Another school shooting in Finland...

[timhau]

... in Kauhajoki. (http://www.yle.fi/news/left/id102382.html) Several people are injured, no definitive news about casualties yet, except for the shooter himself who is said to have committed suicide.

Not a full year after the Jokela school shooting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokela_school_shooting), which claimed 9 lives (including the shooter himself).

[Kuko 4000]

:(

9 people dead.

2 badly injured.

The shooter probably shot himself. But is in hospital and possibly still alive.

[timhau]

It's my understanding that "2 badly injured" category includes the shooter himself.

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

:( Terrible news. Absolutely terrible news. I hope the two injured will survive.

[Kuko 4000]

It's my understanding that "2 badly injured" category includes the shooter himself.


This is my understanding as well.

The President and the Prime Minister are now discussing the shooting in the media.

The shooter was a student in the same school, male, born 1986.

[Coolhat]

More information:

The shooter uploaded some videos on youtube of himself on a shooting range last friday. The police were notified about the videos and called the guy in for questioning. The questioning took place yesterday, but no measures were taken.

I´d hate to be the cop that talked to the shooter.

[WildCat]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.

I'm glad this POS was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt. I hope he lives a long horrible life in prison (hopefully grossly disfigured from his failed suicide attempt) where he will be haunted by this every waking moment, and in his dreams at night.

[Coolhat]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.
I tend to agree. I would think a "blaze of glory" like this would be particularly tempting to lonely, frustrated and bitter young men.

Of course it is only armchair psychology on my part, but there seems to be a pattern. One thing is sure though: there´s something messed up in this country and it is going to take more than some hasty gun restrictions to cure it.

[Chicken Pot Pie]

When it happened here in a small town in Kentucky, it sure hit home the hard way. Absolutely tragic. It's sad to see it spreading to other countries.

[Rinky]

The shooter has died, too.

[Gurdur]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.


= "Copycat crimes". Fashions.


The shooter has died, too.


Good.

[ConspiRaider]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.

I'm glad this POS was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt. I hope he lives a long horrible life in prison (hopefully grossly disfigured from his failed suicide attempt) where he will be haunted by this every waking moment, and in his dreams at night.
Yep, Cat.

And of course the measures we take to address this horror, and others such as terrorism, are purely reactive. To try and make ourselves "safer" in the short term. More scanning, more metal detectors, more restrictions, more intrusions, more eavesdropping, more security personnel and lets arm the teachers and pilots while we're at it. All of which isolate and depersonalize. To protect ourselves from - ourselves. The "react to the symptom" mindset with "tough measures" simply increases the very levels of frustration and desperation and hopelessness lying at the root of these types of incidents.

School massacres essentially didn't occur a generation ago, and now they do, far too often. It should not happen anywhere on this planet - ever. Not if we wish to fancy ourselves as civilized. We'd better fix this. Because the consequences are so horrific that they demand we eliminate the possibility of this ever happening again. People live once, and life is precious. I can barely comprehend the monstrous notion that kiddies - CHILDREN for chrissakes - can have their lives ended in a moment at the hands of a man blinded by, and consumed by, his demons.

We don't quite care enough about each other, from a societal viewpoint, and that is one of the root causes. Another is easy access to weaponry. Another is the celebration of infamy. Another is the jackhammer marketing of materialism, whereby the faux-mega-importance of YOU THE INDIVIDUAL is seared into the consciousness of us all. That can play havoc especially within young, immature minds - minds which do not yet comprehend the cliched (yet true) concept that the best things in life are free, that tying importance to material items is hollow, superficial - meaningless. Mass consumerism marketing promotes the concept that you are defined by the stuff you can acquire. Madness - nothing less.

We had damned well better stop this horror. Because it isn't just going to go away. Quite the contrary.

[Professor Yaffle]

This is a well known effect in suicide research (Werther effect, or social contagion) - with the result that there are press guidelines on reporting suicide (which were widely flouted in the recent Bridgend suicide cluster). It's not really possible to curb news reporting on the more sensational events of a school shooting, so this copycat effect is probably unavoidable.

