Not what we needed to have in the news

[VickySGV]

3 hours ago, Willow said:

I was under the impression that gender Dysphoria was not listed as a mental disorder.

 

GLAAD publishes a media guide that is distributed to reputable media sources. This gives the media outlet information on that sort of thing.  This is a link to that guide.  https://www.glaad.org/reference

 

The problem is that a number of the media outlets such as the Fox and similar outlets toss it in their trash cans or outright mock the guide.

 

1 hour ago, Betty K said:

... only two years ago I encountered a doctor — a doctor claiming to be a gender specialist, no less — who apparently had not received the memo, and still spoke of Gender Identity Disorder.

 

Probably this was because Australia / New Zealand medical societies do not use the same manual as is done in the U.S. and Canada, where the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health) is updated and re-published every few years, and this medical publication is where the Psychiatric and Psychological Associations collaborate and define Behavioral Health issues, and it was DSM5 where Trans was no longer considered a mental illness but was listed because the help of medical personnel is needed to alleviate the Dysphoria symptoms since the DSM is used by insurance companies to provide coverage for treatment.  Other countries in Europe and Australia and New Zealand use the WPATH Standards Of Care which was just re-published as SOC8 where the same definitions as DSM were published formally which may explain the doctor in the Southern Regions of the world was behind.

[Sally Stone]

When I listened to the news this morning (the opening 18 minutes on ABC's Good Morning America) the shooter was referred to as trans.  From the videos, I gathered the shooter may have been non-binary, but it was just my gut feeling by how she was dressed and the way she carried herself.  Ultimately, though, this isn't about gender or gender care.  The fundamental root cause of mass shootings is society's blind eye to mental health.  Mass shootings tend to be a symptom of the root cause, which I believe is our inability to deal with the overwhelming mental health crisis we are facing in this country.  We have to stop treating symptoms and instead, target the actual disease.  Until we do that, these mass shootings won't go away.  

[awkward-yet-sweet]

19 minutes ago, Sally Stone said:

Mass shootings tend to be a symptom of the root cause, which I believe is our inability to deal with the overwhelming mental health crisis we are facing in this country.  We have to stop treating symptoms and instead, target the actual disease.  Until we do that, these mass shootings won't go away.  

 

I would add that health professionals need to stop treating symptoms and start treating PEOPLE.  A person is not their illness.  In some variations of the oath a doctor takes upon graduating school, that concept is present. 

 

A friend of mine ended up in the hospital last year for a mental health crisis.  The system seems mostly oriented toward substance abuse or institutionalizing somebody (with out without consent.)  It doesn't seem to do much to address somebody who is in immediate crisis, but for whom enduring the crisis is preferable to the options professionals are willing to provide.  There's a big gap.  Just my opinion, but I think that's how some of these shooters get ignored until it is too late. 

 

Loneliness is a huge problem in the USA.  Its just my impression, but I think we're one of the most lonely nations on earth.  Lots of people living by themselves, with limited or totally non-existent circles of family and friends.  Humans are social creatures, and for some folks loneliness can turn into paranoia, anti-social behavior, or even violence.  I don't have any idea of how our society can solve that problem, although I could make a wish list of possible methods. 

 

[VickySGV]

33 minutes ago, Sally Stone said:

We have to stop treating symptoms and instead, target the actual disease.  Until we do that, these mass shootings won't go away.  

 

We do not have enough well supported mental health professionals for the job needed.  We are up against the stigma that has been given to mental health problems, some from the current protocols of treatment.  I can say for myself that Mental Health issues were not accepted as realities and certainly not something that people as intelligent and, lower upper class as my family presented itself to be could tolerate.  As a result, visits for mental health reasons were not supported or even believed by my family.  With the lack of support and acceptance even I could not accept myself for needing Mental Health assistance and thus could not benefit from it.  The denial culture, and it is a culture greatly infects the most needful segments of our society.  It is the self denial of the politicians who fund the treatment and local medical services in general that is a big roadblock.  It is circular and self damning but we need to improve on it.

[Carolyn Marie]

The shooter is said to have been under active treatment for an unspecified psych issue.  But we don't know what, or for how long, or whether they were on meds, or not taking them, or whether they were cooperating in their treatment, etc.  In other words, we don't know squat.  So I'm not going to guess.  What we do know is that the parents didn't want this person to have guns, but they snuck them into the house, snuck them out to commit the shooting, and Tennessee has no laws prohibiting gun purchases by persons under mental health care, or to be confiscated at the request of family.  So there were failures at many levels, and six people who paid for those failures with their lives.  So very sad and tragic.

