Jared Loughner is an aspie?

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Someone should inform her that sons of overbearing mothers usually grow up to have some serious women hating and sexual issues.

I think this gunman has some form of schizophrenia.

Yeah, I've written three comments now...every time, Firefox has crashed before I could click send.

He does sound like he has schizophrenia, although schizophrenia is not a predictor for violence. Schizophrenics are still far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.

I swear to God I will flame the hell out of the next person who says Jared Loughner is an aspie.

He's got issues, but AS is not one of them. Tourettes, maybe. Schizophrenia, most likely. But from the description, he has no autistic traits whatsoever, other than being a loner (and let's face it, just because you're a lone wolf does not mean you're autistic. That particular logical connective works the other freaking way.)

Besides, it doesn't matter why he did it, what matters is he did and he'll have hell to pay for it. Period, end of story THE END.

That not only annoys me, but makes me mad. Every time somebody goes on a shooting spree the media is quick to list up characteristics that people tend to find a bit out of the ordinary. The media doesn't mention when shooters are extraverted, talkative, social, have lots of friends etc. In this case it even sounds like the description the media gave of the shooter was completely incorrect, but do you hear them correcting it?

People are enough already freaked out about quiet people, loners and people who struggle socially without the media stigmatizing those traits even more by labelling every damn murderer with them and emphasizing this in their coverage.

I also hate when they feel the need to mention whenever a criminal has some mental disorder or even speculate about it on the media when it's completely irrelevant to what the person did. In most cases those disorders have little or nothing to do with the crime committed, but when people constantly hear certain disorders mentioned in relation to murderers and other criminals, they jump to the conclusion that all people with that disorder are potentially dangerous or bad people that they need to stay away from. Aspies, schizophrenics etc. don't commit more crimes than other people, but a lot of people think that they do because the disorders are so often mentioned in the media while they never hear "the murderer had no disorder whatsoever".

I'm an aspie and I'm quiet, have few friends and am pretty much a loner who keeps to myself (I have no choice, because I don't know how to make new friends or keep them). I have on several occasions noticed that some people are scared of me, freaked out or uncomfortable with my quiet loner demeanor. I don't need stuff like this to make things even worse and cause even more ostracization.

This article is actually pretty close to my own opinion on the whole thing:

Article on why speculating about Loughner's mental health is bad (link)

All I know is that 4chan has a new hero with that crazy mugshot he gave. But I see much more violence like what happened occurring as austerity measures take effect and it's not going to be because of "aspergers." Congress is out of touch with reality and America's democracy is close to a fascist dictatorship. I want to leave America.

Good article, and unfortunately a very necessary one. This is something that needs to be discussed more. People need to be made aware of how biased and demonizing speculations and news coverage about mental illnesses can be, and the media needs to seriously reconsider the way they report violent crimes.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-shooter ... d=12591246

http://abcnews.go.com/US/jared-loughner ... 114&page=2

According to the links above he wasn't always a friendless loner. His mental state started deteriorating in high school, and it sounds like there were family problems too, and that the whole family started isolating themselves about 15 years ago--they also didn't always let him play with the other kids starting around that time (he'd have been about 7 then). So: He wanted to play with the other kids, and they would have played with him, but his parents didn't let him out of the house. That doesn't sound like most kids with AS, who usually either don't want to play with most of the other kids, or most of the other kids don't want the Aspie kid to play with them.

It also sounds like his mental health started to deteriorate when his girlfirend dumped him in 10th grade. After that he started to do a lot of drugs.

Yes, Aspie teenagers could get dumped by their girlfriend but so could non-Aspies. If he had a developing mental illness that could have sped things along.

From what I'm reading his mental state got worse and worse and people either dropped him as a friend because they were scared of him or couldn't understand what he was talking about, or he dumped them for no reason. Prior to that it didn't sound like he had trouble making at least some friends.

This is just my opinion, but I kind of doubt he will turn out to be an Aspie, especially as more is revealed about his early childhood. That one woman who thought he was an Aspie because he had one of the same interests as her son was only going by one characteristic.

Exactly, totally superficial. She's being alarmist.

EXACTLY! The media is going to spin it to where people are singling us out. Which I think is on purpose. My mom started getting all worried because she thought I was like this guy. The media is ridiculous. Reminds me of the witch trials.

^^^^^ THIS. The media are so dam irresponsible. The idiots watching at home eat it up too.

He's not aspie nor is it likely that he have ever had been diagnosed as such. Arizona law make it very easy for involuntary commital to a mental ward. He never was committed. Had he sought diagnosis and did receive Asperger's then I find it hard to believe someone as loony as he would not have been committed for having a whole bunch of other crazy issues stacked on top of that.

