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The Nashville school shooter

The New Neo Posted on by

The person who killed six people – three 9-year-olds and three adults – at a Christian school in Nashville has been reported as having identified as transgender. Initially this caused confusion as to whether that meant the shooter was a biological male or a biological female, but it now has been clarified and the shooter was a biological woman. We don’t know whether she was receiving any drugs or hormones for a medical transition, but she was 28 years old.

As is so often the case, the British coverage seems more complete than the US coverage. There is footage of the shooter shattering the locked doors, which were made of glass, and then climbing through. That type of door offers virtually no barrier to an armed person, although it would do two things: delay the shooter’s entrance by a few seconds, and give warning through the sound of gunshots that a dangerous shooter is at the school. Those two things don’t matter much, however, if there is no one at the school who is armed and who encounters the shooter.

Police eventually shot and killed the perpetrator, who was firing at them from a second floor window. The shooter was not behind a locked door, and seems to have been clearly visible.

It also seems quite clear that, in addition to being a terrible mass murder, this was a case of suicide by cop. The shooter had sent a message to a friend that she would be dying that day and “something bad is about to happen. Unlike in some other shootings, this friend took the warning very seriously and alerted authorities in a timely fashion. But the message had been sent to her extremely close to the time of the shooting, and nothing specific was said about any intent to commit mass murder or about a school, and so the friend’s actions were to no avail:

Patton [the friend] said she called the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office to make them aware of the situation and was instructed to call Nashville’s non-emergency number. By then, MNPD says it was too late.

“After phone calls from friends and Audrey’s name was released as the shooter at Covenant Nashville school, I learned that Audrey was the shooter and that she had reached out to me prior to the shooting,” Patton said. “My heart is with all of the families affected and I’m devastated by what has happened.”

If you go to the link and read the texts and you will see that the suicidal intent is very overt.

A horrific event in all its aspects.

Here is Helen Smith on the subject of female school shooters:

RIP to all the victims.

Comments

The Nashville school shooter — 95 Comments

  1. If the perp attended the school she later attacked, she must have done so a long time ago. I say that because it is an elementary school and the shooter was 28 at the time of the attack, i.e. some 15+ years earlier. That’s a long time to hold a grudge, and possibly even predates any thoughts she had about gender transition.

    It all makes me wonder if the attack had anything to do with gender identity issues or was something else entirely. I guess we’ll find out eventually.

  2. A rather egregious example of suicide by cop. She was probably medicated and it will be interesting if we find out what she was taking.

  3. We don’t know whether she was receiving any drugs or hormones for a medical transition

    When I read that the shooter was a biological woman who transitioned to a man the first thing I wondered about is whether this person was receiving some sort of testosterone treatments. The level of blind rage and aggression required to outright murder children seems to be (thankfully) rare in women.

  4. Thank you, Neo, for identifying the shooter as female and not playing along with the game of pretending that someone deliberately mutilating themselves (or having themselves mutilated) to resemble another gender makes them that gender.

  6. Alan Colbo:

    Actually, it’s the case that many trans people don’t ever have surgery. There are no reports about whether this was the case with the shooter, so we simply don’t know.

  7. If the perp attended the school she later attacked, she must have done so a long time ago. I say that because it is an elementary school and the shooter was 28 at the time of the attack, i.e. some 15+ years earlier.
    ==
    It’s a K-12 school with a nursery. True she hasn’t been enrolled there in a decade or more. She was enrolled in art school at the age of 28 and insisting she was actually male. I suspect she’d been the source of considerable dismay in that family before she went on her shooting rampage.
    ==

  8. I find it interesting that Dr Helen, as well as the Fox people were treating the shooter as female, which they were originally. But the shooter was trans male. And etiquette would require that the male pronouns be used. I agree with Dr Helen here – female mass shooters are often different than male ones, and catering to modern trans etiquette would merely have confused things.

    My view is that the shooter being trans fits right into Dr Helen’s point about mental illness. Guys can be mass shooters out of rage (which I think was the case for the two Columbine shooters), instead of mental illness. Females, or those born with female brains, seem to require mental illness to do such a thing.

    I have long loved Dr Helen. Read her blog for years. One of the few people openly concerned about the effects on males of an ever more feminized society. And married, of course, to Instapundit, the first blog I have read every day for a couple decades now.

  11. its as much a state of mind, but she was triggered by all the gaslighting from lightfoot, by the stanford mob by the yammering yutz last october, closer to home david french who indulges this insanity,

    the ur text is the hatred of orthodox christians who affirm God, and Gender and all those other immutable realites,

  12. It seems a bit curious to me that the media outlets reporting on this incident haven’t been too reticent about “deadnaming”, “misgendering” and using incorrect pronouns for the criminal in this case.

    Could it be that they’re trying to downplay the “transgender” angle of this story because it doesn’t fit in with their worldview of “transgender = victim”?

    Nah…couldn’t be that.

  13. Powerline has the video from two officers – https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/03/nashville-bodycam-footage-released.php

    There was a woman outside the school who gave detailed info to the cops re “everyone is locked down, but we can’t account for two children”. And the cop appeared to have a key to the doors, so there had been some planning/training at the school.

    The search tactics were very good – checking all rooms as well as having some officers advance with others holding positions in doorways until the room was cleared.

  14. An internet search for “Covenant school Nashville” shows that the school is K-6. The shooter would have left it a decade and a half ago.