 

Carolyn Marie

[Marcie Jensen]

Great point about the shooter's guns, @Carolyn Marie. This is a case where two systems either broke down, because HIPAA laws prevent the medical professional from disclosing medical conditions and/or treatments, and thus could not show up in any federal background check when purchasing a firearm. Remember, the media reported that all of the weapons were purchased legally in this case, which means federal background checks were done; although that does beg the question about the sawed off shotgun the shooter had in her home, as those are illegal if the barrel falls below a certain length. Additionally, as the shooter was 28 and not a felon, there is literally nothing her parents could have done to prevent her from making the firearms purchases. 

 

Another question that arises is where did the money come from to make the purchases? As a gun owner, and a 2A supporter, I've got some familiarity with retail firearms purchases, and I know from experience that 2 AR15s, a pistol, a shotgun and a sawed off shotgun cost on average over several thousand dollars combined, which seems a reach for recent college graduate who worked as a freelancer. Logically, someone had to be helping her. But, that's a side issue.

 

It seems to me that the biggest issue that surrounds this entire tragedy is that the shooter did not receive the help she needed and six people died as a result. The second and third order effects that stem from the shooting--how it affects the LGBTQ+ community, the issues regarding background checks, the further polarizing of the political climate, etc--while certainly important and far reaching, pale in comparison to three dead children, three dead faculty and the victims' families. Oh and lest we forget, this was another attack on a Christian entity as the school itself is a parochial school run by the Presbyterian church.

 

Just another example of how far our society has deteriorated.

[DeeDee]

This is heart breaking precisely because it is so avoidable. It's not my country nor my culture so I genuinely do not want to offend, but as an outside observer the question is always going to be how many schools need to be shot up and lives lost before something substantive is done about private gun ownership. Access and convenience will always correlate to use, look at any other products that can be bought... by all means have professions or clubs where hobbyists can have secure supervised access but otherwise the only reason to buy a gun is to use it. The human right to Healthcare is another serious issue entirely.

[April Marie]

You're right on the costs associated with the weapons @Marcie Jensen. I do a lot of target shooting and have purchased and built ARs...it can get quite expensive. Unfortunately, the ties in our systems to link potential mental health issues with firearms purchases are almost non-existent and become a precursor to these rampages.

 

I always come back to the issue of a lack of belief in anything greater than ourselves - the generations now of non-believers. Without a belief that something exists beyond our current lives, call it whatever you want..religion, Karma, Reincarnation.....whatever, then we are trapped into a reality where nothing that we do has any greater consequences beyond our current lives. So, mass murder becomes a much more palatable option in making a political or social statement. It negates the concept of sanctity of life and makes killing children more attractive since it evokes an emotional response from everyone and tears at the very fabric of our emotional wellbeing. 

 

You can take away all of the ARs you want, but until our society deals with the underlying causes, mental health issues and re-instills a sense of the sanctity of life...all lives...the weapons/methods used may change but the tragic results will not.

 

There is no short-term feel-good answer to this problem we've created as a society, even though we've also become accustomed to believing there is one. Another of our generationally instilled faults.

 

Just my own $.02.

[Davie]

For a longer-term perspective there's this:

According to the Violence Project (TVP), men are responsible for carrying out more than 97% of all public mass shootings. Following this definition, there have been 190 such disasters in the past 57 years, and of those 185 were carried out by shooters who were assigned male at birth.  

 

The gun law reform group Gays Against Guns, formed after the Pulse nightclub massacre of 2016, condemned the Nashville shooting but also criticised Republican policies and laws.

Gun violence and mass killings, the group said, “cannot be separated from the efforts of the cisgender white supremacist patriarchy to keep us divided along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation”.

 

https://gaycitynews.com/gays-against-guns-condemns-nashville-school-shooting-2023/

 

 

[Marcie Jensen]

@April Marie, as always, you are eloquent and on point. I agree with everything you said, and you deserve a mic drop for this one!!!

 

@Dee Dee, I appreciate your perspective and no offense taken. That said, the history of the Second Amendment in my country's constitution is the topic for another thread. Suffice it to say that when our constitution was written, the founders had just completed an eight year war with, ironically, Great Britain to secure our own independence and as late as 1745 Scotland had tried the same thing with the Jacobite rebellion under Charles Stuart, which failed epically. Many of my ancestors were border Scots exiled or sold into indentured servitude for their participation in the rebellion. Suffice it to say, that one of thee things the founders wanted was to prevent the new American government from becoming a tyranny, hence the Second Amendment. In fact, it's been said that Thomas Jefferson advocated armed rebellion every 80 years or so just to keep the federal government in check. Don't know if that's true, but it expresses the premise pretty well, I think.

