Murder article emphasizes AS in perpetrator

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My friend sent me this video in an email. It's about this kid who goes on a shooting spree because girls didn't like him (what he says, though I am sure there are many other things which contributed). But anyway, in the article, under the video of him speaking, there is a paragraph that says:

"Police also had dealings with Rodger, who had Asperger syndrome, on two other occasions."

They just randomly throw that in there. It's as if they are trying to point out that he had AS to make it seem like THAT is the SOUL reason he really went and shot a bunch of people. I hear about people with autism/as being harrassed by cops and beaten by cops. And the more this country arrives at a place where the government wants everyone to think the same way and be easily controllable, I believe the media is going to put more and more emphasis on "mental disorders".

This same entity (the government) wants people to believe that autism is a "treatable disease". Well, in my opinion it is not "treatable" nor is it a "disease". Though some people have a harder time than others. I personally would rather see the world the way I see it (not sugar coated). But I would never just haul off and kill people.

The only way they can get rid of the way someone processes the world around them is by turning them into a zombie and destroying who they are inside. There are of course, certain things a person can do to ease them in life, but it's not just going to change the way a person sees the world and processes things in their brain. Society is what needs to change. They want everyone to be the same and to live (generally) the same lifestyle. They don't want people to go beyond and to reach their full potential. The more people there are who think differently and see what's wrong in the world the less controllable people will become.

Getting rid of guns won't change anything. Getting rid of AS won't change anything (cause they won't be able to get ride of it). It's not the AS, or the GUNS that made him do it. He did it and the environment which effected him emotionally and physically (society) is what collectively causes people to go insane. Oh, that and the meds they put people on.

But what my main point is here is that the media is going to start pointing out (even more) when people who commit crimes have autism because they want the rest of society to have a more extensive stigma towards it. They want it to be ostracized (more so). They want to mold us all into little incomplete triangles; they want us to be trapezoids.

I read an article about the shootings & watched his 7min video. There wasn't a mention of AS in either, but I did notice AS traits being described both in the article and by the shooter in his video and wondered if he had a diagnosis.

Also, it's been my experience that AS is treatable and we can in fact change how we perceive the world. Further to that, it's not the whole rest of the world's responsibility to change to accommodate us. It's up to us to do what we can for ourselves to fit into the world and make sense of it. People need to take personal responsibility for themselves and their actions vs. blaming everyone else or society at large for them being different. You're under no obligation to agree with me, but that's the way I see it.

As for the media and AS/murderers.. I think it's just a bit of a trendy fear inducing topic they can use to get ratings and sell advertising. It'll all blow over soon enough whenever there's a new boogieman to sell on the 6 o'clock news.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I think that is a carry over of the past couple of shooting as well. There as been more and more discussion about these types of crimes being connected to some sort of mental illness. Many people probably don't even know what Aspergers is though so I hope they don't think all people with Asperger's are like that

Its kinda like. when you hear about kids killing someone, its not how did they get guns, how did they learn to use the guns. its THEY PLAYED VIDEO GAMES.

I remember when that lunatic Jack Thompson was in the news all the time.

If you ever fired a real gun, its easy to see how crazy it seems, that you could somehow learn to fire guns from playing video games

Another person who thinks autism is a difference...when I hear someone say its not a disease/disorder/illness/disability and they have aspie/NT listed in their signature It's hard to believe they even have autism.

Autism is much more clinically significant then just a difference.

I've fired real guns and it's not like a video game...there were no video games when I was a kid and learned to shoot..and yep, I hit LOTS of tin cans at 50 feet! But I never shot a living thing, much less a person.

But how many faux murders has the average teenager (boy usually) committed by the time they are 21?

The goal of so many of them is to kill an enemy and get the (whatever prize is being offered) The competition is to beat someone else's kill rate or point goal...But you're right about one thing...it's not like firing a real weapon.

Modern video games are not like firing a real gun, but they totally desensitize a person to the idea of shooting someone. They are highly realistic (the goal is constantly for further realism) ... they enable, no, they train a person to the idea that it's a release of power to kill someone. The military uses these skills in their drone program...the guys who were really good gamers go on to operate the programs that man the machines that kill at a distance - but they don't fire guns. They go home when their shift is over, kiss their wives and kids and eat dinner.

