A Quote from the Nashville Shooting

There must be a topic addressing today’s shooting in Nashville, but I couldn’t find it, so @moderators, please merge this if necessary.

I was dumbstruck at the comments from one of the neighbors of the Nashville shooter. This is what some/many people think about guns and the people who own them? That “gun culture” is the root cause of someone shooting up a school.

We’re never going to even approach solving this kind of violence until we begin to address the true root cause, severe mental illness. But that doesn’t sell newspapers – or get votes.

Anyway, here’s the quote, surrounding context, and a link to the article where I found it (emphasis mine):

Sean Brashears, a next door neighbor, said he used to play basketball with Hale in his driveway and said she was a ‘normal, nice person. Maybe a little quiet.’

‘If I had to imagine, Audrey’s parents are probably just as shocked as everybody in the neighborhood is…It just doesn’t seem real,’ he told The Daily Beast.

He added that, knowing the Hale family, it doesn’t seem like Audrey would have ever even been influenced by gun culture.

‘There’s nothing that would have led me to believe that she was capable of such a thing or that she or anybody in that family would have access to, much less ever used, a gun.’

‘They just don’t seem like the family that, like, is around guns. They’re not talking about going to a gun range or they’re not going hunting.’

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Gun “culture” doesn’t induce violence it induces respect, when taught. Non gun culture induces fear and awe. Children always look to things that are awe inspiring. This was a 26 year old woman that thought she was a man. There is a whole lot there that I am not qualified to speak on. The simple version is once again we are defeated by our lack of believing that the shortest way to end a violent situation is to have a gun in hand. It is a shame that we now need an armed “Resource Officer” in every school yet I would submit that arming teachers and school staff and brazenly projecting that would be a more than fair deterrent.

I lived in submarines for most of my life. Our position was not disclosed our abilities were not broadcast we lived to threaten the enemy because he did not know our capabilities and more import did not know where we were.

Cheers,

Craig6

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And that seems to be the case for a significant majority of these sick mass murderers.

Instead of growing up around firearms and associating them as the useful tools they are, they often grow up in non firearm using households where their primary exposure to firearms is through movies and news stories that portray firearms as fantastically powerful talismans that can impart their wielders with super powers. Then these sickos fantasize about using these omnipotent weapons to right every perceived wrong they’ve ever faced.

Though they don’t have quite enough faith in their new found power to face law abiding firearms owners so they choose to attack defenseless targets like young school kids in gun free zones.

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“10:13am - Brandishing her assault rifle”
I still haven’t seen where I can buy one of these.

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One of our local attorneys teaches a self-defense course from the legal perspective, and he makes a strong point about neighbors. After a sensational news story, local TV news stations will always flock to the neighborhood like a bunch of buzzards to get a quote from local residents, whether they knew anyone involved or not. They usually produce remarkably stupid TV clips or articles, like you found here. But if you’re involved in a shooting, no matter how justified, don’t be surprised if your neighbor 3 houses down who you’ve never talked to is on TV getting his 15 seconds of fame.

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Why do these shootings mostly happen in “gun free zones” ? It’s as if the evil minded shooter doesn’t realize that they are not supposed to have a gun in a “gun free zone”. Why can’t we pull armed security from the White House and other government complexes that have armed security and have them as security in our schools? The president and govenors and senators can just pass more “common sense gun laws”, that will keep them safe. The schools need armed security !! This dirtbag decided not to shoot up a different school because of their security. I wouldn’t put a bumper sticker on my car or a sign on my property saying that it is a gun free zone ( because it would be a lie ),to me that would be an open invitation for the evil-minded to do their thing. Now that there is video of this dirtbag shooting through the door glass we will see more of this happening. Put bars on the doors and main floor windows. FOURTEEN minutes this thing was in the school before police got there to stop it . To bad one of the adults (or more) wasn’t armed and could have done something sooner.

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…and it’s being praised as a fast response.
Typical “when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.”

It’s worth remembering that this was a private school. I don’t know what state laws allow as far as armed security at private schools, but this was otherwise not a failure of the state to protect a public school. Private schools are responsible for their own security plans.

The big question on our minds should be, “what is my own school’s security plan until the police arrive?”

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I read one report that according to the shooter’s manifesto they were planning on targeting more then one school but chose this one because the other school had more security. Which I assume means at least one armed guard or staff member.