 

Regardless, gun control and reform isn't the answer in this situation. The shooter legally purchased 7 firearms from 5 retailers, and so went through at least 5 background check; 7 if she purchased the guns individually as this is a federal mandate. The larger issues are societal decay, failure to recognize and treat mental issues, and the inability of medical professionals and the BATF to communicate when conducting background checks. Or that as the school is a gun free zone, it was an easy target.

 

This also doesn't take into account that this was probably a hate crime. Had this taken place at a Madressa, mosque or synagogue instead of a Christian school, the media would have pounced already decrying this as a hate crime against a religious minority. We can rail against the white male patriarchy all we want, and have the right to do so, but this has nothing, or very little, to do with that particular shooting

 

And, sadly, the victims have been all but forgotten in this and transgender people are going to be further stigmatized because the shooter was trans.

[Ivy]

29 minutes ago, DeeDee said:

how many schools need to be shot up and lives lost before something substantive is done about private gun ownership.

I don't mean to be callous about this tragedy, but I believe that in the US there is no way to remove guns from the society.  There are simply too many already.  

Although I don't personally have any "military-type" firearms (other than an antique Mauser rifle) I do own several guns, acquired over the years.  There was a time when I would target shoot regularly.  And I did enjoy playing with some black-powder guns.  I don't really mess with them these days.  But they are available.  I have been told by friends concerned for my safety that I should carry.  I don't though.

 

My point is just that confiscating all the guns in the wild would be essentially impossible.   I have heard it said that there are actually more guns than people here in the States, and I can believe it.

 

13 minutes ago, Marcie Jensen said:

This also doesn't take into account that this was probably a hate crime.

I personally find it difficult to think of Christians (in the US) as an oppressed religious minority, despite what Fox News may claim.  But that doesn't mean it couldn't still be a "hate crime."  

And considering the political climate in Tennessee, it's not difficult to see an already unstable queer person going off in this direction.  But I certainly am not trying to justify it.

 

2 hours ago, Marcie Jensen said:

It seems to me that the biggest issue that surrounds this entire tragedy is that the shooter did not receive the help she needed and six people died as a result.

And lastly this.

[awkward-yet-sweet]

Without taking this topic off into the weeds, I don't find the debate about guns that happens after every shooting to be helpful.  The usual politicians will make the usual noises.  

 

I can focus on what I can do to help. I can do my part to make sure something like this does not happen in my own community. By reaching out and interacting with people who are lonely or vulnerable, I can make an effort to reduce the stress people who are lonely or having a tough time.  In the process, if I notice someone's distress, I might be able to assist them in finding the resources they need.  

[VickySGV]

1 hour ago, awkward-yet-sweet said:

I can focus on what I can do to help. I can do my part to make sure something like this does not happen in my own community. By reaching out and interacting with people who are lonely or vulnerable, I can make an effort to reduce the stress people who are lonely or having a tough time.  In the process, if I notice someone's distress, I might be able to assist them in finding the resources they need.  

 

This is by far the greatest need that this series of events has pointed out.

[Vidanjali]

16 hours ago, Carolyn Marie said:

The shooter is said to have been under active treatment for an unspecified psych issue.  But we don't know what, or for how long, or whether they were on meds, or not taking them, or whether they were cooperating in their treatment, etc.  

 

We also do not know whether the shooter was receiving any trans healthcare, although that dearth of information isn't preventing people from blaming transness. The irony is that, and this is just as speculative, if the shooter had had access to trans healthcare, it might have saved many lives. 

 

7 hours ago, April Marie said:

Without a belief that something exists beyond our current lives...then we are trapped into a reality where nothing that we do has any greater consequences beyond our current lives... until our society deals with the underlying causes, mental health issues and re-instills a sense of the sanctity of life...all lives...the weapons/methods used may change but the tragic results will not.

 

Yes, indeed. And this can be taught through therapy, if only we made the resources available. Seems many, if not most, of our elected officials should be among the first who need such professional aid to realize a higher purpose of life. 

 

That all said, it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that Marjorie Taylor Greene is claiming the shooter's aggressive behavior was due to testosterone HRT and psych meds saying "everyone can stop blaming guns now".

 

https://www.newsweek.com/audrey-hale-hormones-transgender-shooting-nashville-1790804

 

I long for elected officials who will inspire, unify and actually help; not enflame, deflect, scapegoat, blame, vilify, etc. 