...just to come back to the original topic... this story was also reported here in Australia on the ABC (the national broadcaster). The initial radio news story implied a link between the killers actions and his AS, which I thought was a bit of a shocker. They later dropped the reference.

Read the post carefully please.

If I am wrong about the drone operator/ gamer connection, then I am the victim of a story that was published in the main stream media...I thought my information was accurate. I will have to look this up further.

I maintained that first person shooter video games desensitize a user to the idea of shooting people. I did not say they made people go out and kill others. However, when a psychologically fragile boy spends countless hours playing these games he is reinforcing the use of violence to solve a problem. Add in frustration, a psychotic inability to tell right from wrong and reality from 'the game'...give him access to real guns...welcome to a real mess...

I have no doubt that lots of AS kids do just fine playing the games, and for basically healthy adults - of course it's no big deal. But don't deny that in every recent AS shooter case, violent video games was a behavior they indulged in before they went out and shot people in real life. There is an obvious link with that and their fundamental mental illness .... that should be enough for parents to be very careful about carefully monitoring any AS child's media and gaming exposure.

My main point is that kids on the spectrum might do well to avoid these games, and that these violent video games might not be healthy or conducive to their general mental health. AS kids have enough issues just figuring out how to function in the a world that does very little to accommodate their natural developmental curve in a positive way without providing them with violent social fantasies.

It really gets down to whether being on the spectrum is a mental illness or a mental condition. Plenty of people with AS are not mentally ill - certainly not in the manner of the UCSB shooter. But for the ones who are mentally ill ... are violent video games a good idea?

edit: I just put the term - drone operators/ gamers - into the search engine box...329,000+ results and the many interview articles maintain that the experience for the drone operator is basically the same as gaming. if you just look at the titles of the games themselves, I think you might reconsider the idea that there is no connection between the virtual and the real.

Spree killers are pretty much always men. There are a few women, but the vast majority are men.

Spree killers have often expressed reasons for their murders.

The focus on mental illness and autism is a dodge, just as the focus on video games is. No one is going on a shooting spree because they're autistic or because they played every single Call of Duty and/or Battlefield installment. Mentally ill and developmentally disabiled people are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Trying to use mental illness as the explanation is a distraction.

Also, the idea that stricter gun control would not make any difference is ideological, not factual. Weapon lethality matters. Knives are much less lethal than firearms, so even when stabbing sprees happen, fewer people are killed as a consequence. Yes, criminals can get access to firearms, but a significant number of these firearms are stolen from private collections - and the majority of spree killings involve the use of legally obtained firearms. Anyone who thinks that gun control would make no difference is in denial.

Verdandi,

First of all, I don't regard AS as a mental illness, it is a mental condition caused by the specific neurological makeup of the individual. it only rises to the level of a disorder when the AS person is unable to function in society. And the difficulties that AS creates means that we often struggle to maintain our mental health - we do develop co morbid conditions more often than NT individuals (depression being the most common) ...the mental health of an individual is directly related to how they function in life.

Whether Elliott Rodger had Aspergers or not was irrelevant to his actions, but his level of mental illness was central to his behavior. Did his mental illness arise out of a badly handled AS condition...probably. Total support of his narcissism and too much money and violent video games and the whole sad spiral of his life show that.

But most Aspies are not mentally ill, or if we are, not like this. Yeah, we have problems, but that does not make us psychopaths and that's what E.R. was... Mentally healthy people do not do what he did. Neither is his mental illness an excuse that makes it okay.

And yeah, better gun control would definitely help. Free access to guns by mentally ill people is especially a very bad idea. Personally, I think one should have to positively demonstrate a very high level of mental health to own one.

When I first heard of this shooting I immediately Google image searched Elliot Rodgers to see why girls didn't like him. Its quite obvious that his lips are puffed up like they were stun by a bee and his eyes are too small with brownish circles around them. Makes sense why girls were creeped out. No amount of armani sunglasses can help him.

When I first heard of this shooting I immediately Google searched Elliot Rodgers picture to see why girls didn't like him. I noticed that his lips are puffed up like they were stun by a bee and his eyes are too small with brownish circles around them. Makes sense why girls dont want him. No amount of armani sunglasses or bmw's could help him. Its a shame some people are born ugly.