(ETA: I am currently reading "We Need To Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver, about a (fictional) mother whose son commited a school killing. Anyone else read it?)

[timhau]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.

That's been my half-ass theory as well (does that make it a full-ass one?). What I've been thinking is this: if the media witheld the shooter's name, would that have any effect? This guy was a nobody 24 hours ago, but instead of soon being a household name, he'd be just a dead nobody now.

[fuelair]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.

I'm glad this POS was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt. I hope he lives a long horrible life in prison (hopefully grossly disfigured from his failed suicide attempt) where he will be haunted by this every waking moment, and in his dreams at night.or publically flayed over a week or so.

[Rinky]

Good.

I just wish that for once one of these idiots would survive and actually have to face the consequences...

[Safe-Keeper]

My semi-layman take: school shooting is a symptom, not the disease. You don't stop them by walling yourself in, you stop them by preventing people from wanting to do it in the first place. School shooters are people with huge issues in their lives, as far as I know. Could be friendless, deep in depression, rejected, low self-esteem, etc. You give people with problems help, school shootings go down. Not that there isn't a copycat effect here, too, and I don't know how good/bad psychiatry is in Finland, but elsewhere a lot of people with problems don't get help.

if the media withheld the shooter's name, would that have any effect?Don't think it could've hurt. No clue, though.

I just wish that for once one of these idiots would survive and actually have to face the consequences...He died. Punishment enough.

[Cainkane1]

If a bad guy wants a gun he can get a gun. The old Soviet Union saw to that. Guns become outlawed and the criminal element sees a way to make money selling illegal weapons. Its like drugs. It may be against the law to buy, sell or use thme but they are still easy to find.

[fuelair]

My semi-layman take: school shooting is a symptom, not the disease. You don't stop them by walling yourself in, you stop them by preventing people from wanting to do it in the first place. School shooters are people with huge issues in their lives, as far as I know. Could be friendless, deep in depression, rejected, low self-esteem, etc. You give people with problems help, school shootings go down. Not that there isn't a copycat effect here, too, and I don't know how good/bad psychiatry is in Finland, but elsewhere a lot of people with problems don't get help.

Don't think it could've hurt. No clue, though.

He died. Punishment enough.
No, it isn't. He had a perfect right to be unhappy, kill himself and die. Depending on the actual circumstances, I might have agreed he had a right to kill some specific person(s) if those persons were the purposeful/intentional cause of his unhappiness and they were the ones in the wrong. Otherwise, he has no right to kill, harm or put in danger any persons. Violation of that removes him from any care I may have and puts him in the needs to be exterminated educationally category. I also have no acceptance of killing in diminished capacity/not guilty due to insanity etc.

[Policenaut]

I have my own halfass theory about these things. Once it (school shootings) starts, it becomes a societal meme and spreads like a virus. It's no longer enough to commit suicide, you have to take out as many the people as possible to go out in some sort of sick "blaze of glory" and infamous throughout the world. It becomes a force all its own.

I'm glad this POS was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt. I hope he lives a long horrible life in prison (hopefully grossly disfigured from his failed suicide attempt) where he will be haunted by this every waking moment, and in his dreams at night.

If only he listened to or watched the music video for Jeremy.

[Safe-Keeper]

I'm not sure if I understand your answer, fuelair. I'm not saying he had a right to go on a massacre. I'm saying good psychiatry and people caring about each others very likely has a preventive effect on school shootings.

ETA: And yes, unless you seriously think death sentence is a milder form of punishment than lifelong jail, then death is punishment enough. It doesn't matter who hands out the punishment, death is death.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I have a feeling that when people saying that "he died so he didn't have to own up to what he did", most of them really mean "****it, now we didn't get to punish him ourselves to went our anger and grief!".

[geni]

I just wish that for once one of these idiots would survive and actually have to face the consequences...

Didn't one in canada survive? Jordan Manners?

[Safe-Keeper]

I also have no acceptance of killing in diminished capacity/not guilty due to insanity etc.Fortunately, the people who run the courts think otherwise.