[VickySGV]

48 minutes ago, Vidanjali said:

The irony is that, and this is just as speculative, if the shooter had had access to trans healthcare, it might have saved many lives. 

Tennessee recently put the lid on Trans Health care and conceivably terminated his care with the passing of that law.

 

51 minutes ago, Vidanjali said:

it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that Marjorie Taylor Greene is claiming the shooter's aggressive behavior was due to testosterone HRT and psych meds saying "everyone can stop blaming guns now".

She did and has!!

 

51 minutes ago, Vidanjali said:

I long for elected officials who will inspire, unify and actually help; not enflame, deflect, scapegoat, blame, vilify, etc. 

So much so.

[Mx.Drago]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5ypzm/nashville-school-shooting-body-cam-footage

 

Another article that gives more details about Aiden(The name Audrey picked for himself).

I don't feel surprised that the media doesn't know how to write when it comes to stories like this. It also doesn't surprise me that the media will leave out the guy who gave the guns to the kid. Fail to write about the government institutions that consistently fail children like Aiden, that would much rather bury people instead of getting rid of senseless toys, like firearms. We'll blame it all on the kid who literally broke mentally, and was so messed up he turned to murder to be murdered... The entire situation just hurts.

My life has been a ball of endless infinite stress... this only adds more.

[Ivy]

 

[awkward-yet-sweet]

As usual, the talking heads take a tiny bit of truth and twist it.  I recall Satan quoting Scripture in the New Testament in a similar fashion. 

 

Yeah, SSRI's can have nasty side effects.  Yeah, Christians can be (and are) targeted.  But Tucker (getting difficult to say his name with the proper consonent 🙄) making those claims in this case as mere speculation and weaving together an unfounded narrative is irresponsible and dishonest.  

 

Until now, it has seemed like MtF trans folks have been the primary target.  If Aiden was FtM, I wonder what new facet of persecution is going to show up?  

[Marcie Jensen]

2 hours ago, Mx.Drago said:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5ypzm/nashville-school-shooting-body-cam-footage

 

Another article that gives more details about Aiden(The name Audrey picked for himself).

I don't feel surprised that the media doesn't know how to write when it comes to stories like this. It also doesn't surprise me that the media will leave out the guy who gave the guns to the kid. Fail to write about the government institutions that consistently fail children like Aiden, that would much rather bury people instead of getting rid of senseless toys, like firearms. We'll blame it all on the kid who literally broke mentally, and was so messed up he turned to murder to be murdered... The entire situation just hurts.

My life has been a ball of endless infinite stress... this only adds more.

Some significant facts:

 

First, he was 28 years old. He was not a child, kid or anything other than an adult. We don't know his mental state as HIPAA laws prevent the public from finding out. Can we place some of the blame on his medial care provider? Maybe, but this too is a gray area and we have no details regarding his care and treatment regimen.

 

Second, he purchased the guns legally. They were NOT "given" to him. Additionally, the firearms were purchased in five different places, and Aiden/Audrey went through at least five and possibly seven background checks; one for each firearm purchased.

 

A third point, firearms are not toys and should never be referred to as such for any reason. Firearms are inanimate objects--tools--and have to be wielded by human beings. Granted, humans often use them for awful purpose. Let's make no mistake, Aiden/Audrey Hale was responsible for this regardless of mental state'

 

The entire situation is a tragedy for any number of reasons and media reporting has been confusing at best and downright misleading at worst. While the shooter may be considered a victim too, the real tragedy is for the children and their families. While the shooter and his family have my sympathy, I can't give him a pass because of gender dysphoria. There are tens of thousands of us in this country, we have each had our own trials and bad experiences and we have dealt with them without resorting to mass murder.

 

And as if all of this isn't enough, one of the TN delegation to congress is already raising a ruckus and railing against the trans community. With regard to the trans community as a whole, it's simply given the far right even more grounds to persecute us and our community such bad, and unwarranted, publicity that the cause of trans rights has had a huge setback.

[VickySGV]

There were SEVEN deaths in this event.  I realize only SIX of the SEVEN will be publicly mourned and honored, but still the 7th death happened and the mourning for that one too needs for all of us to join it. 

[April Marie]

5 hours ago, Marcie Jensen said:

Some significant facts:

 

First, he was 28 years old. He was not a child, kid or anything other than an adult. We don't know his mental state as HIPAA laws prevent the public from finding out. Can we place some of the blame on his medial care provider? Maybe, but this too is a gray area and we have no details regarding his care and treatment regimen.

 

Second, he purchased the guns legally. They were NOT "given" to him. Additionally, the firearms were purchased in five different places, and Aiden/Audrey went through at least five and possibly seven background checks; one for each firearm purchased.

