one example, there are many, many crimes like this. One report had a young boy, well under teenage years, who raped and then beheaded his little brother brutally. So I really wouldn't say kids are somehow exempt from mindless violence either. There are similar cases in other countries, too.

 

It is very easy to make judgements when we are not emotionally involved.To quote a Native American saying "Don't judge a person until you have walked two miles in his moccasins." We are human beings and so very complicated. Biology,and environment both go to making us what we are. Ask any parent that has two or more children if they are same, react the same, think the same.

School shootings make big news partly because we want our children protected, to grow, to be safe and happy. This a tragic incident for the people who were killed, for the people who loved them and for the killer.

I thought long and hard before posting my personal experiences as I am sure did the others. Please do not trivialize us or patronize us. It is a deeply frighting thing to know that I might have seriously injured or even killed some one. Fifty years later I still tense up and get a sick feeling just posting this.

Anger is a natural thing and also a survival trait. Anger is not wrong but how we handle that anger can be good or bad, negative or positive.

NOG has a valid point here:

I will add this: Until society realizes that the quiet child sitting in the corner or the back of the room alone needs time and attention explosions will happen.

edit: I do know of incidents where men in their 30 or 40 shout up offices. No it wasn't schools but people got killed. Children? Ever see a three year old throw a temper tantrum? Give them time to get a bit bigger. Women? A woman puts her children in a car and manages to get the car into a lake. I think all these incidents have something in common which is the inability to cope with our feelings and reactions to how we are treated.

 

I'm not trying to scapegoat anyobody, I'm stating a fact. The fact is that last year after the Jokela incident, some laws should have been changed. They weren't. And now they're considering doing something about them next spring.
That's how speedy the process is, another shooting and 1,5 years.

That's logical. I'm sure we all know so many people who know how to build a bomb.

See if they'd change the laws, all the handguns could be removed. There's just no use for them except manslaughter (same as Fiskars axe, haw haw). You could try to walk into a school with a shotgun, but it's much harder to hide (sure, maybe a sawed-off shotgun, but those things only have two shells).

See, I don't think he would have attacked armed with only molotov cocktails. These guys shoot themselves at the end, and want to have a more direct part with the killing. Both are offered by a handgun.

 

As in most cases, it isn't exclusively one factor that is responsible for something. Nakia has very good points:

However, the below one is even more significant and important, a VERY good point:

and related to it, this one:

Let's just see the case where someone killed many students because some guy "stole" his girlfriend... Sorry if my memories are bad on this, I remember such a thing happened in the near past, but it's too faint for me at the moment. (EDIT: I remember now. It was a Korean student, who made that massacre.) Nonetheless, the point remains the same:

People should learn to accept (and handle) "failure", accept that they can't always "win" in everything, can't get everything they wish. This is strongly related to self-control and controlling emotions, as Nakia says.

Of course, these things usually lead to the question of family background and parents. In very many cases, those are responsible for many things.

The fact it's easy to get guns in certain countries just worsens the situation, it increases the probability of tragedies such as this one.

I assume (but I'm not 100% sure) that the presence of these two factors are one of the reasons why such things often happen in countries such as the USA. Many parents give all apparently 'important' stuff to their children (DVD, video game etc.) but don't dedicate time (or enough time) to actual "education" (= talking with the children about the world, etc.). More generally, they don't spend (enough) time with their children. Such children can get into trouble more easily.

 

I have to agree with Coin insofar as it seems that these incidents of mass murder with guns are primarily perpetrated by young men. Maybe it is hormones. Maybe it's the way that young men today are acclimated -- they are told it is OK and even cool to turn those emotions outward, whereas girls are told to turn them inward, which is why so many women kill themselves. It's the old "nature vs. nurture" argument and I think that most of us know that both of those factors have an impact on human behaviour.

I am of the humble opinion that in cases like this SOMETHING is missing. That something is different in each case. In some cases, a caring or understanding family may be the missing factor. In others, it may be a network of friends. In still others, it may well be a hormone or other chemical in the brain. In yet others, it could be a lack of healthy restrictions on the teens activities (one teen in Saskatchewan killed and boiled his brother in the belief so doing would make him immortal. He had watched the B-Movie "Warlock" over 100 times in the 2 weeks prior to the incident.) I'm not one for blaming "the media" for stuff like this but ridiculously repeated exposure like that at a young age could warp the mind, IMHO.