[albion]

My semi-layman take: school shooting is a symptom, not the disease. You don't stop them by walling yourself in, you stop them by preventing people from wanting to do it in the first place. School shooters are people with huge issues in their lives, as far as I know. Could be friendless, deep in depression, rejected, low self-esteem, etc. You give people with problems help, school shootings go down. Not that there isn't a copycat effect here, too, and I don't know how good/bad psychiatry is in Finland, but elsewhere a lot of people with problems don't get help.

Don't think it could've hurt. No clue, though.

He died. Punishment enough.

I am inclined to agree.

I think there are far too many separate factors involved in the build up to each incident to make concrete pronouncements but depression seems to be the common thread.

Looking back to when I was a teenager I can see a number of similarities in my own outlook to some of these people. When you become withdrawn from social interaction there is no one to show the person that each small incident is not a massive event, there is no one to prevent seeing each perceived slight as devastating.

A number of these kids and young adults once withdrawn into a fantasy world turn themselves into superheros. They make up for the lack of outside acclaim by acclaiming themselves. Many become interested in extreme politics like Nazism or Nietzschean superman nonsense, imagining themselves as vastly superior beings who are simply unrecognised by their 'subhuman' peers.

Luckily for me as a socially inadequate teen, I had a good relationship with my parents and was able to seek help from them and broke the cycle to be the relatively sane adult I am now ;)

More definitely needs to be done to address, not just the potentially violent actions, but the number of teens who become socially excluded and end up harming themselves also.

As far as the specific actions themselves, i.e school violence specifically there does seem to be a strong case for cutting back on the media coverage, concealing the name etc because it seems within certain circles these people end up getting idolised as heroes and sets a copycat phenomenon going.

That's enough of my rambling.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Will the NRA be opening a branch in Finland to protect their 2nd Ammendment rights?

[-=Vagrant=-]

There are talks of stricter gun laws, but we'll see if anything actually happens. Getting better mentalhealth care to students would go a long way to make these things more rare.

[shadron]

My semi-layman take: school shooting is a symptom, not the disease. You don't stop them by walling yourself in, you stop them by preventing people from wanting to do it in the first place. School shooters are people with huge issues in their lives, as far as I know. Could be friendless, deep in depression, rejected, low self-esteem, etc. You give people with problems help, school shootings go down. Not that there isn't a copycat effect here, too, and I don't know how good/bad psychiatry is in Finland, but elsewhere a lot of people with problems don't get help.

I'm not sure I completely agree with this. We all know that the long view is lost on youth - they don't have enough experience to say whether the setback they just received in life will affect them for a week or 20 years. I rather don't think all of them are "people with huge issues in their lives"; I think a lot are simply rather impatient and not caring of others. They see and hear about massive death in he Near East, and think, because their boy/girlfriend snubbed them that meaningful life has ended, and all they have left is to leave an impression. They don't have coping resources (family or close, caring friends) to help them see the problems they have as minor. Perhaps more then anything they don't have any purpose that would demand of them that they just push on through (I know that religion is commonly placed in this space. Perhaps it does have a purpose after all...).

After all, no one has ever studied Dillan Kliebold or Seung Hui Cho in sufficient detail before the fact to identify any huge issues, and it is too late after the fact. All that is done is to look at their history and mainly what other people thought about them. That's hardy a way to identify personal issues.

[fuelair]

I'm not sure if I understand your answer, fuelair. I'm not saying he had a right to go on a massacre. I'm saying good psychiatry and people caring about each others very likely has a preventive effect on school shootings.

ETA: And yes, unless you seriously think death sentence is a milder form of punishment than lifelong jail, then death is punishment enough. It doesn't matter who hands out the punishment, death is death.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I have a feeling that when people saying that "he died so he didn't have to own up to what he did", most of them really mean "****it, now we didn't get to punish him ourselves to went our anger and grief!".You are correct at least for me on the last. No matter whether I would have tried to help him/support him etc. prior to what he did (and I have and probably will do that with some others) there is no way I will have sympathy once innocents are hurt/killed. My mind simply does not function that way. I also do not say or think the first sentence (second para) - either, I just don't care.
Also, to be clear, in the case of death/ harm to innocents I am not in favor of the death penalty as such, I am in favor of an educational death (which is why I mentioned a week and flayed). My feeling is the murderer should not just die, but should die with the intense and incontrovertible knowledge that he had done a really bad thing.

