What would have become of so many of those rough or unmoored high-school drop-outs in American cinema from East of Eden to Stand By Me had they too been effectively housebound by social media apps had they been invented in the Fifties? The miniaturisation of screens, their glorification, has done untold harm to youth; and in a society that has easy access to guns combined with the inexorable planting of ineradicable profiles on social media, on the internet, a toxic environment has unsurprisingly ensued. The more one unstable young man posts stuff, the worse it gets, the more extreme and dangerous he may well become. It’s as if shame no longer has a say. It might do if one changes one’s tune. But hours and hours, thousands of them, are spent on tiny screens by mentally unstable youth, I imagine. All over the world! And those hours are spent away from parents, grand-parents – and the more “stuff” that gets posted, the deeper the resentment that builds, making it unlikely someone unstable can be made to step back from the brink. Many parents, especially not-very-well-off, may just give up on their teenage sons. The browbeating and the trivialisation of life by the oppressive blanketing of social media on human life today certainly helps nobody. The problem may be parked, but it festers. The idea of a fresh start in life seems impossible in the ridiculously tiny screen internet age. It’s as if society has become God-like, and instead of the thundering preachers of old bellowing “Your sins shall find you out!”, it’s the ineradicable traces of internet usage that forever will “find you out!”, with no guarantee of salvation. This is not good for a society that must try to protect its most vulnerable and those who become wicked.
A healthy society needs healthy families (eg, Ramos’ drug-addict, single-parent mother with boyfriends are not what I mean). Boys (who are the problem 99.9% of the time) need fathers to teach them the proper uses and abuses of manliness (please don’t insert the word “toxic” here).
I think the “mental health” angle (formerly known as crazy people) is an epiphenomenon, not a cause.
Boys and girls need a loving, supportive environment, free from abuse. There are plenty of kids raised by single parents who turn out great. Boys can and do turn out great even if they don’t have a father. Same with girls and mothers. Healthy families can be many different shapes and sizes… and “traditional” families can be quite dysfunctional. Forcing a one-size-fits-all model for healthy family dynamics is wishful thinking.
All very true, but when working on averages which is what you have to do when discussing policy at a national level, then there’s no doubting that the traditional family structure does tend to lead to the best outcomes.
Your wishful thinking is utterly wrong. Men from single mother households are responsible for nearly all crime. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
I have a mentally ill relative who has been in and out (but largely and now permanently in) psychiatric institutions since his freshman year in college – 40+ years. He is schizophrenic and nonviolent. The shooters cited in this article are/were not afflicted with mental illness. Rather, they all have/had personality disorders, once known as being antisocial.
The author notes ADHD and depression – dubious conditions often made by unqualified people like preschool teachers and “treated” with drugs when a boy is very young. What happens to a boy fed questionable pharmaceuticals from age three who lives in a 24/7 digital world saturated in violence? Add a poisonous or non-existent family life and a society that tells him he is toxic. Antisocial behavior grows and festers.
The author suggests more mental health facilities are the answer. She is wrong. Whole industries have mushroomed under that very lucrative banner since my family member experienced his first horrific mental break and suicide attempt. Do these facilities actually help anyone recover? Our family went from expensive hospital to chic treatment center to private practice to celebrated doctor for decades (until the money ran out) and conditions never improved. One doctor, a “star” in his field, actually told my relative that people diagnosed as “mentally ill” were in reality on a higher intellectual plane than the rest of us normal, uncreative sticks in the mud – including his heartbroken, long-suffering parents. It was monstrous. He is now fully committed to a state facility because all other options have been exhausted. He enjoys a deeply loving, supportive extended family and is still a barely human shell living in prison-like conditions.
What hope is there for the boy drugged from childhood? It certainly isn’t more “mental health” facilities. Perhaps it starts with Mom and Dad (provided there ARE two of them) saying no to that first ADHD pronouncement and being the parents they signed up to be. Beyond that, protecting schools using the Israeli model makes the most immediate sense.
No one in the US will be treated with drugs for ADHD unless they have been diagnosed by a physician or licensed clinical psychologist. That a preschool teacher might assert a child has ADHD will not result in them being treated for it.
Many years ago my son’s school was insistent that he saw a particular physician. We asked our GP about this man and he said that if he saw this Doctor he would be prescribed Ritalin ! Instead he saw a psychologist who said that he was just a normal boy and so we took against the drug idea. His headteacher was furious !
thankyou for some real life experience. In a former life I worked in what was known as a ‘therapeutic community’ which was run very economically. Live in care and therapy for clients with major mental health challenges – all aspects of life were part of therapy including group, one to one, music,art, physical therapies as well as lots of out in the real world experiences – walks, camping etc etc. We also administered more independant living houses and flats for clients after 1 to 2 years in the main facility – leading hopefully to fullish independance. Clients did have to be motivated and to adhere to the group culture – most wanted to after ‘feeling the love’. Around the year 2000 the NZ ministry of health decided to follow the ‘american best practice model ‘ ie clients could not be asked to do anything they did not want to do-so our rehab facilities degenerated into messy b oarding houses with depressed clients lying in bed half the day and ordering delivery pizzas – with a large middle management staff filling in forms to make it look as if something useful was happening. NZ now has a mental healthsupport problem as does the US -and i can feel the tears rising for all those parents/clients who have nowhere to go. The really sad thing is that we provided this service for actually a bargain price that would now cost a fortune to replicate. How do one or a few people get to be able to make such massively potentially damaging decisions based on probably a politically expedient premise is beyond me. We were quite clear that we had a brilliant rehab system happening , after thirty plus years of steady development, and i went into a kind of shock that our so-called experts threw it out . Probably best just to not risk having kids in the present world…………….