 

A third point, firearms are not toys and should never be referred to as such for any reason. Firearms are inanimate objects--tools--and have to be wielded by human beings. Granted, humans often use them for awful purpose. Let's make no mistake, Aiden/Audrey Hale was responsible for this regardless of mental state'

 

The entire situation is a tragedy for any number of reasons and media reporting has been confusing at best and downright misleading at worst. While the shooter may be considered a victim too, the real tragedy is for the children and their families. While the shooter and his family have my sympathy, I can't give him a pass because of gender dysphoria. There are tens of thousands of us in this country, we have each had our own trials and bad experiences and we have dealt with them without resorting to mass murder.

 

And as if all of this isn't enough, one of the TN delegation to congress is already raising a ruckus and railing against the trans community. With regard to the trans community as a whole, it's simply given the far right even more grounds to persecute us and our community such bad, and unwarranted, publicity that the cause of trans rights has had a huge setback.

Perfectly stated @Marcie Jensen.

 

A person doesn't just go from angry to mass murderer in a day. Someone or multiple people missed signs before he acted out. Going from considering self-harm - something many if not most of us have considered because of the tremendous external and internal pressures we experience - to murdering innocent children and adults isn't a natural progression. 

 

As I've mentioned before, our society always defaults to looking for an easy end to problems - someone or something to blame quickly so they can "solve" the problem and move on. Complex issues get a band-aid so we can get back to Starbucks and Snapchat. If Aiden had taken a knife and killed just one person would people demand knife confiscation? Would it be less of a tragedy because only one person was murdered? Of course not. Any act of violence, whether at the hands of a transgender, cisgender, nonbinary......... any act of violence is tragic and needless. The way to stop it isn't through eliminating the means, it's through addressing the root causes - inadequate mental health care, presence of tremendous societal prejudices, inadequate family structures, lack of individual accountability for actions, lack of a societal moral compass, loss of a belief in the sanctity of life....I could go on.

 

And, in the end, my heart breaks for the families who are suffering today because we - our politicians and our society - shed a tear and then plaster another band-aid solution over the problem.

[Davie]

The main and top headline in today's newspaper gets it right: 

‘Desperate and bigoted’: the right uses latest shooting to malign trans people  From hateful rants on Fox news to falsehoods in Congress, the far right exploits the tragedy to demonize vulnerable people.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/30/far-right-demonize-lgbtq-nashville-shooting

[Marcie Jensen]

17 hours ago, VickySGV said:

There were SEVEN deaths in this event.  I realize only SIX of the SEVEN will be publicly mourned and honored, but still the 7th death happened and the mourning for that one too needs for all of us to join it. 

You are so right! As is the case in most of these types of tragedies, we forget about the shooter who was killed. You've made me examine my thoughts, Vicky. I wonder if it was a subconscious reaction of outrage against the shooter. If so, I need to do some serious soul searching. Maybe we all do...

[VickySGV]

14 minutes ago, Marcie Jensen said:

You've made me examine my thoughts, Vicky. I wonder if it was a subconscious reaction of outrage against the shooter. If so, I need to do some serious soul searching. Maybe we all do...

 

There are several models for processing grief, and all or none of them may pertain to every instance but all show anger of the sort that totally engulfs our reason and even compassion at some point of the process.  That anger numbs us and prevents us from seeing  all parts of the death and life around it. We are processing grief, that soul drowning anger, and fear for ourselves in all of this one and all of those play with our thinking and direction this will lead us in.  I know that my first reaction was anger and horror, and then fear when I heard that the shooter was Trans, but it was fear for myself and only a bit later it included others.  I have 'Read The Names" many times for our Trans victims and in those necrologies I never once saw a Trans person as the possible killer in the stories, and this one has changed it.

[awkward-yet-sweet]

 

 

3 hours ago, Marcie Jensen said:

You are so right! As is the case in most of these types of tragedies, we forget about the shooter who was killed. You've made me examine my thoughts, Vicky. I wonder if it was a subconscious reaction of outrage against the shooter. If so, I need to do some serious soul searching. Maybe we all do...

 

I can see from both sides of this one.  On one hand, we can be more sad and outraged for the shooter's victims.  For our feelings towards the shooter, those can be mixed.  Sadness for what he could have been if he had chosen a different path.  Sadness for what affected his mind.  Outrage at the action.  Crime and atrocities are complicated because we as humans are complicated.  From my understanding of faith, we can hate the actions of sin and evil done, yet mourn the sinner's own reflection of the divine image being shattered.