Thread: Another Mass Shooting

Bath salts? A false flag? A result of the American media's tendency to to sensationalize/glorify these shootings by providing month-long non-stop coverage of these stories even when no new details come up (giving the shooter's pseudo-celebrity status, thus making mass-shootings seem appealing to "unhinged" individuals)?

And if the NSA's PRISM spy program is designed to deal with matters of national security, why weren't they able to stop this? Does this discredit the program altogether?

Thoughts?

I can't comment on this particular shooting. Have had no time to catch up on today's deaths.

But I agree 100% with the idea you mentioned about almost "glorifying" the perpetrators of these events. When Rolling Stone had that Boston' fella' on the cover after the marathon, I think that was a new low & precisely what any attacker goes for.

When the elementary school massacre took place, & we saw headlines such as "Inside the mind of ...", your point of "celebrity" was illustrated clearly.

I've been predicting the nonsense conspiracy theorists will come up with all day. Alex Jones has of course already implied this shooting is a false flag attack, but then again he would declare the milk in his fridge going sour a false flag attack.

I even came up a theory of my own. OBVIOUSLY this shooting is a staged diversion since the Senate closed up for the remainder of the day. This is in line with John McCain, a US Senator, stating that he'd like a day off (insert link to news story from any point in time between the years of 1987 and 2013 where McCain said he'd like a day off).

I imagine it's a very angry person with a death wish. The media's guaranteed obsession probably encouraged him.

Originally Posted by GavinGill

And if the NSA's PRISM spy program is designed to deal with matters of national security, why weren't they able to stop this? Does this discredit the program altogether?

Erm... no? PRISM can't stop people conspiring, or walking into a gun shop.

Yep, I watched about 5 minutes of cable news coverage and learned a good deal about his life and his history - it's guaranteed celebrity status, which must feel very comforting to desperate people contemplating suicide. At some level we're all afraid of dying unknown and totally forgotten.

I wonder if he was also 'addicted to violent video games'? Apparently there's some new study trying to make a causal connection, which I think is completely wrong. Obviously anybody who's a violent sociopath or psychopath will also be drawn to violent video games if they're a gamer, in the same way many hunters have subscriptions to hunting magazines and watch hunting shows. That isn't what causes them to be hunters though.

Orson Welles on the impact of violent movies and horror comics:

Originally Posted by Xei

Erm... no? PRISM can't stop people conspiring, or walking into a gun shop.

My point was, that the NSA claims the program is needed to prevent things like this from happening. That if the NSA collects intel on all forms of (electronic) communication, the country will be safe from terrorist activities and other forms of large scale destruction (like this). That's their biggest justification for keeping the program going.

But since it clearly can't manage to do that, does the US government have any real justification for keeping such a program in effect? I'm not saying that this one instance alone proves that the program is useless, but that the government's argument for keeping it going isn't a strong one.