The Wow I Can't Believe That News Story Thread

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by jwb

I'm speaking subjectively oblviously... I have no idea

But what was the last great serial killer that really caught everyone's attention? The DC snipers? Seems like most of the big names are from the past. Bundy. Dahmer, Gacy, etc.

Yet almost all the major mass shooters are post Columbine. You had your odd case like the guy in the Texas watchtower. But it wasn't the thing back then.

The thing holding back actual serial killers now is that it's just so much harder to get away with longterm secretive murder given modern police capabilities that they don't get away with it long enough to gain the notoriety of a Bundy or a Gacy. But mass or spree killers have the advantage of doing their thing in short amounts of time where a concerted investigation doesn't have the time to go into motion before a large number of people are already dead.

I mean one of the most prolific serial killers ever was a guy in the Soviet Union where the police actively suppressed information about his crimes because authorities didn't want to give the impression that something like that was even happening let alone that they couldn't catch the culprit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo

[Frownland]

The big names are in the past because of improvements in forensic and investigation methods. You've seen CSI. The mass shooter phenomena exploded post-Columbine because the Columbine shooters were made into antiheros, basically. Combine that with an unperturbed gun fetishism increasing access to weapons, widespread disillusionment, and the increase in mental illness that our healthcare system hasn't caught up with yet and you have a mass shooter epidemic.

[jwb]

That makes me think... At the shelter there's an incinerator

[The Batlord]

Godspeed.

[jwb]

I agree about the Columbine thing and how it was recieved though

My gut instinct would be that we shouldn't publicize the killers motives or story at all. And just shoot them on the spot so there's no trial.

[Lisnaholic]

Yes, there are disgruntled people everywhere. I think these are a couple of factors that make the US particularly prone to mass shootings:-
i) people may be poor, but have just enough money to live in isolation. In India, where one family may all live in one room, it's difficult to hide a weapon and plot your shooting spree.
ii) people have the materialistic good life thrust in their face like a recrimination every time they turn on the tv
iii) access to and no. of guns per capita puts the US in a league of it's own

[jwb]

To play devil's advocate guns are very prevalent and poverty is even more prevalent in many parts of the third world

Yet you look at a country like el Salvador... Massive amounts of gang violence.. but how many random mass shootings?

The shooters in the US aren't the most down trodden... They're spoiled white boys with poor social skills and extremist ideas.

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by jwb

To play devil's advocate guns are very prevalent and poverty is even more prevalent in many parts of the third world

Yet you look at a country like el Salvador... Massive amounts of gang violence.. but how many random mass shootings?

The shooters in the US aren't the most down trodden... They're spoiled white boys with poor social skills and extremist ideas.

If you don't count Chicago, then you're right.

But for what ever reason we don't count Chicago mass shootings. Almost as if this country just doesn't care when black people die.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by jwb

Yet you look at a country like el Salvador... Massive amounts of gang violence.. but how many random mass shootings?

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic

ii) people have the materialistic good life thrust in their face like a recrimination every time they turn on the tv

When I think of El Salvador, I think of a culture of built on the idea of self-reliance culminating in consumerist class warfare.

[jwb]

We count the church shooting in SC where ah the victims were black

Cause random mass shootings are a different phenomenon from gang shootings

And El Salvador and other countries definitely have us beat in the gang violence per capita dept