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
There is no one silver bullet that will solve the problem of mass murder by mentally troubled young men .Ayaan Hirsi Ali has focussed on mental health treatment and it is surely correct that in most cases the signs were there that a potential shooter was on the loose if a proper system of mental health oversight was in place that could respond and ensure (a) treatment was available and (b) that such individuals should not get their hands on assault rifles and just as important ammunition. I believe that while rifle ownership is widespread in Switzerland ammunition control is tight.
l do think the US should review the right to arms and ammunition in respect of those who by reason of immaturity are less likely to be able to control their violent impulses. We know that emotional control is relatively weak in teenagers and does not reach adult levels until early 20s. Restrictions on alcohol consumption, driving and getting married are widespread for this reason and a ban on weapon possession until 21 or 25 might gain widespread support given the usual age profile of school shooters. Unfortunately the tendency has been to look at such things as rights that should be possessed at the youngest age conceivable rather than setting the age at prudent levels.
Of course, the widespread availability of violent shooting-based video games does not assist and the importance given to fame/notoriety fuels the shooter fantasy- a way to make your mark. The names of the shooters should be given no publicity for this reason.
Just as well publicised suicides tend to lead to a spike in suicides so publicity of such incidents tends to result in copycat killings.
There are no easy solutions merely trade-offs that might ameliorate the level of violence.
Last edited 1 year ago by Jeremy Bray
Marius Clore
1 year ago
Excellently put. It seems that everyone ignores the simple fact that everyone of these mass school shootings have involved young men who are highly disturbed, Perhaps rather than reflexively going after the 2nd amendment the US would be better served to increase mental health care and mental health surveillance, particularly of disturbed young men in schools or colleges.
Very well – but there similar challenges and similar cohorts of disturbed young men in other countries which don’t allow obviously ill 18 year olds to buy weapons designed for war (and war only); and they seem to have fewer mass slaughter incidents, however dreadful their mental health services are.
The London Bridge* attack saw eight dead and many more injured by stabbing. All three Islamic assailants were shot dead.
Where there’s a will there’s a way unfortunately.
If their victims had legally been allow to carry handguns then they could have shot their killers, within the 8 minutes that it took the police to arrive – too late.
Exactly! The State failed miserably in its primary duty, defending its unarmed citizens.
Had a citizen produced a handgun and fought back, he or she would have been charged with possession of an illegal weapon. What an awful world we have made for ourselves, where eight innocent lives are sacrificed so callously, and nothing is done or ever will be done.
Sadly nor was that brave chap from ‘Millwall’ made a Knight of the Garter or given the George Cross as he so rightly deserved.
If British society was armed like the States there would have been a lot more than 8 innocent lives lost in the time period from the London bridge attack and now though
I think you should perhaps inform yourself a little on the nature of firearms. The fact is that you cannot buy fully automatic weapons used by the military in the US. Or more specifically you have to get a special license which isn’t easy to get and they cost a fortune. Every pistol today is semi-automatic with a magazine, generally 10-15 bullets. As for the AR15 rifle it is absolutely not a weapon of war. It is simply a regular rifle dressed up to look badass. Just like the majority of rifles it has a magazine. But it is not an automatic weapon used by the military in combat.
The big difference between the US and the UK is that mental health treatment, ever since the days of Reagan when the majority of psychiatric hospitals were shut down, is very very poor and not readily available.
Just remember, it is just as easy to do the same amount of damage with a car but nobody is talking about banning cars or in the US even raising the driving age from 16 to 18.
Now, a simple commonsense solution regarding guns in the US would be to raise the age at which a gun can be purchased from say 18 to 21. Not unreasonable since one has to be 21 in the US to buy any form of alcohol.
Reagan’s move to shut down psychiatric hospitals resulted from the trend, started in the 1960s, of not institutionalizing people with mental health issues. #One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “State hosipitals” and their beds became virtually unused relics and closing them was sensible.
Impetus of the de-institutionalization movement was provided by patients’ rights advocates and the notion that better outcomes would result if the patients were handled somehow within their communities.
Now, the pendulum has swung too far, especially given the acceptance by today’s society for unthinking tolerance, perhaps I should say enthusiastic embrace, of deviance from traditional social norms.
I see the Reagan reference used a lot as if to blame him for the closing of mental hospitals. It was actually a liberal push to close them and de-stigmatize mental illness. It’s just another example of unintended consequences of the liberal insanity.
A man out on $1,000 bail, for attempting to run over his girlfriend with his SUV, intentionally hit 60 people at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, last year, killing 2. The news was suppressed for 2 reasons:
1.Low bail is a leftist cause, so bad consequences must be minimized.
2. Driver was black, and almost all victims were white.
There were no calls for SUV control, although the majority of the few stories published said the SUV did it, and didn’t mention the driver.
A man out on $1,000 bail, for attempting to run over his girlfriend with his SUV, intentionally hit 60 people at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, last year, killing 2.
The news wasn’t really suppressed (at least not where I live, 90 miles from Waukesha), but the fact that the driver was black was suppressed for quite some time. In general when the race of a criminal is not mentioned in the press, that means he’s black.
Clearly the AR-15 does a great job at destruction. We unfortunately have proof. Whether or not the AR-15 is a dressed up rifle is besides the point. The killer knew as you and I do that it will provide much more carnage than small arms pistol or knife any day of the week.
I agree with the conclusion but would add on that a license along with training is mandatory. Not saying it would prevent, but certainly slow down his ability to receive his weapons.
Fair enough, but ‘ Every pistol today is semi-automatic with a magazine, generally 10-15 bullets..’ etc seems to me to be an admission that the US has simply redefined weapons of war as recreational/defensive, not that the easily available guns are suitable for non-military use – whatever that might be. But indeed I am ignorant on this area, and can’t readily imagine a situation in which I would need 15 bullets. The nonsense elsewhere on this thread about the London Bridge killings is a case in point – give all the bystanders automatic weapons, and imagine the carnage that would have ensued. Oh, and the ‘cars are just as dangerous’ dodge is unworthy – they are not designed to kill and wound, ffs, With no other purpose.