    She appears to have begun presenting as transgender very recently. I haven’t seen any information on whether she was taking cross sex hormones. Some people simply change their hairstyle and dress, at least at first. She is said to have had a history of depression and suicidal thoughts. Whether she was taking antidepressants is also unknown.

  15. Also, I think at the Daily Mail, it was reported that the school had done some threat training, and this may be why there were not lots of children in the halls. A good job by the staff, if this is true.

  17. its still a blue city in a red state, the mayor is likewise practicing category error,

  18. May the souls of the victims rest in peace, and may God comfort the survivors.

    I appreciated the police spokesman (I think) who asked for prayers, saying “That’s how we do things in the South.”

  19. Sorry. Mistook the school for a different one founded in 1971. This school was founded in 2001.

  20. Sailorcourt,

    As I mentioned over on the open thread, CNN has yet to report that she was transgender. They are trying desperately to hide that fact; and the recent celebration about trans buying guns and arming themselves.

  21. Next Saturday is evidently planned to be some sort of Trans “Day of Vengence”. Not sure what they were attempting to convey with that title, but it certainly seems like an unfortunate name choice in light of these recent events.

  22. This comment is just made of my opinions. I don’t claim that all the statements I make in it are 100% accurate.

    According to the site, https://americangunfacts [dot] com/ ,

    1) about 46% households in the US have guns in them, and there are 2) about 460 million, civilian owned guns, in the US.

    (To my knowledge, there are: about 333 million people in the US.)

    (By civilian guns, I am guessing that americangunfacts is including: [guns in civilian homes, as well as guns that are in gun stores, as well as guns in other gun-industry businesses.)

    What laws or methods could be used: to stop this kind of mass killing/mass shooting from happening again, I don’t have the professional experise to say what they could be.

    I guess that this is a hard problem, or problems for- experts on: violent crime, gun laws, and mental health treatment, to- explore + tell the US Federal-government, and the US people, what they think the possible solutions for this problem, or problems, are.

    However, I don’t see that President Biden, or the current US congress, are 1) going to try to examine this problem in a non-emotional, logical way, or 2) in a way that involves cooperation between Biden…the Democrats in Congress…or the Republicans in Congress…since Biden keeps shouting or demanding that [a new, assault weapons ban be made], and:
    Biden, + some Democrats in Congress who like to 100% back his actions, like to blame all gun crimes on a problem they call, “there are too many guns in America”.

    I imagine that Biden, by unfairly using the Nashville shooting tragedy as an example, might get [ a new, assault weapons/assault guns ban] made into a law, but I don’t think that [a new assault weapons ban] would stop mass shootings from happening.

    I think that a better way to stop mass shootings would be- To get the US Government, and President Biden, to examine:

    1) what makes some people emotionally fall apart, and decide that their lives “aren’t worth living”, and that makes these people want to get big…news headlines by murdering themselves and other people, and 2) how to help these people- with these hard, emotional problems, to overcome these emotional problems, and then learn to value their lives…and focus on non-destructive things to make their lives feel better, and focus on continuing these positive lives.

    I personally don’t think that nationally outlawing some types of guns, or some [cartridge holding]…gun magazines, will eliminate the problem of- mass killings or mass shootings in The US.

    If “assault weapons type guns” are outlawed, then likely violent people will find other methods, I think, to do their crimes.

    Finding a way to reduce mass shootings, and other murders, in the US, is a hard solution, or solutions, to find.

    I think working with people, and their problems, is a good way to find that solution.

    [I realize that this comment is probably a, “Too long. Didn’t read it”, kind of comment, but this is a large problem, that I don’t think can be discussed, or explained, in a 3 sentence message. I think that large issues likely need lots of discussion.]

  23. Eventually, this story goes one of two ways in the media- (1) it is memory-holed quickly and never mentioned after today, or (2) the church affiliated with this school gets blamed for antagonizing the shooter over transgender issues.

  24. physicsguy, I just checked CNN.com. Halfway down their story, they report on the shooter’s claim to be transgender. The photo of the shooter they show is of her as a female. Throughout the story they refer to her as “the shooter,” carefully without using pronouns.

    Yancey Ward, Covenant Church is a PCA congregation. This is the conservative Presbyterian group which broke away from the PCUSA over the gay and lesbian issue, well before the current transgender craze. We’d have to see the shooter’s “manifesto” and social media posts before deciding that the school was targeted for this reason.

  26. My take is that suicide was probably part of the planned denouement, but not the objective. In another article I saw that the woman who was the head of the school was in fact shot and killed. While the shooter may have been mentally ill, she perhaps successfully carried out a plan of some difficulty. It’s also possible that the head of the school was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    The two “assault style” weapons used by the shooter were both AR-15 style, with one being an actual AR-15, but the other was a PCC; a pistol caliber carbine. Usually, the PCC will accept 9mm Glock magazines. In the DailyMail video the shooter enters firing the AR-15, and then switches to the PCC. Curious.

  27. Well, color me confused about terminology. When the media refers to someone as transgender is that reference to the gender, or sex (I always thought sex was an activity) that the individual aspires to, or the one that was discarded? The context is not always clear.

    Such a tragedy. So much pain and suffering for those who loved the innocent lives snuffed by a senseless act.

    Sadly as well, our esteemed leader and the baying mob focus on the type of weapon used, and give very little thought to why these tragedies have become so common.

