Chattanooga Shooting and Depression? (America, Islamic, Muslims, protestant)

[Continuum]

As one piece of the puzzle in their investigation of his motive, authorities are looking at a text message from Abdulazeez to a friend before the attack, law enforcement sources told CNN. The message said:

"Whoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him."

The gunman's family issued a statement expressing their condolences and saying he suffered from depression.

"It grieves us beyond belief to know that his pain found its expression in this heinous act of violence," the statement read. "We extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the honorable service members and police officers who were victims of the shooting our son committed on Thursday in Chattanooga, Tennessee -- our community, and one we have loved for over twenty-five years."

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes said depression doesn't necessarily make anyone more likely to kill.

"I think mental health professionals would be not happy with what the parents are assessing, in saying, 'Well, he was depressed, and therefore that's why he became a killer like this,'" Fuentes said. "People with depression do not turn, necessarily, into psychopathic killers -- as he did."

Chattanooga shooting: Mourning the victims - CNN.com

Do you think the MAIN cause of the shooting is due to depression or perhaps it is the religion?

[hljc]

Ask CCN and they will not blame the gunman Islamic religion on His motives , as liberal niceties forbids it ........Ask BBC and they will blame the gunman religion on His motives ....go figure ...

[bUU]

Ask Fox News and they will blame everything on liberals, Muslims, people of non-White races, and stick around long enough and they'll end up blaming everything on women too. There is psychological research that links depression to violent crime. I haven't seen any psychological research that links any specific religion to violent crime. A few studies have found a negative correlation between religiosity (in general) and criminality. So who to believe? CNN or Fox News? The reality is that people who hate Muslims have a vested interest in making claims and promulgating perspectives that foster hatred against Muslims by others. People who traffic in hate-mongering shouldn't be rewarded for their craven behavior, especially when trying to parlay the tragic deaths of our nation's servicemen into political fodder for their hate-mongering.

[mordant]

I have no way of having an informed opinion on this topic without visibility into this man's thought life that maybe no one has had or will have. Depression can be a primary morbidity and driver behind all sorts of dysfunctional behaviors; or it may only have been a complicating factor. The CNN talking head is correct that depressed people don't necessarily become psychotic or violent and that it is probably not a good idea to connect the two in people's minds as that would be an atypical outcome, and prejudicial against people who are suffering. Most are not a threat vector, even to themselves.

When something like this happens there is an understandable human tendency to cast about desperately for meaning, to make sense of it ... sadly often there is no sense to be had. Even if you understand the motives that doesn't mean the motives are sensible. No one EVER says "well alright then, I understand now why he slaughtered all those people at last. Makes perfect sense. I would have done the same thing." So I'm not sure why people cast about for logic / reason / explicability; even if it's obtainable it's not going to really help.

Except in this limited sense: there's the slightest chance it might inform how we handle security or early warning signs and avert or ease some future occurrence like this. But I can't remember the last time that wasn't illusory too. People in practice can't go around in some hyper-aware state of alert over something that has a one in ten thousand chance of happening in any one person's lifetime.

How many people are going to try to detonate their underwear or shoe sole? Has it been worth the inconvenience to billions of people and the invasion of privacy, all the measures that have been taken since? Do those measures matter at all given that recent penetration testing of TSA checkpoints has gotten all sorts of forbidden items past them?

These are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves when dealing with tragedy. The system fails to work, we want to understand why, we Take Measures, attention is diverted from elsewhere so something else can go awry. Rinse and repeat.

[Shirina]

In today's world, the blame for these kinds of heinous crimes is usually put upon the shoulders of mental illness or the side effects of medication being taken for a mental illness.

Of course, no one really tries to delve into the source of the problem -- why are there so many young people with mental illnesses? Why does America, for instance, produce more serial killers than the rest of the world combined?

Religion does play a role in this, though not as directly as other causes. I think it comes from the stressers of the Puritan-Protestant work ethic where greed becomes a virtue and rampant materialism decides whether or not you've been a success. It's like those dorm room posters showing an exotic sports car with the caption, "He who has the most toys wins." Essentially that is how our society measures success and it can be exceedingly stressful if you just can't quite achieve the same kind of showy success as others have. With so much value placed on "things," it's no wonder then why parents will opt to spend 70 hours/week at the office rather than come home and actually parent.

Thus we have an entire generation of children growing up feral with the excesses of television and the media teaching them what is important, what is moral; worse still is that the media teaches kids that if you can't succeed, you can always shoot up a school or a workplace. THEN everyone will know your name. You'll be more famous than many celebrities; people will be researching you and your life for decades.

I find it rather ironic that many conservative Christians pump the idea of family values yet somehow that only comes into play when talking about gay marriage. When family values really count for something -- like pushing for higher wages and fewer hours so that parents can raise their kids -- they think we're a bunch of pinko commie socialists who don't want to work.

Jeb Bush just the other day said that Americans should work more hours. MORE hours. As if our children aren't being ignored enough in favor of work. Where, Mr. Bush, are your family values now?

As a nation, our priorities are all messed up. We are a nation that lacks vision, a nation where our heroes are sports figures who beat their girlfriends, a nation which happily destroys the future for a big payoff right now, a nation that no longer values greatness and instead strives for mediocrity, a nation that has an economic system that has become a race to the bottom for most of us in the middle class.

Even the Pope told the GOP to expend more effort in lessening the problem of income inequality and not so much effort trashing homosexuals. This was backed by the Council of Bishops. If a conservative organization like the Vatican can see the problem, we should be able to, as well. But you watch as the 2016 election draws near ... the issues will be irrelevant to want is important to most Americans.