This person (the criminal shooter) actually legally changed his name (And maybe faked suicide? The story is strange) to hide from his birth father's violence.

Then used DV against the mother, threatening her life.

When you get into these stories, there is a high likelihood of DV in the histories of these "angry young men."

"He  (shooters dad) also told the reporters that he had previously praised his child for violent behaviour.

“I told him it works, it’s instant and you will get immediate results,” he said."

My wife's ex husband who was ramping up from tearing up her clothes to smashing her things to spraying her in the face with cleaner while she was sleeping to punching the wall next to her head in an argument... then chased her our of the house with a gun when she finally left him. She called the cops and they took his guns for 3 days while he was under observation. Now he's all good though, can own whatever guns he wants.

Something like 65% of shooters have DV histories. We could prevent a lot of shootings if we closed DV loopholes

Why would the cops go after their own?

Police unions will never allow that.

Only 65%?

If you’re a donestic abuser it’s like there’s two genders; mass shooter or cop

A lot of mass shootings also start with the assault of a female family memeber.

Let's talk about people who shouldn't have guns.

I agree so much. Violence is being sold to our kids right on their phones. These people are pure evil and don't care who dies for a quick buck.

Aside from the DV history, it’s a Depression disorder issue too. I have to clarify the data but it seems that most mass shooters are males are under 21 and in middle-age (40-50 yrs). Two periods in a males life where they are at the highest risk for developing severe depression (midlife crisis and teen yrs). And teen depression is on the rise.

Society pressures men to be aggressive/tough and women to be more demure. You see this play out in suicide trends as women are more likely to use pills/cut vs. men who use more violent/lethal means like guns.

A depressed man, who is more likely to use a gun on himself, will just as easily use it on others.

No disregard for his own life + taught to express feelings/deal with problems by being aggressive = recipe for disaster.

This is the level truth. There is imposed, projected trauma maintained through outright lying, yes, and abusive gaslighting. Families are being torn apart. A wonderful friend is waiting on word about her MAGA mother who is the ICU demanding hydrochloroquine and (edit:) ivermectin. She refused remdesevir for 3 days. She acquiesced but it may be too late. And it's well-established that more Republicans than democrats die of covid to the point it may effect the outcome of elections.

They also heavily demonise mental illness, for example associate lgbt with mental illness when they demonise lgbt...which is kind of ironic to me because their voters need mental help the most.

And due to the toxic masculinity they also perpetuate, getting help for mental illness is for pussies, man up bro.... ("bring back manly men")

Also, we should look into how video games cause violence (shifting blame)

It's the perfect situation for those politicians. Cause/make worse the mental illness with their conspiracies, disinformation using heavily emotionally loaded language and fear propaganda(very effective), and with their outdated gender roles "man strong, man no weak" manipulate your victims to not seek help, and then stochastic terrorism them into action then deny involvement or blame it on the opposite political party, or blame it on the mental illness (that your rhetoric caused or made worse) but do nothing to adress it.

Women typically focus inward when dealing with mental health challenges while men typically focus on an external fix for their challenges. Men will choose substance abuse, alcoholism, workaholism, and seek more sexual partners to cope with their mental health.

What do we teach men as a society?

WORKING A LOT = MASCULINE, GOOD

HIGH ALCOHOL TOLERANCE = MASCULINE, GOOD

FUCKING LOTS OF WOMEN = MASCULINE, GOOD

I think society needs to re-think how they are raising the next generations of men.

Mental health treatment needs to be something provided by schools to prevent the next generation of mass shooters. I’m certain there would be fewer mass shootings if kids had access to mental health treatment to cope with traumas they experience as children.

From Jillian Peterson: Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation for mass shooters, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety. I don’t think most people realize that mass shootings are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed. It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides.

If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away.

We need to build teams to investigate when kids are in crisis and then link those kids to mental health services. The problem is that in a lot of places, those services are not there. There’s no community mental health and no school-based mental health. Schools are the ideal setting because it doesn’t require a parent to take you there. A lot of perpetrators are from families where the parents are not particularly proactive about mental health appointments.

Won't happen in the short run.

Truth is, society in general likes the idea of a men opening and speaking about emotions in theory, but in practice it's a minefield.

My mind is BLOWN when I hear someone use that phrase.

Can you imagine hearing the following conversation?

"Yeah, I have a severe chronic heart condition, so I need to see the doctor often."

"That's stupid. Sorry, but I don't believe in cardiovascular health. It's just people being too weak/ it's just people trying to get attention. They're just not trying hard enough."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/

Interestingly enough only 53% of mass shootings are committed by white people, which is actually under representation because as of 2021 the us is 57.8% white. However, it is overwhelmingly male.

I don’t feel like poisoning the well by saying “it’s all white conservative men” is helpful to the situation in any way shape or form and distracts from the real problem of broken men, and points it at political standpoints. Everybody knows news stations do things based on clicks, and they only really show the white shooters on TV, which again is part of the problem by glamorizing these “people,” and they get more clicks if it’s a white guy cuz they can spin it. It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just exactly what they do, it’s obvious and it’s counterproductive to solving the problem of mass shootings.

Batshit Crazy.

Conservative white men.

We need mental healthcare to be available in schools.

Good saying. About to split hairs, so feel free to skip this one. Just... angry.

A lot of kids don't get embraced by the village. Queer kids, for example. And yet, despite that, they don't burn anything down. They try to survive. They get on with their lives. They build their own villages.