And since Asperger's criteria says you can't be schizo and a buncg of other things, odds are if he had those other issues then he'd be ruled out from the Asperger's criteria.

Lastly, it's been noted here that aspies do have normal if not stronger affective empathy. (Cognitive empathy, yeah that's lacking.) Sociopaths and I think schizofrenics (correct me if I'm wrong) tend to totally lack affective empathy. This guy clearly lacked that. Watch the Ed Schultz interview of the guy who helped tackle the shooter (search ed schultz joe zamudio on YouTube; great interview). He says that while people are on the ground screaming in pain with blood everywhere, the shooter's reaction to the tackle was to complain that they were hurting his arm. Clearly no affective empathy there.

Which as an aside is an interesting story. That guy who was interviewed, Joe, wasn't even at the scene. He heard gunshots while shopping at a nearby store and since he was armed with a concealed pistol he ran towards the shooting to put an end to it. That's quite brave!


This was also not the only bad reporting. The media coverage of this has been shameful and disgusting. Here are some corrections to things I've heard or seen recently:
* He didn't have Aspger's, as discused in this thread.
* Giffords wasn't killed.
* The shooter was not a loner.
* The "Mayhem Fest" artwork that he drew was not a sign of a disturbed mind. He probably attended the Mayhem Fest heavy metal concert held in Tucson a while back.
* There is known no link with him and the Tea Party or Palin's web site or talk radio.
* There is known no link between him and American Rennaisance (a racist organization). He doesn't even fit the target demograpic of American Rennaisance, which older and educated; he is young and uneducated.
* There is no known evidence that he wanted to shoot the first Jewish Representative in Arizona for being Jewish.
* News reports related to the above two note that American Rennaisance is anti-semitic, which oddly enough is false. Surprisingly for such a group as that, the guy who runs it actually likes Jews.
* There's no known evidence that this was politically motivated of any kind.
* The equipment he used was not illegal under the Brady Bill. That law just required one insert larger magazines into a pistol made before 1994. And even if he owned a pistol post-1994, I believe it was still legal to own the parts so long as he didn't actually put them together.
* It's a "magazine," not a "clip."
* The harsh political rhetoric today is not something new. It was just as bad as how Bush was treated by the left. And Clinton by the right. ... And John Adams by Jefferson's anti-federalists.

And what I consider inaccuracies of conspicuous ommision in the political commentaries:
* The slain judge normally carried a pistol but this one day was unarmed because he thought it disrespectful to carry during church. No discussion on how that might have changed the story.
* The man who ran to the scene to help was armed with a pistol, never hear about that.

His parents and friends knew nothing of his fixating on Giffords? There's probably more to this than meets the eye but since it may incriminate folks who don't wish to be, we might never know the truth about Jared Lee Loughner...

I am not buying this media portrayal, the old serial killer cliche of a lone guy who lives in a vacuum, most likely suffers from a mental illness and nobody in their wildest dreams believed they were capable of murder. With Jared Lee Loughner, I am willing to bet he was surrounded by people who don't like government or taxes. I am willing to bet his parents are on the far right, maybe members of the tea party express. They might have been upset that Giffords was reelected but I doubt the public will ever get to learn of this reality because of all the cover ups.

LOL! I figured this would come up!! !! I hate as a Psychology major seeing the OMG! Something is wrong with Mental Health care! OMG! He fell through the cracks. (Ya like so many other shooters!) YAWN!! !! !! ! Please!! ! I hear it every time shome shooter goes on a rampage he has X disorder (insert professional discussing it on CNN). It gets old. It's sad yes a tragedy yes but they toss psychological issues around and make them a big deal when normally they wouldn't be.

While he would need to be assessed to be certain, I would agree from what I have read that he clearly appears to strongly present with symptoms of schizophrenia, along with substance abuse.

An interesting factor was that his parents were also known as loners, and nobody in the neighborhood knew them. I would be curious to know if they meet the diagnostic criteria for anything.

The neighbors knew them. One of their next door neighbors was on CNN talking about the Loughners reactions to what happened. It completely contradicts the media's portrayal of them! You cannot rely on the media to be truthful about the situation so you must use deductive reasoning, instead. Of course, in hindsight, the neighbors are going to say "we don't know anything about them". They aren't going to say if they all sat around at night griping about the government because it would make them look like they had a hand in it, like it was a plot.
Everyone backs off and distances themselves to avoid trouble.