Douglas Proudfoot
1 year ago
In today’s world, families take no responsibility for crazy members, mostly because they can’t. The current shooter was thrown out of his mother’s house, and shot his grandmother. Under current US law, involuntary commitment is not an option. Even though the shooter’s family probably knew he was dangerous, they realistically couldn’t do much.
My brother was bipolar. He refused to take his meds, or see psychiatrists. While my mother was alive, she wired him money weekly. When she died, I set him up with a cash station card that had money transferred into it every week. He lived in Sacramento. Whenever we tried to visit him, he would avoid us, often by getting arrested. He lived on the street. A drunk driver hit and killed him in a cross walk last year.
My brother wasn’t violent. He didn’t do any drugs. However, there was nothing our family could do for him against his will. He would only accept money for food. He refused our help, end of story.
Families with violent crazy people can’t do much either. If the family notifies authorities, the violent crazy person may retaliate, while the authorities will most likely do nothing. That situation is what has to change.
Peter MacDonagh
1 year ago
I don’t really remember these problems growing up in a suburb of Detroit in the 70s. Was it as bad then and I just didn’t know it? What has changed?
There was a lot gun violence in Detroit, two miles down the road but nothing where I lived. Even today there is more gun violence in London (where I live now) than in the Detroit suburbs. Kid shot in Brixton a week ago. Nothing approaching Detroit level violence though and we have population 10 times the size.
I think probably global media’s reach and social media are the big differences.
Maybe in the USA’s past guns were more based around hunting rather than self-defence in all the strata of communities.
Tom Watson
1 year ago
Always interesting to see which alleged elements of a mass murderer’s mental state are thought improper to discuss.
Dawn McD
1 year ago
I won’t get into the complexity of the mental health topic other than expressing my increasing distress that the legal rights of mentally ill people to refuse treatment and remain at large, for some reason, remain more important than everyone else’s right to be safe from their actions.
Ali seems to imply (I didn’t click the link) that “multiple exits” is the “opposite” of “single point of entry.” This is not true. Every secure government building (for example, the courthouse in your town, if they’re doing things correctly) has a single point of entry yet multiple doors available to exit the building. An exit door locks behind you, you cannot re-enter the building through that door. This is an effective system, weakened only by human decisions based on deliberate sabotage or laziness (blocking a door open, with excuses including: I just needed to get something from my car, I was only gone for a minute, we needed some fresh air/a quick cigarette, blah blah blah).
Americans have always had access to guns, and guns are not the problem here. We in the U.S. are living in a hellscape reflecting half a century of “progressive” policies that have made everything they touch worse. Every single day, millions of American gun owners manage to conduct themselves in a law abiding manner, without killing anyone. Every day. Guns are not the problem here.
Karl Schuldes
1 year ago
I can’t help thinking these mass shootings are largely caused by the culture of fame. This shooter is now the most important person in the US. What empty loser is watching all this, fantasizing about forcing everyone to notice him and the power he wielded.
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
One of the problems in describing ‘mental disorder’ is that its conception of the mind (as a separate ‘thing’ from the body which can be filled with either healthy or damaging, right or wrong ideas) is completely false. There is no known non-physical ‘thing’ known anywhere else in the entire Universe. The ‘mind’ is just the body’s own self-aware summary of its current state, the totality of which constitutes our idea of ourselves as ‘persons’.
So rather than get lost in the wilderness of ‘diagnoses’ of the ‘conditions’ supposedly exhibited by something that doesn’t exist I(‘the mind’). Let’s concentrate on what we know most mass-shooters have done to their bodies, and the overwhelming fact about that is that most I have read about have, in the run up to their crimes, been dosing themselves with various forms or cocktails of either legal or illegal psycho-active (which should really be called body-disequilibriant) drugs. That’s why (at least I think) civil mass-shootings in the US didn’t exist prior to 1966, when the post-war general surrender to socially widespread and intensive drug use first got under way in the US (a bit later in the UK).
The Texas shooter was a known marijuana (paranoia, risk of ‘psychotic’ episodes) user (possibly heavy), which I predicted before I even knew who he was (and what else, one wonders?). This is at least worth looking into, surely? Yet the fact took a week to surface, as neither the police nor most commenters seem to think it very interesting.
Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail would certainly support your observation and regularly mentions it following terrorist attacks, but as you say there is no official enthusiasm for exploring this connection. Indeed the liberal consensus in the UK is all for decriminalisation of marijuana which is scarcely enforced.
See this report: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084484/
Like you Arnold my first thought is that this young man may have a cannibis induced psychosis. I know two young men who have separately been so afflicted, to the despair of their families.
Warren Trees
1 year ago
A gratuitous sham of an essay from an otherwise good and insightful writer. The real issue is that the institution of the family structure is broken down and Godly wisdom has been relegated to the trash bin. Build a million mental health edifices if you want, but you’ll need to force people into them. Perhaps that’s the real strategy.
Andrew Langridge
1 year ago
There are 130 times as many gun murders per person in the USA as in the UK. No amount of mental health data can obscure this difference between two supposedly ‘civilised’ countries.
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Langridge
Cassandra Cavanaugh
1 year ago
Any child with an absent father and an addicted mother should be known to social services and provided with family and social support services prophylactically, without needing a MH diagnosis (big brother/sister, mentoring, individual and group therapy, vocational, etc.). This is not rocket science. Some unicorns may be able to emerge from such a youth unscathed, but far from most.