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Private schools can and should hire their own security but public schools need security also.

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Exactly

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I have no issues with adult trans people to the extent that they stay away from “marketing to” children. After all we never see “stripper story hour” in libraries. I would really be curious to know if she was under the care of a doctor or self medicating with testosterone. Was this potentially a case of “roid rage?” Doctors have been over promising and under delivering on gender reassignment surgery for decades and unfortunately I think these individuals are being sold a faulty bill of goods.

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I think her manifesto will reveal this to have an anti-Christian motivation. Fox just ran a quick statement that indicates she had resentment of having to be a student there.

We have seen churches and pro-life centers vandalized recently. There could be a similar motivation in this attack. There are already calls for her manifesto to be released.

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Can you imagine someone shooting her childhood piano teacher because she resented her parents forcing her to take piano lessons? None of this makes sense, but as per usual, we shouldn’t expect mass murderers to present sane arguments.

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I don’t know to what extent the killer’s gender identity is (or should be) a factor in this story. The vast majority of school shooters are straight, white, young men, so I don’t want to extrapolate one transgender shooter who breaks that profile as something that we all need to overreact to. I’m also not clear if this person was actually under medical care, was actively transitioning, had already transitioned, or simply self-identified as a different gender. It’s a confusing topic, and our culture has competing definitions and interests.

Those disclaimers aside, yes, hormones are a dangerous thing to play with. I have my own stories which I’m not going to share on this public forum, but it’s scary how messed up a human being can become from even minor hormone adjustments. I don’t know how the average transitioning person makes it when a doctor rebalances major hormones like a see-saw.

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What I really think is this:

Calling yourself transgender doesn’t change your biology. Her body was still female, but she was almost certainly on testosterone. Testosterone increases anger and aggression. Women’s bodies are not made to handle large amounts of testosterone, leading to extra anger and aggression on top of what it already does. Then on top of that, you get this rhetoric that opposing transgenderism is literally genocide, and you have the makings of evil acts exactly like this.

This is horrible, but it is not terribly surprising.

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Agreed, testosterone is a crazy hormone. Look at what it does to adolescent boys.
BTW, I hope no one takes my earlier post as some sort of anti-trans rant. I’m sympathetic to people struggling with their identity. I just happen to know from data and from personal experience that altering hormones can be like playing with fire, so I’m even that much more sympathetic to people who have to cope with ever-changing levels of hormone therapy. My fear is that many don’t understand what they’re signing up for.

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A significant number of mass shooters are found to have been taking some sort of anti-psychotic medication. In large measure, our medical industry is a “prescribe and forget” business model. How often do people get a call from their physician asking “How are you doing on the drugs I prescribed to you?”

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Here is a real worry, currently liberals are pushing for school educators to push an agenda of getting involved with their students gender in many cases where the student has no gender issues to begin with, and to keep this activity secret from the child parents.

Gender issues obviously involve some sort of mental issue or conflict for the person having them, and when acted upon or forced upon children these issues are bound to create mental issues. These mental issues can grow into significant mental issues as can be indicated by the Nashville Trans shooter who attacked a Christian school most likely because she felt Christians did not agree with her lifestyle choice.

This will become a real problem going forward as liberals and their unqualified educators are pushing an agenda that includes confusing children on gender issues, this needs to be stopped now!

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I think mental health is an important point. Probably all of these active shooters have some form of mental illness. You have to be very sick in the head to want to murder innocent strangers, especially children.

But we need to be careful not to stigmatize all people with mental health issues. Just as the vast majority of gun owners don’t go around murdering people, the vast majority of people with mental illness pose no threat to society as well.

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EDIT: This is very confusing. Yesterday I was reading M->F. Now I’m reading F->M. I can’t keep up.

I’ve read it as the other way around; born male, identifies as female. Hormones could still have been a contributing factor. But I think this is going to come down to a simple hate crime. He graduated with a graphic arts degree at the age of 27. That’s a LOT of college indoctrination.

How many pages is this “manifesto”? It shouldn’t take long to read it and release a motive to the public. I suspect that they’re using the time to water things down, ignore the primary themes of hate, and focus on the more incoherent ramblings so they can portray it as mental health, followed by something about the system failed by allowing someone like this to possess firearms, we need more laws, yadda, yadda. They don’t want backlash for the real motive, while I’m sure the FBI will be pushing to turn this into a “gun thing” instead.

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