I’ve been wondering if a brain tumor was the Maine mass shooters problem as well. We’ll probably never know
In my neurology class Whitman was the only case of the tumor clearly being a major driving factor.
I’m not saying the class was entirely comprehensive, or that the other cases were not medically-driven. The other cases we studied were psychologically driven (mental disorders) rather than physiological (e.g. tumor/cancer/head-trauma). I just wanted to say the tumor case might not be as likely as one might think.
Thanks for your input. Where are you going to school/did you go to school? How did you like your neurology class?
Sidenote: I hope that someday we are able to look at most psychological disorders as physiological disorders. I feel like more people would get the help that they need, (and society would be more accepting of it) if we looked at it through that lense instead of thinking of it like something people have complete control over by themselves. The brain is another organ, after all
It was the University of Texas at Dallas! The class was fantastic. Not only changed my understanding of how brains work, but changed it beyond what I thought was even possible.
I agree I think there is a very very gray line between physiological and psychological. There are some differences to be had, like tumors are actually just straight malicious, while disorders like psychopathy, ADHD, and autism can be argued to be different rather than strictly unhealthy (psychopaths make better soldiers, people with ADHD can be great in emergency rooms, people with autism can have all kinds of prodigy-like gifts). But many disorders like bipolar or schizophrenia are pretty much all unhealthly.
Not pointing any fingers at anyone directly, but it is noticable to me that questions like that don’t seem to come up when the murderer isn’t white.
Most mass shooters are white males, tho. It’s pretty rare for them to be anything other than that
This is absolutely not correct if your definition of mass shooting is the same one used by the people saying “there have been 500+ mass shootings in the US in 2023”. I would say white males would make up less than half of these at best. I would love to see an empirical study of this if one exists.
If your definition of mass shooting is “dude with a gun shoots lots of strangers at random in a planned extended attack in a space unlikely to have potentially armed victims (school, church, mall, concert, etc)” then you are only partially correct. Off the top of my head I can think of several shootings recently committed (since 2021) by Latino men, Asian American men and one trans man (still a man, but not the typical “while cis male shooter” profile you are implying). Yes, almost all mass shooters are men, which is a societal problem. But I would not generalize it as a white male issue, or even a mostly white male issue.
Either way, the answer must be multi-pronged. We need to enforce more strict gun control laws that include mental health issues. We need a UBI to reduce the general amount of suffering by the people of the US. We need to destigmatize mental health problems and encourage men to talk about their emotions without judging them or telling them to get a job instead. And finally we need to make mental health care affordable and accessible for everyone.
Also we should all punch nazis, because even if they aren’t the majority of mass shooters, they are certainly a part of the problem and deserve to be punched in the face. By everyone.