Hiring 5 million social workers (I realize that was not a serious suggestion) means that, instead of hiring from the bottom of the barrel as social services agencies are doing now, they’ll be hiring from under the barrel. There are not 5 million people qualified to be social workers in the United States, and there never will be because it takes an unusual combination of intelligence, empathy, and toughness to do the job. “Unusual” means you can’t just line people up and enlist them as social workers like you do soldiers.
Martin Dukes
1 year ago
When the wise founding fathers of the United States were writing the 2nd amendment to their constitution they were talking about muzzle-loading muskets. Maybe those are the arms that citizens should be permitted to bear. Context is everything.
I think the purpose was to enable citizens to provide a militia to protect them against a dictatorial government. The modern equivalent might be the sort of anti-tank missile that has been so effective in the Ukraine! I don’t think even the most enthusiastic gun proponent would suggest these be made available to 18 year olds under the 2nd Amendment.
Any European should be embarrassed to comment negatively on our 2nd amendment rights. The track record of dictators ravaging their populations throughout European history is evidence enough. Why do you think the Founders added it in the first place?
Actually, if you read the American founders, they were talking about all weapons of war, muskets, rifles, swords, cannon… And yes, private citizens could purchase cannons — how else would one outfit a privateer if granted a letter of marque and reprisal by Congress? The cannon on the village green in those days was the artillery piece of the local militia, most likely bought with private subscriptions, rather than tax monies.
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
I think the most obvious answer is to require regular mental health screenings and therapy as a prerequisite to attending school, similar to vaccinations, though given the state of the country at the moment, that may be just as politically difficult as gun control. I think the best we can hope for is local school districts, cities, and towns implementing new programs at the local level where they can actually find some level of consensus, and then others see what works. A bottom up approach is the only viable one in today’s political climate.
Sam McGowan
1 year ago
This author knows absolutely nothing about Ramos (neither do I.) She is basing her assessment on after-the-fact memories of his fellow high school students, some of whom are known to have bullied him. By the way, this is only the second mass shooting in an American elementary school in history. How he got in the building seems to still be up in the air. Initially, law enforcement claimed a teacher left a door propped open but that has since been disproven. It’s recently come to light that the grandmother he shot in the face is a school employee.
She mentions Santa Fe but leaves out that Jana Fisher, who was probably his first victim, had publically humiliated the shooter a week before. She told her mother he was going to bring a gun to school and kill her – and she was going to haunt him forever. He did, along with several other fellow students he didn’t like. He’s mentally ill but perhaps as a result, not a cause. We’re probably never going to know what prompted Ramos’ actions but instead of talking about an epidemic, the world needs to understand just how infrequent tragedies like this really are.
They’re much more frequent in America than they are anywhere else though I think you’d agree, and bullying certainly isn’t something that’s unique to American children
Two in the history of the country (if that number is correct) cannot be “much more frequent” than elsewhere unless there have never been any elementary school shootings elsewhere. I believe there have been 13 mass school shootings (all grades) since 1966 when records began to be kept after the Texas Tower shooting. Mass shootings are much more common, and school shootings are somewhat more common, but *mass school* shootings (defined as 4+ people shot) are extremely rare.
“Active shooter” drills in elementary schools are almost certainly more damaging to children than the shootings, unless you happen to be the one shot. I am very glad I did not go to school in a glorified prison camp. We could come and go more or less as we pleased, facing no consequences other than detention if we left when we weren’t supposed to (that happened to me once).
A naive enquirer might wonder if the culture of bullying might have a very real negative effect on the mental health of a fragile psyche. Has anyone done a study on this contributary factor – or do we just accept that bullying is somehow ‘normal’ and therefore not worthy of serious attention. If this is the case then surely we then live in a brutal society – and in brutal societies brutal things happen. Many studies have clearly shown that regular bullying can have catastophic effects on developing youths so why is so little attention paid to it ????? “public humiliation” can be a precourser to suicide -and quite possibly serious retaliation – why is this not seen as the catastrophe for an individual that it is ?? I think our society is , in fact, a brutal one – and we will see the outcomes of that for a long time – unless the tacit acceptance of personal attacks is eradicated.
Garrett R
1 year ago
Incredibly lazy article. Ali is not informed on mental health and makes ludicrously dangerous assumptions. Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that includes ADHD, ASD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, etc. For many years we did ostracize the neurodivergent.
TikTok is a form of acceptance for your condition.
These folks truly are different on a neurological level. The science has shown this for decades. Children with dyslexia need extra resources at school. Children with ADHD who go unmedicated have smaller cerebellums, smaller temporal gray matter, and smaller total cerebral volumes. Furthermore, ADHD has one of the strongest genetic components in psychiatry at about 75%. Children with ASD have much different wiring from others without ASD.
Ali—you’re a better thinker than this. This effort was 10th grade BS.
>TikTok is a form of acceptance for your condition. Tumblr is; I’m not sure about TikTok. All I’ve seen on TikTok is teenagers dancing in their bedrooms.
M. Jamieson
1 year ago
It’s worth noting that in almost every case the perpetrators of these events are sicidal. THey do not expect to come out of them alive. While it’s not impossible that mentally healthy people might see a self-sacrifice for a cause as a noble course of action, that doesn’t seem to be the case in these instances.
Methids of suicide have a strong cultural element, there are typical differences in methods used and these are learned. In the US, getting gunned down after perpetrating a mass shooting is now one of these typical methods. So there is absolutly some room for looking at it through the lens of the apex of a mental health crises.
Scott Norman Rosenthal
1 year ago
“Neurodiversity” is a very real aspect of humanity. In reality, all of us are “neurodiverse”. I myself have lived with bizarre, physiologically agonizing symptoms throughout my life. My progress didn’t begin until I broke away from the mental health system its drugs and interference
One common characteristic of thee shooters is that all were on psychiatric “meds”. These don’t calm down people. To the contrary, they often create fatigue and hostility. This is a factor in promoting such violence.