In any event, I hope that Finland's actions help the problem and don't merely sweep it under the rug. I could also extend that to all world governments.

 

Not trying to downplay your points trellheim however anyone can learn in 30 minutes of searching the net how to make a c-4 type plastique with close to 75% of the power of the real thing. Another 15 minutes can teach you how to use disposable cellphones as triggers.
Guns aren't the problem, the lack of help for these societal problems is.

 

I did mention Myyrmanni, a Finnish case preceding the shootings where a lot of people died when a young man blew himself up in a mall with homemade explosives.

Perhaps not a school massacre but relevant nonetheless.

 

*raises hand*
*looks around*
*raises hand again*
Myself, my brother, my father, my mother, both my brother-in-laws, my father-in-law, at least half the kids in my highschool class (guys and girls), the majority of my fellow college students... Of course, the propensity for engineering and science educations, along with the fact that both my parents were raised on farms where home-made explosives were used to clear stumps and the like may have something to do with it.

Tal, I haven't heard of any cases of the student using explosives in lieu of guns, but I don't think I've heard of one yet where they didn't make bombs as well as use guns. Also, knives may not lend themselves to mass attacks like this, but they have been used for more personalized (and *ahem* detailed) revenges.

As for young men, the young is a mistake. Replace 'school shootings' with 'workplace shootings' and you'll understand why I say that. Men of any age are capable of doing this, and frequently for similar reasons.

If you want an excellent book on why we kill, I'd recommend the book I mentioned earlier: The Murderer Next Door by David M. Buss. I won't say he's right on everything, but it's a very thought-provoking book, and he did a lot of research before he wrote it. It isn't socialization, because similar patterns (though not with guns) present themselves in primitive tribal cultures with no TV, no video-games, no movies, not even books. It presents itself across cultures, which is almost a universal disproof of socializing aspects. It's a built-in psychological circuit, and it exists in men and women, it just presents itself differently in the two.

As for the idea of getting them 'attention', I'm not sure that's always a good idea. Attention from the teachers is dangerous at best, and attention from professionals is only a little better.

One change I would suggest is public and swift punishment for bullies. It would not only reduce the rate of offenders, it would also provide a degree of consolation to the victims, which would help to mitigate their anger greatly. The touchy-feely attitude of rehabilitating or fixing members of society that do such things is fundamentally flawed, because the vast majority of them aren't actually psychologically unstable, damaged, or impared in any way. People just have violence as part of their nature and they need a reason not to use it. Negative re-inforcement is the best option.

The real cure for the victims, though, is attention from peers, something that is almost impossible to induce.

 

Attention? Give attention to that well behaved boy or girl? Why The aren't doing anything wrong. They don't complain about any thing. Oh, yes they did mention being bullied by someone. Why don't they learn to fight back? Cry babies is the worse they are. We don't have time to waste on those quiet types. We are too busy dealing with serious problems.

What he just shot 15 people and 9 died? What is this world coming too. Such a quiet, well behaved boy. Who would have ever thought he'd do such a thing. Maybe we should have tougher gun laws. Must remember to write my assembly person. After I do some shopping will be time enough. Why didn't the parents do something. That reminds me I must check and see if Junior did his homework. Oh this is such a good show I'll wait until it is over. I wish Sophy was as polite and considerate as that nice quiet girl next door. What? That man two houses down just killed his boss and 3 co-workers? Why? Oh he didn't get the raise he expected. Seemed such a nice man. Guess you never know.

I hope you realize that this post is totally and completely sarcastic.

 

Yep, what NOG said, i think i was about 7 when i blew up my first tree-stump on gramps farm with a little ANFO(Ammonium Nitrate(fertilizer) & Fuel Oil)

I'm not sure how prevalent it is in other countries but here in the ol' usa just about anyone who had any country upbringing nows how to blow stuff up.

 

Do we have any statistics that show how many of these school killers come from a farm background where it is possible that they would know how to make these bombs?