    Repeating a previous rant; I will note that I was born in the ,30s, came of age in the late 40s/early 50s. Bought my first gun at about 15 or 16. It was not at all uncommon for teen age boys to have guns, and to hunt unsupervised. Yet, the incidents of mass killings of people who had never interacted with the killer were virtually non-existent.
    Something changed.
    To my thinking, what is different is that there is now an epidemic of extremely violent video games, and graphic violence in the entertainment media. In other words, a constant barrage of the idea that life is cheap, and people are expendable. Troubled minds apparently believe, without context, what they are told and shown.

    Ironically, many of the people who lecture us from the red carpet are the very ones who routinely profit from the graphic portrayal of gratuitous violence. A pox on them.

    No need to mention the politicians who pontificate for stricter gun laws in knee jerk fashion. Ha! There is an epidemic of gang related shootings in SoCal where strict gun laws have no effect at all.

    Clearly, too many rice bowls would be shattered if the root causes of these senseless acts were addressed honestly.

  28. This is the conservative Presbyterian group which broke away from the PCUSA over the gay and lesbian issue, well before the current transgender craze.
    ==
    No. A bloc of congregations broke away from an ancestor of PCUSA fifty years ago and formed the PCA. The PCUSA was formed from the merger of a pair of liberal denominations in 1983. I don’t think the gay issue was salient in the intramural disputes of midcentury American presbyterianism (or, indeed, in any other protestant confession). That came later.

  29. There is footage of the shooter shattering the locked doors, which were made of glass, and then climbing through. That type of door offers virtually no barrier to an armed person,…

    Which is exactly why, at the private Christian school some of my grandchildren and nieces attend, bullet proof glass was installed in all the doors and windows at some expense a few years ago. If, in this day and age of madness, you are not preparing yourself for such madness to actually come in contact with you, you are not taking the madness seriously enough.

  31. Art Deco:

    As a member of a Covenant
    Presbyterain congregation (specifically ECO) we left the PCUSA 16 years ago because of the gay agenda being relentlessly pursued by the PCUSA. The split was more than 20 years in the making.

  32. These school shootings will never end until there are armed personnel (e.g.,teachers or security guards or admin) at each school.

    Makes no damn difference as to what caused the shooter to murder kids. These killers know that it is highly unlikely that they will – initially at least- encounter anyone with a gun that will stop them; it’s basically a free-fire zone for the shooters.

    As for those school killers that are captured alive, they should be interrogated and then, within 30 days of their capture, hanged – PUBLICLY .

    This, of course, would be a sickening site to see (more than likely, the killer will be screaming and begging not to be hanged and will have to be carried /dragged onto the gallows) , but this sort of immediate and public punishment may convince other potential school shooters that shooting up a school is not worth being dragged in public – kicking and screaming – onto the gallows and hanged

    The Florida, Parkland school shooting occurred in 2018. The killer was finally sentenced to life in jail in November 2022.
    It took over 4 years just to sentence this guy??
    And all the while, in court, he gets treated, literally, with civility as someone who is innocent until proven guilty (or pleads guilty).
    Nick Cruz, the Florida school shooter, pled guilty in late 2021; over 3 1/2 years after he murdered 17 students and faculty and injured 17 others.
    This is really bullshit.

    The lack of a quick and certain deadly punishment can in no way serve as a deterrent to those considering shooting up a school or any other venue in which many people may be present.

  33. Eventually, this story goes one of two ways in the media- (1) it is memory-holed quickly and never mentioned after today, or (2) the church affiliated with this school gets blamed for antagonizing the shooter over transgender issues.
    ==
    It would be audacious for them to attempt (2) inasmuch as she could not have been enrolled there at any time in the last 15 years.

  34. It took over 4 years just to sentence this guy??
    ==
    The courts seem to exist for lawyers to play footsie with each other. I think it does vary from state to state, though.

  35. My error about the PCA. It was established in late 1973, with the founding issues being scriptural authority and rejection of female ordained elders. So, more consistent with the 1970s-era troubles in other mainline denominations. Several congregations around here left the PCUSA more recently, and joined the PCA, with those issues and the newer need to reject same-sex marriage.

    In any case, this church and school hold to traditional views about sex and marriage, which might cause them to be targeted by deranged violence from people who disagree.

  36. “The two “assault style” weapons used by the shooter were both AR-15 style, with one being an actual AR-15, but the other was a PCC; a pistol caliber carbine. Usually, the PCC will accept 9mm Glock magazines. In the DailyMail video the shooter enters firing the AR-15, and then switches to the PCC. Curious.”

    Yeh – initially questioned whether the one was a PCC, but the picture of it does have a pistol magazine. I have a non AR-15 type 9 MM Ruger PCC, and it came with a Glock magazine adapter. One reason for converting is that Glock magazines are cheap and plentiful, and available in 30 rounders. I had one of those, and since it’s pretty useless in a handgun, is currently stored with the PCC.

    https://twitter.com/MNPDNashville/status/1640521034594918400/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1640521034594918400%7Ctwgr%5Ea6e1baf2a3a05446da0012944be32cabaaa9b4cc%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fwhat-we-know-guns-nashville-school-shooting-1790784

  38. There has been an exodus of local congregations from the PCUSA beginning around 2011 as a result of abandoning scriptural and embracing homosexual ordination and acceptance of same-sex marriage.

    The local church I was attending left the PCUSA about 5 years ago, and is now an independent community church. I think somewhere around 1,000 congregations have left in the last 10 years.

    One of the issues is the PCUSA owns the buildings. In our local churches case, an amiable settlement allowed the local congregation to keep the building.