Rafi Stern
1 year ago
Some good points until you got to the penultimate paragraph decrying the celebration of neurodiversity. I don’t think anyone is celebrating the disturbed individuals who become mass shooters.
What would have become of so many of those rough or unmoored high-school drop-outs in American cinema from East of Eden to Stand By Me had they too been effectively housebound by social media apps had they been invented in the Fifties? The miniaturisation of screens, their glorification, has done untold harm to youth; and in a society that has easy access to guns combined with the inexorable planting of ineradicable profiles on social media, on the internet, a toxic environment has unsurprisingly ensued. The more one unstable young man posts stuff, the worse it gets, the more extreme and dangerous he may well become. It’s as if shame no longer has a say. It might do if one changes one’s tune. But hours and hours, thousands of them, are spent on tiny screens by mentally unstable youth, I imagine. All over the world! And those hours are spent away from parents, grand-parents – and the more “stuff” that gets posted, the deeper the resentment that builds, making it unlikely someone unstable can be made to step back from the brink. Many parents, especially not-very-well-off, may just give up on their teenage sons. The browbeating and the trivialisation of life by the oppressive blanketing of social media on human life today certainly helps nobody. The problem may be parked, but it festers. The idea of a fresh start in life seems impossible in the ridiculously tiny screen internet age. It’s as if society has become God-like, and instead of the thundering preachers of old bellowing “Your sins shall find you out!”, it’s the ineradicable traces of internet usage that forever will “find you out!”, with no guarantee of salvation. This is not good for a society that must try to protect its most vulnerable and those who become wicked.
A healthy society needs healthy families (eg, Ramos’ drug-addict, single-parent mother with boyfriends are not what I mean). Boys (who are the problem 99.9% of the time) need fathers to teach them the proper uses and abuses of manliness (please don’t insert the word “toxic” here).
I think the “mental health” angle (formerly known as crazy people) is an epiphenomenon, not a cause.
Boys and girls need a loving, supportive environment, free from abuse. There are plenty of kids raised by single parents who turn out great. Boys can and do turn out great even if they don’t have a father. Same with girls and mothers. Healthy families can be many different shapes and sizes… and “traditional” families can be quite dysfunctional. Forcing a one-size-fits-all model for healthy family dynamics is wishful thinking.
All very true, but when working on averages which is what you have to do when discussing policy at a national level, then there’s no doubting that the traditional family structure does tend to lead to the best outcomes.
Your wishful thinking is utterly wrong. Men from single mother households are responsible for nearly all crime. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.
I have a mentally ill relative who has been in and out (but largely and now permanently in) psychiatric institutions since his freshman year in college – 40+ years. He is schizophrenic and nonviolent. The shooters cited in this article are/were not afflicted with mental illness. Rather, they all have/had personality disorders, once known as being antisocial.
The author notes ADHD and depression – dubious conditions often made by unqualified people like preschool teachers and “treated” with drugs when a boy is very young. What happens to a boy fed questionable pharmaceuticals from age three who lives in a 24/7 digital world saturated in violence? Add a poisonous or non-existent family life and a society that tells him he is toxic. Antisocial behavior grows and festers.
The author suggests more mental health facilities are the answer. She is wrong. Whole industries have mushroomed under that very lucrative banner since my family member experienced his first horrific mental break and suicide attempt. Do these facilities actually help anyone recover? Our family went from expensive hospital to chic treatment center to private practice to celebrated doctor for decades (until the money ran out) and conditions never improved. One doctor, a “star” in his field, actually told my relative that people diagnosed as “mentally ill” were in reality on a higher intellectual plane than the rest of us normal, uncreative sticks in the mud – including his heartbroken, long-suffering parents. It was monstrous. He is now fully committed to a state facility because all other options have been exhausted. He enjoys a deeply loving, supportive extended family and is still a barely human shell living in prison-like conditions.
What hope is there for the boy drugged from childhood? It certainly isn’t more “mental health” facilities. Perhaps it starts with Mom and Dad (provided there ARE two of them) saying no to that first ADHD pronouncement and being the parents they signed up to be. Beyond that, protecting schools using the Israeli model makes the most immediate sense.
Wow. A nice dose of common sense there. Sorry for your relative’s plight.
Thank you. It’s been tragic for him, just waiting out his days.
No one in the US will be treated with drugs for ADHD unless they have been diagnosed by a physician or licensed clinical psychologist. That a preschool teacher might assert a child has ADHD will not result in them being treated for it.
Many years ago my son’s school was insistent that he saw a particular physician. We asked our GP about this man and he said that if he saw this Doctor he would be prescribed Ritalin ! Instead he saw a psychologist who said that he was just a normal boy and so we took against the drug idea. His headteacher was furious !
thankyou for some real life experience. In a former life I worked in what was known as a ‘therapeutic community’ which was run very economically. Live in care and therapy for clients with major mental health challenges – all aspects of life were part of therapy including group, one to one, music,art, physical therapies as well as lots of out in the real world experiences – walks, camping etc etc. We also administered more independant living houses and flats for clients after 1 to 2 years in the main facility – leading hopefully to fullish independance. Clients did have to be motivated and to adhere to the group culture – most wanted to after ‘feeling the love’. Around the year 2000 the NZ ministry of health decided to follow the ‘american best practice model ‘ ie clients could not be asked to do anything they did not want to do-so our rehab facilities degenerated into messy b oarding houses with depressed clients lying in bed half the day and ordering delivery pizzas – with a large middle management staff filling in forms to make it look as if something useful was happening. NZ now has a mental healthsupport problem as does the US -and i can feel the tears rising for all those parents/clients who have nowhere to go. The really sad thing is that we provided this service for actually a bargain price that would now cost a fortune to replicate. How do one or a few people get to be able to make such massively potentially damaging decisions based on probably a politically expedient premise is beyond me. We were quite clear that we had a brilliant rehab system happening , after thirty plus years of steady development, and i went into a kind of shock that our so-called experts threw it out . Probably best just to not risk having kids in the present world…………….