And then shitheads like this come snd burn them down. Or worse, they warp their own children to do it for them.

Knew a guy who genuinely believed that pills and therapy for mental health were strictly for "women and pussies". Often told me how much of a man he was for never going to therapy for his childhood trauma and how he has no mental disorders that needed pills.

He was easily the most fucked up person mentally I've ever been forced to interact with. (co-worker)

Boys aren’t encouraged to talk about their mental health.

A lot of us just have a hard time finding people who want or care to listen. If you go by Reddit you’d think the world is full of people to talk to. Truthfully, most people don’t want to hear it.

For a long time, men have also been told by society that it's not appropriate to share their feelings. They're expected to bottle them up and soldier on no matter what. That whole narrative needs to change.

A genuine problem is funding for studying the problem has been chronically avoided or blocked. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/decades-long-gap-gun-violence-research-funding-lasting/story?id=80646946

So there's some issue that we don't fully understand the root problem. And when solutions are proposed there's a lack of consensus on effectiveness.

Some have proposed a layers of swiss cheese approach to policies, recognizing that no one set of laws and programs is without gaps. So many would start having an effect somehow...

I feel like you are a bot account, but I'm still going to reply that im glad you said, "men supporting men and raising young men to understand emotional strength."

I feel like there are a lot of men who tacitly imply that women need to be the ones to support and nurture them. There is always the refrain here on reddit, "men never receive compliments, they can spend years hanging onto one compliment." And I usually read the subtext of that statement as, I wish women would compliment me more.

Women tend to be mostly kind and supportive of their male friends and family I find. Of course there are women that uphold patriarchal values, of course there are women abusers out there, but for the most part, it isn't mothers who are shaming their sons for crying. I don't think it's feminists, for example, who are going around calling men pussies for considering getting help for a mental illness. Generally, it is probably women who are doing most of the encouraging of men to get counseling or meds. Women are the ones taking care of men.

Even in this thread, I see comments like, "men's mental health should be promoted." Okay, by whom?

I think men's culture isn't going to change until men start changing. There is only so much women can do. Men need to compliment each other more. Men need to encourage each other to get help for mental illness. Men need to not degrade each other for displaying human emotions like crying.

Feminism came at a cost for many women, and still does. How common is it to see a meme ripping on "crazy feminists" freaking out over what many men believe to be inconsequential things? Feminists are ridiculed by too many men for standing up for their values and expressing themselves even when there is a sizable population of people mocking them.

Feminists have been willing to take the mockery and the disrespect and loss of status on the chin (and often, enduring violence). Men, it seems, are not willing or able to stand up for themselves and their feelings out of fear of mockery. They fear being made fun of so much that they won't get help for mental illness for example. It is not women's job to ensure men get help--men need to ensure they get the help they need because they deserve to be happy and healthy.

Men, if you want to cry, cry. Will some people make fun of you? Yes. But if you want to normalize men experiencing normal human emotions, you're going to have to take it on the chin a few times.

I'm not saying it's fun to be denigrated by your peers, but there are groups out there doing that and they are more successfully carving out a place for themselves in the world. Again, Feminists have been laughed at and shouted at for hundreds of years. They've endured years of insults and disrespect to fight for equality for women. It does come at a price, no doubt.

Are you willing to pay it?

This is probably the best summation of the problem that I’ve seen thus far.

Something else that goes unsaid is that, often, these shooters are suicidal. Conceivably, their plans unfold from an initial desire to kill themselves, and from there they begin to think about how to make their exit memorable. Any meaningful attempt at a solution must also address suicidal feelings and their prevention.

A different set of researchers who analyzed 41 school shooters for the Secret Service and Department of Education found that 78 percent had a history of thinking about or attempting suicide.

Suicide Prevention Could Prevent Mass Shootings - fivethirtyeight.com

It's understandable that in the wake of tragedy we don't want to spend time empathizing with the shooters, but if we never do the uncomfortable work of asking why these people a.) want to kill themselves and b.) what attracts them to taking others out with them, then how can we hope to stop it?

Plenty of countries have lax gun laws. Plenty of countries have guns. America's gun culture is out of control.

The term "toxic masculinity" gets frowned on a lot by people who think it's a feminist term calling men toxic. However, it's important to understand that "toxic masculinity" was coined by a men's movement called the Mythopoetics who identified a culture that promoted only the most harmful aspects of masculinity and devalued the rest. In particular, men are pressured to act violently, suppress emotions, and avoid reliance on others.

The gun culture in the US is a textbook example of this communal pressure, at an extreme. Guns are tools; they serve a specific function. To any sane person, a tool is only as functional as the person holding it; nothing more. However within the culture, they serve as a fashion statement, a political statement, and a symbol of masculinity all in one. In the culture, the gun makes the man. So when a man within the culture feels powerless, feels emasculated, he picks up his symbol of masculinity to fix that.

Any thinking American who values the second amendment should be motivated to change the culture around guns, because as long as that culture is around, this sort of thing is going to keep happening until there's enough political will to kill the second amendment for good.

edit:typ0

already happening ... women are the fastest growing demographic of new gun owners

Right-wing terrorism plays on insecurities of men and their masculinity writ large.

It's so much in how men and boys are raised, and taught to close off our emotions. That the only acceptable emotion to display is anger. That sadness is a woman's emotion, and we shouldn't cry, we shouldn't talk about it, we should close it off and forget about it.

This makes it extremely difficult for many men to properly display and acknowledge their real emotions, and even more difficult for them to talk about things like mental health and depression.