    PCUSA is also very anti-Israel and has been so for some time.

  39. And right on schedule we have Biden proposing to ban guns. There are numerous published studies on guns, violence and crime. These are some of the major studies.
    Wright and Rossi, “Under the Gun, Crime and Violence in America.”
    Kleck, “Point Blank, Guns and Violence in America.”
    Wellford, et al, “Firearms and Violence: a Critical Review.”
    Kleck and Mauser, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?”
    These papers all show that there is no evidence that the availability of guns has any measurable effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery, rape and burglary.
    Wright and Rossi also did a survey of the gun laws on the books and estimated that there are some 20,000 gun laws. The laws are mostly aimed at the criminals, crazies, and careless. These are the very people that don’t pay too much attention to the law, so it’s not surprising that the laws don’t have a noticeable effect. I can hardly wait for the new “common sense” laws that will be proposed to solve the problem.

  40. When I first heard it was Transgender shooter I assumed a Male to Female since I believe that is more common than Female to Male.
    When She first shot out the glass doors I would have thought that the sounds would carry and would alert Staff. Maybe they were.
    Having the doors and windows wired with alarms would also be a good thing. Expensive though.

  41. Apropos of gun control: the Nashville shooter successfully hid seven guns from her anti-gun parents; the cops found the weapons when they searched the home.

    “Cops uncovered the weapons — as well as a manifesto — when they raided Hale’s family home in the aftermath of the deadly tragedy. Drake [Nashville police chief] said the shooter’s mom told detectives she’d asked Hale what was in a red bag she was carrying when she left the house — but her daughter was dismissive. He added that the mom didn’t think to look in the bag because she didn’t know Hale still owned firearms. The police chief said there’s no law in Tennessee that would have allowed authorities to take away Hale’s guns based on her being under the care of a doctor, but he insisted that cops would have made every effort to do so if they had known she was suicidal.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/nashville-shooter-audrey-hale-hid-cache-of-weapons-from-parents-had-emotional-disorder-cops/

    Guns aren’t the only weapons used in killing sprees– just ask Bryan Kohberger. Just yesterday, a 13-year-old student in São Paulo killed a teacher and wounded 5 other people with a knife: https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/brazilian-teacher-71-stabbed-to-death-by-student-5-others-wounded/

    And then there have been two murders in Connecticut and Massachusetts in 2021 and 2022 respectively in which the killers used samurai swords. I suppose Brandon will issue an executive order about knife control (chefs beware: he’s coming for your carving tools as well as your gas stoves).

  42. To do a mass shooting takes work, planning, preparation. Various obstacles, large or small, are overcome. Sometimes there is recon. Columbine’s bombs have been mentioned. This shooter had a manifesto, as did the Buffalo supermarket shooter.
    The point is…determination. Take away guns and you have…another obstacle to be addressed. A Pepsi bottle and fifty cents worth of gas got eighty-plus people killed at the Happyland Social Club.
    The Tsarnaevs’ bombs would have killed more except it was a major public event with lots of trained first responders on hand and that Boston has more top-end medical facilities than any place on Earth. Still, savage, life-changing wounds including traumatic amputations. Different story if it’s at a football game at a rural high school.
    A fit man with a hatchet could have matched the Sandy Hook work.
    I repeat, it’s determination.

    Why the choice of weapons? Because of all the free advertising making them the most lethal weapons EVER short of a hydrogen bomb.

    Goolge earth the school. Lots of heavy scrub surrounding it. Could lie up there with a deer rifle. Take forever to locate and the approaches are without cover.

    And there’s the Darrell Brooks maneuver, although I don’t see a bus turnaround as a likely target at the right moment. Maybe it’s all parent-delivered.

  43. My wife was on the phone yesterday afternoon with a friend who has grandchildren at the school. At the time they talked, the school was known and that children had been killed, but she didn’t know any names or whether her grandchildren were hurt.

    She was losing it. Not much my wife could do or say to help.

  44. About the training aspect – the school has an alarm system which must have two styles – one for evacuate (fire) mode and a shelter in place (active shooter) mode. No one was in the hallways in the schools. Doors were locked and one of the officers had or was given a key.

    And an adult is shown telling the police that the school is in lockdown, and all accounted for except for two children. So, the teachers must have a process to check into the administrative offices.

    In a way, I want to read the killer’s manifesto to find out why but, distribution of the paper gives credibility to the killer.

  45. “…based on her being under the care of a doctor….”
    Um, er, what KIND of doctor?

    Oh, I get it! She was under the care of a shrink! So why even dare to think of taking away her guns….at least for the time being…

  46. You probably didn’t mean it as such, but I find the adverb “eventually” grating in this instance. The shooter was shot dead in about 14 minutes after the police were notified of what was happening. This is an outstanding response, especially when you consider the delays in several of the shooting over the last few years.

  47. Yes, Rick T., I agree. Fourteen minutes from the first 911 call to the end of the incident, and in this case, the police moved towards the gunfire, at considerable risk to themselves. Teachers locked students down, which prevented many more deaths. Well done all around, in a horrible situation.

  48. Perhaps the President should put out a call for all the people who might want to commit suicide by cop. We will ship you to Ukraine, issue you a rifle and a bayonet and let you charge en mass across open ground against Russian lines.
    We will even convince the Ukrainian military to provide suppressive artillery fire for you.