[sackett]

You have to wish that some of these psychos would survive so that they could be studied. I don't mean vivisection, although that's a temptation, but if their twisted heads could be shrunk over the course of years, maybe we'd be able to learn something.

[geni]

You have to wish that some of these psychos would survive so that they could be studied. I don't mean vivisection, although that's a temptation, but if their twisted heads could be shrunk over the course of years, maybe we'd be able to learn something.

We have a fairly good idea. A mixture of copycat suicides and trying to create a no going back situation.

[sackett]

We have a fairly good idea. A mixture of copycat suicides and trying to create a no going back situation.

Yes, but: I wish we could learn more about WHY they get that way. And when, i.e., how soon in life it starts. Early intervention is surely the best prevention.

I can recall fantasizing about going on a shooting amok, when I was a teenage kid and feeling out of step with life. I had access to plenty of guns, too. But that's nothing; a fantasy is normally the end of it. How do they get so ********** up that they make it real?

The Finns are a thinking people. Maybe they can figure something out.

[CrikeyBobs]

This article (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4817612.ece) in the UK Times has a comments section that contains the predictable comments about the right to posses firearms. One comment that I didn't expect though was this:

When people have no moral compass, no right or wrong, and are taught that we are basically apes then killing makes since. The theory of evolution, that teaches us that we have very little if any value, in fact for us to evolve we may need the weak to die, has a lot to answer for.

The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the value of people, or any other species. The writer of the above comment arrives at the totally unsupported conclusion that not stating a value equates to having no value. I guess when you have a creationist hammer, everything looks like an evolutionary nail. (puts down evolutionist hammer :blush:)

[Lonewulf]

The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the value of people, or any other species. The writer of the above comment arrives at the totally unsupported conclusion that not stating a value equates to having no value. I guess when you have a creationist hammer, everything looks like an evolutionary nail. While I agree that it's an inappropriate dig at evolution in general, I have seen some individuals with a very scary amount of moral argument using evolution. I.E., "We don't have to worry about the environment, evolution will take care of it and make everything just fine and dandy!"

Or, "It's evolution; we get rid of the people that are bad for society, and it makes us stronger!" I think that Beerina has used an equivalent to this kind of argument before. Maybe something about getting the "morons of society" to kill themselves, because eugenics is fun, kids.

I'm not kidding, I've seen some people making these arguments, possibly even on this forum (I'm not actually all that sure). I can't point to specific posts, though, as I haven't saved them or anything. >.>

Still, there are some people that scare me out there, and some of them use "evolution" to defend all sorts of freaky ideas.

[albion]

While I agree that it's an inappropriate dig at evolution in general, I have seen some individuals with a very scary amount of moral argument using evolution. I.E., "We don't have to worry about the environment, evolution will take care of it and make everything just fine and dandy!"

Or, "It's evolution; we get rid of the people that are bad for society, and it makes us stronger!" I think that Beerina has used an equivalent to this kind of argument before. Maybe something about getting the "morons of society" to kill themselves, because eugenics is fun, kids.

I'm not kidding, I've seen some people making these arguments, possibly even on this forum (I'm not actually all that sure). I can't point to specific posts, though, as I haven't saved them or anything. >.>

Still, there are some people that scare me out there, and some of them use "evolution" to defend all sorts of freaky ideas.

Some people certainly use social-darwinism to justify all sorts of perverse thinking. The previous Finnish murderer, the Native American Nazi (:boggled:) kid from a few years ago and probably more have justified their own sickness with reference to 'survival of the fittest'. As we know though they are completely wrong and are prostituting an erroneous understanding of nature for their own gain.

The same goes for a number of extreme individualist philosophies which I have also witnessed here, thankfully much like 9/11 woo, anarcho-capitalism is basically an internet phenomenon where people take the opportunity to say outrageous things because they don't feel the same sort of constraint that they would admitting these things in polite society.