There is no one silver bullet that will solve the problem of mass murder by mentally troubled young men .Ayaan Hirsi Ali has focussed on mental health treatment and it is surely correct that in most cases the signs were there that a potential shooter was on the loose if a proper system of mental health oversight was in place that could respond and ensure (a) treatment was available and (b) that such individuals should not get their hands on assault rifles and just as important ammunition. I believe that while rifle ownership is widespread in Switzerland ammunition control is tight.
l do think the US should review the right to arms and ammunition in respect of those who by reason of immaturity are less likely to be able to control their violent impulses. We know that emotional control is relatively weak in teenagers and does not reach adult levels until early 20s. Restrictions on alcohol consumption, driving and getting married are widespread for this reason and a ban on weapon possession until 21 or 25 might gain widespread support given the usual age profile of school shooters. Unfortunately the tendency has been to look at such things as rights that should be possessed at the youngest age conceivable rather than setting the age at prudent levels.
Of course, the widespread availability of violent shooting-based video games does not assist and the importance given to fame/notoriety fuels the shooter fantasy- a way to make your mark. The names of the shooters should be given no publicity for this reason.
Just as well publicised suicides tend to lead to a spike in suicides so publicity of such incidents tends to result in copycat killings.
There are no easy solutions merely trade-offs that might ameliorate the level of violence.
Excellently put. It seems that everyone ignores the simple fact that everyone of these mass school shootings have involved young men who are highly disturbed, Perhaps rather than reflexively going after the 2nd amendment the US would be better served to increase mental health care and mental health surveillance, particularly of disturbed young men in schools or colleges.
Very well – but there similar challenges and similar cohorts of disturbed young men in other countries which don’t allow obviously ill 18 year olds to buy weapons designed for war (and war only); and they seem to have fewer mass slaughter incidents, however dreadful their mental health services are.
The London Bridge* attack saw eight dead and many more injured by stabbing. All three Islamic assailants were shot dead.
Where there’s a will there’s a way unfortunately.
(*2017.)
If their victims had legally been allow to carry handguns then they could have shot their killers, within the 8 minutes that it took the police to arrive – too late.
Exactly! The State failed miserably in its primary duty, defending its unarmed citizens.
Had a citizen produced a handgun and fought back, he or she would have been charged with possession of an illegal weapon. What an awful world we have made for ourselves, where eight innocent lives are sacrificed so callously, and nothing is done or ever will be done.
Sadly nor was that brave chap from ‘Millwall’ made a Knight of the Garter or given the George Cross as he so rightly deserved.
If British society was armed like the States there would have been a lot more than 8 innocent lives lost in the time period from the London bridge attack and now though
I think you should perhaps inform yourself a little on the nature of firearms. The fact is that you cannot buy fully automatic weapons used by the military in the US. Or more specifically you have to get a special license which isn’t easy to get and they cost a fortune. Every pistol today is semi-automatic with a magazine, generally 10-15 bullets. As for the AR15 rifle it is absolutely not a weapon of war. It is simply a regular rifle dressed up to look badass. Just like the majority of rifles it has a magazine. But it is not an automatic weapon used by the military in combat.
The big difference between the US and the UK is that mental health treatment, ever since the days of Reagan when the majority of psychiatric hospitals were shut down, is very very poor and not readily available.
Just remember, it is just as easy to do the same amount of damage with a car but nobody is talking about banning cars or in the US even raising the driving age from 16 to 18.
Now, a simple commonsense solution regarding guns in the US would be to raise the age at which a gun can be purchased from say 18 to 21. Not unreasonable since one has to be 21 in the US to buy any form of alcohol.
Reagan’s move to shut down psychiatric hospitals resulted from the trend, started in the 1960s, of not institutionalizing people with mental health issues. #One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “State hosipitals” and their beds became virtually unused relics and closing them was sensible.
Impetus of the de-institutionalization movement was provided by patients’ rights advocates and the notion that better outcomes would result if the patients were handled somehow within their communities.
Now, the pendulum has swung too far, especially given the acceptance by today’s society for unthinking tolerance, perhaps I should say enthusiastic embrace, of deviance from traditional social norms.
I see the Reagan reference used a lot as if to blame him for the closing of mental hospitals. It was actually a liberal push to close them and de-stigmatize mental illness. It’s just another example of unintended consequences of the liberal insanity.
A man out on $1,000 bail, for attempting to run over his girlfriend with his SUV, intentionally hit 60 people at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, last year, killing 2. The news was suppressed for 2 reasons:
1.Low bail is a leftist cause, so bad consequences must be minimized.
2. Driver was black, and almost all victims were white.
There were no calls for SUV control, although the majority of the few stories published said the SUV did it, and didn’t mention the driver.
“Black lives matter!”
Daryl Brooks killed six people, actually.
The news wasn’t really suppressed (at least not where I live, 90 miles from Waukesha), but the fact that the driver was black was suppressed for quite some time. In general when the race of a criminal is not mentioned in the press, that means he’s black.
Clearly the AR-15 does a great job at destruction. We unfortunately have proof. Whether or not the AR-15 is a dressed up rifle is besides the point. The killer knew as you and I do that it will provide much more carnage than small arms pistol or knife any day of the week.
I agree with the conclusion but would add on that a license along with training is mandatory. Not saying it would prevent, but certainly slow down his ability to receive his weapons.