  49. Rick T:

    I meant “eventually,” meaning it was not immediate enough to save 6 lives. It is not a criticism, it is merely a fact. So far I haven’t seen how long it took between arrival of police and the shooter being killed. Therefore, “eventually.”

    My main point is that the shooter was visible, therefore much different than the Uvalde situation in that regard. I still plan to write that series on Uvalde. Most people are unaware of certain unusual factors involved there. Those factors don’t exonerate the police but they shed light on why they behaved as they did.

  50. Any of you statistics crunchers have data on how many trans people collect guns?
    (E.g., that Colorado person.)
    Wonder if they’re about to become “Biden” ‘s secret weapon.

    File under: The Perfect Victim.

  51. Some notes on the church —

    Covenant Pres Church (home of the school) was formed about 30 years ago by a group of people who left Christ Pres. The impetus for the founding was the nature of the church services (traditional vs modern music, etc.) Both churches are PCA

    Christ Pres was formed by Dr. Cortez Cooper who was minister at First Pres from 1971 through about 1981.. First Pres (on Franklin Rd) was our family’s church. My sister’s family still goes there. My niece is getting married there in May. Dr. Cooper became increasingly upset with the direction of the mainline Pres denomination (now PCUSA). His focus on abortion and social issues created a fissure with a lot of the old line Belle Meade money that dominates First Pres. He eventually left to start the new church on Old Hickory Blvd and that church joined the conservative, evangelical PCA. [unnecessary note — his daughter was a HS classmate of mine across the street at Overton HS]

    My brother left with the group that formed Christ Pres. He was in college. Has been a member since. His kids eventually all graduated from Christ Pres Academy and his wife teaches there. The people of Christ Pres have started a ton of other churches in the Nashville area. They are like the Johnny Appleseed of churches. My brother and his family have often attended different churches just to help them develop a big enough base of members before returning to attend Christ Pres.

    About 30 years ago a debate arose within Christ Pres about the nature of the sunday services. It was decided to go with the more modern music driven service with a music group (drums, guitars, etc) and singers (lots of talent in Nashville). A large contingent preferred the traditional service. Because it’s the best way to worship 😉

    With Christ Pres’ blessing, they decided to start Covenant Pres down Hillsboro Rd in Green Hills area of Nashville just a few miles north and closer to downtown. It was all about the traditional style service.

    Two of the adults killed (head of school and a teacher) both used to be members at Christ Pres. They both had children who graduated from Christ Pres Academy. Those kids were classmates and friends of my nieces.

    So many people affected. These families are all close. So many people affected. My son has a friend of his at college. They just went on spring break in a big group. His friend has a nephew and niece who were in the preschool building that the shooter first tried to break into.

    Sorry if this is disjointed.

  52. PCUSA is also very anti-Israel and has been so for some time.
    ==
    Perhaps the influence of Benjamin Weir.

  53. Correction — the teacher and principal killed used to teach my brother’s son and daughters at Christ Pres Academy. Their children were in the classes with the two daughters.

  57. “I was born in the ,30s, came of age in the late 40s/early 50s. Bought my first gun at about 15 or 16. It was not at all uncommon for teen age boys to have guns, and to hunt unsupervised. Yet, the incidents of mass killings of people who had never interacted with the killer were virtually non-existent.
    Something changed.”     JJ

    Culture.

    Oldflyer,

    “what is different is that there is now an epidemic of extremely violent video games, and graphic violence in the entertainment media.”

    I was born in 48 and had basically the same experiences as JJ. TV was filled with violence then too, not as graphic but incessant. Lots of televising of boxing too, where two men really do try to pound the other into the ground. Culture.

  58. It’s not that transgendering is a mental illness , , ,

    It’s a mental illness.

  59. The Columbine killers were not driven by rage. One was a narcissistic psychopath; the other, a severely depressed adolescent entirely in the thrall of the psychopath.

  62. I once heard an East coast speaker say this, about BANNING types of guns, and banning [gun magazines that carry more than 10 rounds]- [paraphrased]:

    “This type of anti-gun bill doesn’t work.

    It is usually just a plan for weak, anti-gun…politicians, to try to take- the US people’s guns away, or to try to take the US people’s gun magazines away.

    I have to come back each year, back to this State house, to tell our State government not to pass these laws.

    Every time there’s a murder of 4 or more people, these politicians say:

    “Let’s outlaw all guns that hold over 10 bullets”.

    And if you give them THAT law…then after the next murder, then next year they’ll say:

    “Let’s outlaw all guns that hold over FIVE bullets”.

    Then if you give them THAT law…then after the next murder, then the next year they’ll say:

    “Let’s outlaw ALL guns that hold over ZERO bullets.”

    This would take all the gun rights away from the US people.

    These sorts of bans won’t help protect our kids.

    We don’t need to kid-proof the guns…we need to gun-proof the kids.

    Also we need to gun-proof the kids + all the other people.

    What works is to:

    1) teach kids and all people to handle guns and ammunition safely, or let them choose not handle guns + ammunition at all, and 2) we have to gun-proof kids and all people, by- teaching them that using guns to do violence to innocent people is NEVER acceptable, and to make sure that they learn that rule, and that they always [follow] that rule.

    And [that] is how you bring down the number of gun crimes that are done in The United States.

    It is a method that works, and I’ve seen it work for years.”

  63. Now there’s some really sickening victim-blaming going on. It’s a conservative Christian school, which means it’s abusive, and it’s the parents’ fault, because they couldn’t accept their daughter’s being gay or transgender. The shooter’s “manifesto” apparently included plans to kill her family, and maybe shoot up a local shopping mall.

