Hard shells

In Texas, even if you shoot up a church on Sunday, you may find yourself taking return fire.

A horrible, horrible story, a number of young children among the dead in a tiny town that just lost nearly 10% of its people.  Sutherland Springs is a short distance southeast of San Antonio, almost in the middle of what was Eagle Ford shale boom country until quite recently.  It's maybe 100 miles northwest of us.

We know very little about the now-deceased 26-year-old New Braunfels man who was the shooter. I find myself wondering if he's going to turn out to have been on antidepressants.  It wouldn't prove much, since so many people are.  God have mercy on the grieving families.

7 comments:

Ymar Sakar said...

A war needs warriors.

Vs soldiers that need a hierarchy or permission to do anything.

douglas said...

Dennis Prager made a really interesting point today. It's obviously not about guns, and it's probably not really about mental health- even most crazy people have a conscience. He posited that it's about our victimhood culture. One thing all the mass killers have in common is that they see themselves as aggrieved and victims of a society that somehow 'didn't treat them right', and that somehow justified their acting out with violence and mayhem.

Certainly, as the victim narrative has become more standardized, we've had more of these specific types of events.

I'm thinking there's something to that.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ douglas - correct. Most people with mental illness do indeed have conscience, sometimes an over-tender one. There is something else at play among serious killers, and your description is a good first pass. The theme of resentment is powerful.

raven said...

"entitled" may be the word we are looking for.
Entitled to everything, including the lives of others.
Grievous envy is more corrosive than commonly imagined.
We have not educated our children to accept disappointment.
Everybody is a winner , superbly self esteemed, until they aren't.
And then it is the fault of others.

Ymar Sakar said...

The psychological profiles doesn't explain why they often kill themselves. That's a rather convenient discard trigger for trained mind controlled assassins however.

Ymar Sakar said...

The police unions have shown they have the conditioning trigger to train those who pull the trigger without realizing it.

It's shaky and not all that reliable yet, but the R/D is a proven concept there. The CIA and civilian research lines, or Leftist research priests like Chomsky or the Alt Right's NLP, have done even more work on this field.

douglas said...

"Grievous envy is more corrosive than commonly imagined."

There was a time when that was common knowledge- one of the copybook headings if you will.

Why they kill themselves if they feel entitled? Not gonna let someone else get the 'victory' of killing them- only they can take their life. They don't want to go out in defeat. IT's a final flip of the bird in their minds.