Fair enough, but ‘ Every pistol today is semi-automatic with a magazine, generally 10-15 bullets..’ etc seems to me to be an admission that the US has simply redefined weapons of war as recreational/defensive, not that the easily available guns are suitable for non-military use – whatever that might be. But indeed I am ignorant on this area, and can’t readily imagine a situation in which I would need 15 bullets. The nonsense elsewhere on this thread about the London Bridge killings is a case in point – give all the bystanders automatic weapons, and imagine the carnage that would have ensued. Oh, and the ‘cars are just as dangerous’ dodge is unworthy – they are not designed to kill and wound, ffs, With no other purpose.
In today’s world, families take no responsibility for crazy members, mostly because they can’t. The current shooter was thrown out of his mother’s house, and shot his grandmother. Under current US law, involuntary commitment is not an option. Even though the shooter’s family probably knew he was dangerous, they realistically couldn’t do much.
My brother was bipolar. He refused to take his meds, or see psychiatrists. While my mother was alive, she wired him money weekly. When she died, I set him up with a cash station card that had money transferred into it every week. He lived in Sacramento. Whenever we tried to visit him, he would avoid us, often by getting arrested. He lived on the street. A drunk driver hit and killed him in a cross walk last year.
My brother wasn’t violent. He didn’t do any drugs. However, there was nothing our family could do for him against his will. He would only accept money for food. He refused our help, end of story.
Families with violent crazy people can’t do much either. If the family notifies authorities, the violent crazy person may retaliate, while the authorities will most likely do nothing. That situation is what has to change.
I don’t really remember these problems growing up in a suburb of Detroit in the 70s. Was it as bad then and I just didn’t know it? What has changed?
There was a lot gun violence in Detroit, two miles down the road but nothing where I lived. Even today there is more gun violence in London (where I live now) than in the Detroit suburbs. Kid shot in Brixton a week ago. Nothing approaching Detroit level violence though and we have population 10 times the size.
I think probably global media’s reach and social media are the big differences.
Maybe in the USA’s past guns were more based around hunting rather than self-defence in all the strata of communities.
Always interesting to see which alleged elements of a mass murderer’s mental state are thought improper to discuss.
I won’t get into the complexity of the mental health topic other than expressing my increasing distress that the legal rights of mentally ill people to refuse treatment and remain at large, for some reason, remain more important than everyone else’s right to be safe from their actions.
Ali seems to imply (I didn’t click the link) that “multiple exits” is the “opposite” of “single point of entry.” This is not true. Every secure government building (for example, the courthouse in your town, if they’re doing things correctly) has a single point of entry yet multiple doors available to exit the building. An exit door locks behind you, you cannot re-enter the building through that door. This is an effective system, weakened only by human decisions based on deliberate sabotage or laziness (blocking a door open, with excuses including: I just needed to get something from my car, I was only gone for a minute, we needed some fresh air/a quick cigarette, blah blah blah).
Americans have always had access to guns, and guns are not the problem here. We in the U.S. are living in a hellscape reflecting half a century of “progressive” policies that have made everything they touch worse. Every single day, millions of American gun owners manage to conduct themselves in a law abiding manner, without killing anyone. Every day. Guns are not the problem here.
I can’t help thinking these mass shootings are largely caused by the culture of fame. This shooter is now the most important person in the US. What empty loser is watching all this, fantasizing about forcing everyone to notice him and the power he wielded.
One of the problems in describing ‘mental disorder’ is that its conception of the mind (as a separate ‘thing’ from the body which can be filled with either healthy or damaging, right or wrong ideas) is completely false. There is no known non-physical ‘thing’ known anywhere else in the entire Universe. The ‘mind’ is just the body’s own self-aware summary of its current state, the totality of which constitutes our idea of ourselves as ‘persons’.
So rather than get lost in the wilderness of ‘diagnoses’ of the ‘conditions’ supposedly exhibited by something that doesn’t exist I(‘the mind’). Let’s concentrate on what we know most mass-shooters have done to their bodies, and the overwhelming fact about that is that most I have read about have, in the run up to their crimes, been dosing themselves with various forms or cocktails of either legal or illegal psycho-active (which should really be called body-disequilibriant) drugs. That’s why (at least I think) civil mass-shootings in the US didn’t exist prior to 1966, when the post-war general surrender to socially widespread and intensive drug use first got under way in the US (a bit later in the UK).
The Texas shooter was a known marijuana (paranoia, risk of ‘psychotic’ episodes) user (possibly heavy), which I predicted before I even knew who he was (and what else, one wonders?). This is at least worth looking into, surely? Yet the fact took a week to surface, as neither the police nor most commenters seem to think it very interesting.
Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail would certainly support your observation and regularly mentions it following terrorist attacks, but as you say there is no official enthusiasm for exploring this connection. Indeed the liberal consensus in the UK is all for decriminalisation of marijuana which is scarcely enforced.
See this report:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084484/
Like you Arnold my first thought is that this young man may have a cannibis induced psychosis. I know two young men who have separately been so afflicted, to the despair of their families.
A gratuitous sham of an essay from an otherwise good and insightful writer. The real issue is that the institution of the family structure is broken down and Godly wisdom has been relegated to the trash bin. Build a million mental health edifices if you want, but you’ll need to force people into them. Perhaps that’s the real strategy.
There are 130 times as many gun murders per person in the USA as in the UK. No amount of mental health data can obscure this difference between two supposedly ‘civilised’ countries.
Any child with an absent father and an addicted mother should be known to social services and provided with family and social support services prophylactically, without needing a MH diagnosis (big brother/sister, mentoring, individual and group therapy, vocational, etc.). This is not rocket science. Some unicorns may be able to emerge from such a youth unscathed, but far from most.
That strategy just might work…….if we hire about 5 million more social workers.