  64. Nonapod said up-thread, “Next Saturday is evidently planned to be some sort of Trans “Day of Vengence”. Not sure what they were attempting to convey with that title . . . ”

    Here is a lengthy post regarding the upcoming Trans Day of Vengeance: “At the beginning of the month, the Daily Wire broke the story that trans activists were planning a ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ to stop the trans ‘genocide.’ Although like everything they do, it was exaggerated. Their ‘day’ was scheduled from Mar 31-Apr 2. Classic ‘fiery but peaceful’ walk in the park in D.C. was being openly planned. No worries – just in front of SCOTUS, etc. . . . What to do about it seems to be the sticking point. I was finishing up a post on that very sense of trans entitlement yesterday as news of the heartbreaking Nashville massacre broke. Excessive entitlement and what frauds the vast majority of the trans alphabet community – especially the radical activists – are. Entitled by their progressive enablers in the media, government, and society.”

    Examples of trans extremists calling for vengeance at the link:
    https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/03/28/what-to-do-about-all-this-rage-from-trans-types-n539898

  66. we can reference dunblane and port arthur, they never give up till the end, I forgot the previous incident in the uk, that they used as a pretext,

  67. I was born in 45. WW II was all around us. Endless war movies. TV had, from quick recall, two Infantry series, one set in France, the other in Italy. “Navy Log”, a recreation of actual events. Twelve O’Clock High, about bombers out of England. The endless “Victory at Sea”. McHale’s Navy which made the whole thing funny. South Pacific, the musical was all over the place, still available for high school drama presentations. Fighter pilots in the Pacific, series whose name escapes me, starring Robert Conrad.
    Trading cards–from Bond Bread maybe?–of military aircraft, picture on front, specs on the back.
    Revell and others selling plastic model kits of tanks and aircraft, scrupulously accurate. Once got busted for guessing a Mig’s landing gear by inference while our intel guys thought the Russians didn’t know we actually knew by standard intel ops.
    Detroit was, at one point, defended by sixteen Nike Ajax batteries which meant you didn’t go very many miles without passing one.
    Seemed everybody’s father was a veteran and they talked about such things when their sons were around–“talked to us”, I verified with my father half a century later.

    Some time in the Sixties, 260,000 M1 carbines were dumped on the market when the US was going NATO. Assault weapon, semi auto, thirty-round mags available. Sweet, sweet little rifle.

    While playing war with realistic “toy” weapons near construction sites or something, some guy would down tools and come over.. “No, the machine gun goes over here because….”.

    Every guy had, at one time or another, a cap bun, a six-shooter. A Fanner Fifty was kind of top end and popular. Wore a gun belt with a holster, which you hoped would show up on Christmas morning.

    You know where I’m going with this, right? None of this %^&**(( happened.

    So I think video games are overrated as a cause. These folks aren’t doing in on a whim. One exception is a shooting in Paducah many years ago. Cops were stunned at the accuracy of the shots–to the head. Turns out the guy had a vid game with a laser gun you fired at the screen. By horrible mischance, it had the same hand fit as the gun he brought to school. So, with the muscle memory of maybe tens of thousands of shots, he couldn’t miss.

  68. The solution to school shootings is rather quite simple and has been for a long time.

    Everyone considers their children to be the most precious things in their lives, and rightfully so. A society that doesn’t take seriously the protection of their children is a society doomed to extinction. If something is precious, you protect it, with force if necessary. You wouldn’t keep a bunch of gold coins at home without a weapon to prevent thieves from taking them. Banks, jewelry stores, any industry that involves valuable objects has armed guards. It is simply a cost of doing business and nobody thinks twice about it. Society at large needs to embrace this same mindset when it comes to children.

    This does not mean we need a full-time police presence in the schools, although this would work.

    An easy solution is to arm the teachers. The teachers will scream bloody murder at the prospect of such a responsibility, for they are too busy teaching their charges about transgenderism and oral sex and the wickedness of America as founded. What we do as a society is to introduce the responsibility of physical protection of students for all incoming teachers with very few exceptions.

    A proclamation can go out that notifies all of society that all future teachers will be required to be proficient with guns and will be expected to use them in the case of an emergency. Any kid growing up will understand that if they wish to become a teacher, deadly force in the protection of children is part and parcel of that career choice. Knowing how to read or do math is not very important if you are dead.

    My understanding is that all teachers go through a year of education school prior to teaching as a profession. Simply make it mandatory that all prospective teachers entering education school take gun safety classes. If they do not agree, they can pursue a different vocation. In this fashion we can nullify the complaints of the existing teachers, as they would be grandfathered out of this requirement, and the introduction of guns in schools would be a slow but steady process.

    Ed. schools are typically one-year affairs. Make Friday afternoons the gun safety segment, four hours per week. After a year, that is over 200 hours of getting familiar with guns and tactics.

    As for the problem of teachers wearing holsters in an often chaotic environment, that is solved with the biometric gun safe. All classrooms can have a gun safe that can be opened only with the fingerprints of a teacher that is authorized to access the contents. All safes on the school grounds can be programmed with the fingerprints of all authorized teachers at the school, so any authorized teacher can go into any classroom and retrieve a weapon.

    At first, only a small fraction of the teachers will be armed, the new recruits. After a generation, all teachers will be armed, and the bad guys will know it. The schools are effectively ‘hardened’, and school shootings are more rare than pink unicorns.

