Rampage killer Chris Harper-Mercer was an Aspie

Post Reply New Topic

Instead of immediately blaming other unspecified mental disorders instead of autism for someone's horrible actions, it is most useful to understand what were the important contributing factors to the horrible actions and mental states behind them. In this case, I have no idea if the shooter has autism or not, but in general when a shooter is shown to have autism by prior official diagnosis, it is messed up to immediately blame some other mental disorders to say that disorder XYZ and not autism made him do it.

The whole thing looks like a joke after reading the page creater's comments. Surely they can't be that dumb thinking people who are there protesting are actually supporting them and look at what they wrote about the competition to take their page down and thanking a person for signing it.

Agree in that no matter what disorder, the disorder didn't kill people. The person did. It's likely a combination of factors, the upbringing etc rather than one particular disorder that caused them to decide to murder people. There is no one disorder with 100% of the people who have it being murderers, to my knowledge, so it's obviously going to be more than them having, say, a disorder associated with violence.

However, when people start to question if autistic people are violent, but someone violent has another disorder which is diagnosed because of the presence of violence (for example conduct disorder), I don't think it's right to blame their autism for the presence of violence.

Edit: cleared up some of the wording, was just trying to get it through cloudflare at first.

Last edited by iliketrees on 05 Oct 2015, 1:43 am, edited 2 times in total.

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand?

I don't think anyone said it was some specific issue other than autism, simply that it there's no confirmation that this person was autistic and therefore it could be any disorder? Unless there has been a development in the meantime. It was my understanding that Mr. Harper-Mercer attended a school that addressed a variety of needs and that an unidentified person said on an internet forum that she was a nurse and the parent of an Aspie, but I didn't see where it was confirmed that the nurse in question was actually Harper-Mercer's mother.

You mention "when a shooter is shown to have autism by prior official diagnosis"...which shooter are you referring to? Adam Lanza or Harper-Mercer? Again, I haven't heard that there was an official ASD diagnosis for Harper-Mercer. Unless you meant Lanza or even someone else? If so, where did anyone blame some other disorder? Yes, that would be messed up but I didn't see it happen unless it was on some prior thread, perhaps?

I may just be confused. Let me amend that. I AM just confused. (I guess that's obvious by now...)

I can't speak for btbnnyr, but there was THIS post, in THIS thread, that we're on, right now:

http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=294628&p=6803178#p6803178

I feel the point really is:

That we glorify mass murderers by our constant analysis of them. This creates a certain fascination for mass murderers, which future mass murderers eat up. It's like "feeding the troll" on a much greater scale.

I understand the need for analysis--but, at the same time, we don't vilify the actions of these mass murderers enough. Like another poster stated, we blame it on the disorder, rather than the person.

I explained exactly what I meant in my last post which was a reply. There would have to be way more to someone than being autistic to cause them to murder people. I won't post it again, you can scroll up as it's on the same page as this post and above the post you quoted.

I saw his father's picture, the-other-day, and knew he was white, so I went looking for a woman of color (many articles have said he was of "mixed race"), and found THIS:



I just wanted a visual----I thought, maybe, someone else might want one, TOO.

I have absolutely NO PROOF that the image below, is the mother of the person we're discussing, BUT the words seem to fit other things she's been reported as saying:



As others have said, it's VERY reminiscent of Adam Lanza's mother; and, as others have said, I'll just never understand a mother who knows her son isn't right-in-the-head, but allows him to have an arsenal. My aunt's best friend's son, for instance, was dodging planes in the living room; then, he went and bought a gun, and blew his brains, out. She (my aunt's friend) said she "was sitting right there, on the sofa, when he came-in with it, and took it upstairs, to his room." I dunno.....

I'm thinking this Mrs. Harper----and, Mrs. Lanza, for-that-matter----thought she had a handle on-the-matter and knew ALL that her son was thinking and that if he seemed paranoid to OTHERS, it was no different from how SHE was feeling (same with Lanza / Lanza's mother).

There are just SOOOOO many factors in these situations.....

Another thing I wanted to mention..... Several have asked how they knew whatever post was made by Mrs. Harper (NOT the one I posted, above----I'm talking about earlier posts, on this thread)----like, the one where a mom in Oregon posted that she was a nurse, with a kid with Aspergers----I imagine that they traced the email associated with the account, she was posting-from, like they said they did, with things that HE supposedly wrote (that's not PROOF, it's only my theory).

Last edited by Campin_Cat on 05 Oct 2015, 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, I see. That makes sense.

The comments that were offputting in that groups were people saying that what causes autistics to kill is intolerance and ignorance as if we are blaming their actions on other people implying it's other peoples fault they did it.

Yes, I totally understand----I was trying to help-out NowhereWoman, as it seemed she hadn't tied the two together (btbnnyr's post and your post from before; judging by the times, your post right above her's may not have been there, when she clicked-on "Reply").

Anything that tries to validate killing completely innocent bystanders is deeply disturbing to me. All these people did was turn up to class. They did nothing wrong. I don't think we should blame them for getting killed.

Absolutely. Agree 100%.

Oh, I see. I am sorry...I wasn't trying to imply that. What I was saying is that the actual state of being autistic doesn't make a person angry (since anger was a theme that kept being repeated) but more often, how the person is treated. But I didn't mean to imply that murder was okay or even that anger in autistics (or anyone) should naturally result in murder. Personally I've never known an autistic person who would use his or her anger at his or her treatment in order to murder or even harm another person. That's just my experience.

I'm pretty horrified at this entire situation as is the rest of the world, I am sure. I was making these statements (or I thought I was) in response to the comments regarding "angry autistics" and not to justify murder. There is no justification.

Sometimes, when I am trying to get a thought out, although I think I'm being clear, I'm actually jumbled, so that's on me. Nobody's fault but my own and in fact my rambling and repetitive style is something I work on daily.

I wonder what they think we're intolerant / ignorant of?

Aspergers was ONE of the factors with Adam Lanza and if Mercer was an Aspie Aspergers is probably ONE factor in that both men had a special interest in school shooters. There is a myth that special interests are only nerdy, geeky topics like train schedules, baseball stats, comics etc. This myth are a reason for underdiagnosis in females. A special interest can be any topic as long as it is obsessive and narrow.

We need to stop denying this.This does not take away that autistics are more likely to be victims then perpetrators at all.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 05 Oct 2015, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.