Hiring 5 million social workers (I realize that was not a serious suggestion) means that, instead of hiring from the bottom of the barrel as social services agencies are doing now, they’ll be hiring from under the barrel. There are not 5 million people qualified to be social workers in the United States, and there never will be because it takes an unusual combination of intelligence, empathy, and toughness to do the job. “Unusual” means you can’t just line people up and enlist them as social workers like you do soldiers.
When the wise founding fathers of the United States were writing the 2nd amendment to their constitution they were talking about muzzle-loading muskets. Maybe those are the arms that citizens should be permitted to bear. Context is everything.
I think the purpose was to enable citizens to provide a militia to protect them against a dictatorial government. The modern equivalent might be the sort of anti-tank missile that has been so effective in the Ukraine! I don’t think even the most enthusiastic gun proponent would suggest these be made available to 18 year olds under the 2nd Amendment.
Any European should be embarrassed to comment negatively on our 2nd amendment rights. The track record of dictators ravaging their populations throughout European history is evidence enough. Why do you think the Founders added it in the first place?
Actually, if you read the American founders, they were talking about all weapons of war, muskets, rifles, swords, cannon… And yes, private citizens could purchase cannons — how else would one outfit a privateer if granted a letter of marque and reprisal by Congress? The cannon on the village green in those days was the artillery piece of the local militia, most likely bought with private subscriptions, rather than tax monies.
I think the most obvious answer is to require regular mental health screenings and therapy as a prerequisite to attending school, similar to vaccinations, though given the state of the country at the moment, that may be just as politically difficult as gun control. I think the best we can hope for is local school districts, cities, and towns implementing new programs at the local level where they can actually find some level of consensus, and then others see what works. A bottom up approach is the only viable one in today’s political climate.
This author knows absolutely nothing about Ramos (neither do I.) She is basing her assessment on after-the-fact memories of his fellow high school students, some of whom are known to have bullied him. By the way, this is only the second mass shooting in an American elementary school in history. How he got in the building seems to still be up in the air. Initially, law enforcement claimed a teacher left a door propped open but that has since been disproven. It’s recently come to light that the grandmother he shot in the face is a school employee.
She mentions Santa Fe but leaves out that Jana Fisher, who was probably his first victim, had publically humiliated the shooter a week before. She told her mother he was going to bring a gun to school and kill her – and she was going to haunt him forever. He did, along with several other fellow students he didn’t like. He’s mentally ill but perhaps as a result, not a cause. We’re probably never going to know what prompted Ramos’ actions but instead of talking about an epidemic, the world needs to understand just how infrequent tragedies like this really are.
They’re much more frequent in America than they are anywhere else though I think you’d agree, and bullying certainly isn’t something that’s unique to American children
Two in the history of the country (if that number is correct) cannot be “much more frequent” than elsewhere unless there have never been any elementary school shootings elsewhere. I believe there have been 13 mass school shootings (all grades) since 1966 when records began to be kept after the Texas Tower shooting. Mass shootings are much more common, and school shootings are somewhat more common, but *mass school* shootings (defined as 4+ people shot) are extremely rare.
“Active shooter” drills in elementary schools are almost certainly more damaging to children than the shootings, unless you happen to be the one shot. I am very glad I did not go to school in a glorified prison camp. We could come and go more or less as we pleased, facing no consequences other than detention if we left when we weren’t supposed to (that happened to me once).
A naive enquirer might wonder if the culture of bullying might have a very real negative effect on the mental health of a fragile psyche. Has anyone done a study on this contributary factor – or do we just accept that bullying is somehow ‘normal’ and therefore not worthy of serious attention. If this is the case then surely we then live in a brutal society – and in brutal societies brutal things happen. Many studies have clearly shown that regular bullying can have catastophic effects on developing youths so why is so little attention paid to it ????? “public humiliation” can be a precourser to suicide -and quite possibly serious retaliation – why is this not seen as the catastrophe for an individual that it is ?? I think our society is , in fact, a brutal one – and we will see the outcomes of that for a long time – unless the tacit acceptance of personal attacks is eradicated.
Incredibly lazy article. Ali is not informed on mental health and makes ludicrously dangerous assumptions. Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that includes ADHD, ASD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, etc. For many years we did ostracize the neurodivergent.
TikTok is a form of acceptance for your condition.
These folks truly are different on a neurological level. The science has shown this for decades. Children with dyslexia need extra resources at school. Children with ADHD who go unmedicated have smaller cerebellums, smaller temporal gray matter, and smaller total cerebral volumes. Furthermore, ADHD has one of the strongest genetic components in psychiatry at about 75%. Children with ASD have much different wiring from others without ASD.
Ali—you’re a better thinker than this. This effort was 10th grade BS.
>TikTok is a form of acceptance for your condition.
Tumblr is; I’m not sure about TikTok. All I’ve seen on TikTok is teenagers dancing in their bedrooms.
It’s worth noting that in almost every case the perpetrators of these events are sicidal. THey do not expect to come out of them alive. While it’s not impossible that mentally healthy people might see a self-sacrifice for a cause as a noble course of action, that doesn’t seem to be the case in these instances.
Methids of suicide have a strong cultural element, there are typical differences in methods used and these are learned. In the US, getting gunned down after perpetrating a mass shooting is now one of these typical methods. So there is absolutly some room for looking at it through the lens of the apex of a mental health crises.
“Neurodiversity” is a very real aspect of humanity. In reality, all of us are “neurodiverse”. I myself have lived with bizarre, physiologically agonizing symptoms throughout my life. My progress didn’t begin until I broke away from the mental health system its drugs and interference
One common characteristic of thee shooters is that all were on psychiatric “meds”. These don’t calm down people. To the contrary, they often create fatigue and hostility. This is a factor in promoting such violence.
Some good points until you got to the penultimate paragraph decrying the celebration of neurodiversity. I don’t think anyone is celebrating the disturbed individuals who become mass shooters.
Whataboutery.