    In practice, the vast majority of teachers will never be called upon to engage in a gun battle. In many jurisdictions, cops go their entire careers and retire without ever having to draw their weapons.

    A salutory side-effect would be to perhaps change the teaching profession from being monolithically left-wing.

    Erronius

  70. Richard Aubrey, if you do not see the difference between the war movies that depicted disciplined men fighting for a cause that most considered just, and the unadulterated crap that kids are exposed to today, then we have no basis for conversation.
    I do not watch TV, my wife does. NCIS, FBI, and so forth. Every night our house rings with the sound of gunfire emanating from the tv. Murders and shootouts abound. I expect that the movie theatres are the same. They are peddling pure violence as entertainment; and I postulate that minds are affected, I do not have the expertise, credential, or statistics to prove it. But I believe it. I do know for certain that something has changed dramatically during my lifetime.
    I may be wrong, or partially wrong, about the causes; but I should think that the lack of moral constraint and disregard for human life that permeates elements of our society is obvious.

    I did not get into the issue of the wholesale abandonment of Judeo-Christian principles because I did not want to open an argument.

  71. And, as expected, the usual suspects come out claiming that guns are to blame (except crazy Uncle Joe had to explain to everyone how he liked ice cream before talking about the shooting; but eventually he got down to blaming congress for not banning guns)

    And, they also blame our “gun culture” (meaning guns everywhere) for this kind of atrocity, next to blame is violence in movies, television, video games, etc.

    But, as other have said here – I also grew up around guns along with every kid in my town. (except in my case it was keep the gun AWAY from charles! Not because I would be a danger to anyone; but, because my eyesight is so bad that I was considered a BIG waste of ammo and clay pigeons as I never hit one. I was actually kind of surprised, and rather touched, when after my father’s funeral they offered me a couple of shots at clay pigeons and no one said that I would be wasting ammo or clay pigeons. When I mentioned how I wouldn’t be able to hit a single one the response was “that’s okay, he was your dad. Take a couple of shots in his memory” Ah! Country-boy male bonding at its finest!)

    As kids, all our dads had guns. But, no one would even think of using a gun to “settle an score.” Never! Not even a knife!

    So the real question is when did weapons become a way to settle an argument? What changed in our culture so that kids (adults too) started to think of using guns to settle a dispute. That is what I mean by “gun culture” – not that we have guns everywhere; but that guns have become a way to “settle a score.”

    I, for one, don’t have a clear explanation for this gun culture. Although, when I hear a liberal blame our “gun culture” I explain that gun culture as they mean it and I mean it are two different concepts – I just love to watch them become speechless.

    A couple of things that seem to be missing from the debate on how to end this kind of terror. No one in the media, or among liberal circles, wants to talk about how mental illness is often involved, how abuse of drugs is often involved, how sometimes there seems to be a lack of parental involvement with the teenage shooters. I’m not saying any of those are the causes; but, wouldn’t they be worth looking at?

  72. }}} The person who killed six people …(snip)… at a Christian school in Nashville has been reported as having identified as transgender.

    Commence media shutdown of all commentary about “another mass school shooting” in 3…2…

  73. Old flyer.
    I left out the cowboy flicks. Figured that was obvious. In every case, there were one or another Bad Guy, or there’d be no nerd for our heroes.
    I can tell the difference, thanks very much, but the point is not desensitizing normal kids. The point is where the nutcases come from in the first place.

  74. I expect to see more and more of these sorts of things perpetrated by leftists and targeting right-of-center people, especially Christians. Leftists have taught a generation of Americans that anyone who disagress with their ideology is literally negating their existence. In the real world, deadly force is justified against a person who tries to negate your existence. Leftists have a very hard time telling the difference between reality and the fantasy land in their heads. It’s really not at all surprising that some leftists on the tail of mental stability will conflate real-world principles of self-defense with ideological hothouse tropes like “speech = violence.”

    (Nor is this the first time. Luckily the worst was avoided with the FRC near-shooting a few years ago, but the details are horrifying, and much more overtly political than any of the shootings that the left tries to pin on the right. Same for the Congressional baseball game shooting.)

    The gun controllers also live in the leftist fantasy land. We need to start thinking about becoming hardened targets, especially Christian schools and organizations.

  76. The full extent of the vast number of people affected shouldn’t be a surprise to me when something like this happens, but I’m still hearing about people who will be forever impacted.

    My nephew’s sister-in-law is a counselor. She grew up in Christ Pres and went to the academy. She arrived right behind the first responders and spent the day long into the night providing grief counseling to the students and families. My brother’s family went to a service at Covenant Church that night just to provide hugs to shattered people.

    Not a surprise. Maybe not even interesting. Just what happens when tragedy strikes anywhere. It just hits different when you know people.

    Here in Knoxville, I know the public high schools have full time police officers. I don’t know about the younger kids, but their schools are very close to the high school. My kids went to Farragut and I think they had two. Maybe three officers. The middle school and intermediate school are just across the parking lot from the high school. The primary school is just a few hundred yards down the street. The response time for our high school’s police officers in a similar threat should be minutes, maybe just seconds, at any of the schools. I know the police cars are parked in a special place just a few steps outside the door of the HS main entrance. Perhaps this is why. I can’t say I thought about it. I’m glad someone has.

    I don’t understand why every school isn’t similarly protected. I don’t understand why every faculty member isn’t given the option of a firearm and extensive training. I don’t understand why we don’t make a stink until it happens.

  77. Stan.
    Making arguments like yours to the usual hysterics: When facts are too much for them, it’s “I just don’t want guns in schools!” as if this answers every issue. What it does is signal rational discussion is over, which is, in many circumstances, a victory for them.

    Knowing some of them, it may well be the most rational they get on the issue, and not a deflection from some line of discussion they know they can’t handle rationally.

  78. IrishOtter49 (Roughcoat):

    Narcissistic psychopaths can be driven by rage. Eric Harris – the psychopath in the Columbine duo – was definitely driven by (among other things) an overwhelming rage against just about everything and everybody. His notebooks are full of it.

  79. Neo:

    Correct. But it always struck me that his sadistic homicidal rage was an offshoot — a symptom, or result — of his psychopathy. The psychopathy was, in other words, father to the rage. His psychopathy drove his rage. No psychopathy, no sadistic homicidal rage. In which case Eric would be just like Dylan: an angry, depressed teenager. Lots of those around. Most don’t commit mass murder.

    Or not. I have absolutely no expertise in the matter. In the end, it makes little difference.

    More intriguing to me is the question of what caused his psychopathy. Where did it come from?

  80. IrishOtter49 (Roughcoat):

    No one has a clue what causes psychopathy.

    Not all psychopaths are full of rage, however, and not all are violent. And not all killers are psychopaths. Harris was a psychopath AND full of rage. Klebold, who was depressed, also had quite a bit of rage.

  81. More intriguing to me is the question of what caused his psychopathy. Where did it come from?
    ==
    You’d define him as a ‘psychopath’ by taking an inventory of his observable acts and expressions. You’d recognize ‘rage’ the same way. Not sure how you’d determine that his ‘rage’ derived from his ‘psychopathy’. Both are intangible properties. (His association with Dylan Klebold seems to have generated a folie à deux). As far as I could see, Harris and Klebold were enraged by the way their peers treated them. The young often treat each other like dirt; most subject to this react with only episodic anger and only a tiny population show up at school and waste people at random. (IIRC, they had history with only one of the youths they killed).
    ==
    As for why people are ‘psychopaths’ or ‘sociopaths’ and not something else, you’ve got a question for the ages.

  82. Art Deco:

    As you can see by my comment right above yours, I agree that we know little to nothing about what causes psychopathy.

    However, the Columbine killers were not motivated by rage at the way their peers treated them. That was a tiny tiny portion of what motivated their rage. Particularly for Harris – who was popular with his peers – it was a virtually non-existent motivator.

    I have written extensively about the Columbine killers’ actual motivations – as best we can ascertain them – here as well as here.

  83. The shooter was a biological female. Born female.

    Conceived as female sex. Evolved feminine in sex-correlated attributes. A natural born girl.

  85. Hey, Jeff the troll – I never said the Uvalde cops were brave or anything even remotely resembling brave. But reading comprehension is probably not your strong suit.

  86. Particularly for Harris – who was popular with his peers – it was a virtually non-existent motivator.
    ==
    I think you’re mistaken here. Harris was most certainly not popular with his peers. See also the video they left their parents, which made particular reference to peer problems.

  87. I have been reading a lot about the contrast between LEO’s actions in this situation vs their actions at Uvalde. I was pleased to see that you are still intending to add a final piece on what the aitch happened there. A while back I requested that you do just that and you replied that you would. Then you experienced such a great personal loss that I figured it would be a “in God’s good time” thing. I’ll be looking forward to seeing your analysis when the time is right.

  89. As regards Uvalde and Nashville some might consider that the Nashville and other first responders with firearms have learned not to take the Uvalde path.

    Experience is a cruel teacher. ‘No matter what, we’re not doing what they did.’

  90. Neo –

    Thanks for the links to your essays on the Columbine killers.. I was unaware that you had written extensively on the subject.

  91. Baa Baa Black Sheep was the Robert Conrad show with fighter planes that ran 76-78, my childhood.

    The real autobiography of Major Greg ‘Pappy’ Boyington was a great read. From flying tigers to pow. The Japanese pilot that shot him down would go to the Chino Airshow to sell his biography.

  92. I do remember that show from the late 70s many of the cast went on to magnum pi and other series i imagine conrad was a more cleaned up version of boyington

    Irish did you get the website fixed

  93. I shook Boyington’s hand and spoke with him at an airshow in Colorado in the 80s. He had a gruff raspy voice and his face was as leathery as a catcher’s mitt. He struck me as being mightily used up by life. He died a short time later.

    The mother of a high school friend was married to Cmdr. Arthur Maher USN, XO of the USS Houston. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese when the Houston was sunk in the Battle of the Sunda Strait 29 March 1942. He was in the same POW camp as Boyington. Said that Boyington was a really unpleasant fellow, all the other POWs couldn’t stand him.

    No progress on my website. Haven’t gotten to it. So many other things to do.

  94. Ray. Thanks for Conrad’s series title. Almost had it there. Age….

    I read his auto and I suspect if he hadn’t had a magic liver, booze would have kept him out of trouble. But he could do both.

  95. I once saw an interview of Robert Conrad, on TV.

    He said that: “Pappy Boyington visited the set of Baa Baa Black sheep.

    Pappy said to me: “Robert, I wish you had been in my fighter unit…”,

    And I said, “Thanks!”,

    And he said, “…so that I could beat the CRAP out of you!”

    I guess he didn’t like my working style.” 🙂

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