Shooter reported at Santa Fe, Texas school

[freyguy 4279]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I didn't say that.  I said (according to the table quoted prior) that the 0.556 bullet with a muzzle energy of ~ 1.8 kJ would equal the same kinetic energy of a 180 lb man moving 6.6 m/sec.

The two velocities are drastically different, because the masses are drastically different.

I was responding to the implication that the bullet and the shooter both gain the same kinetic energy.

I’m almost there guys, keep it up..

[Fozzz 152]

An American life

https://twitter.com/theseantcollins/status/998197114650980352

[Lat22 4015]

I can’t hit shit past about 15 feet with my 9.

AR with a red dot? Good to 25 yards while standing.

That’s my point. Real world accuracy.

We got us a regular Carlos Hathcock here!

[Dahobbs 17625]

12 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Excuse me?

The whole conversation is confused, but after rereading, you may be more right than I thought. 

Both shooter and bullet will have the same force imparted to them. Recoil will extend that force over longer period of time on the shooter, allowing the shooter to more easil deal with the recoil (e.g., transfer the force to the ground)

Energy is different. Vastly more kinetic energy is transferred to the bullet than the shooter. And that is evident because kinetic energy is 1/2 mass x velocity squared. Here, the gun and bullet have the same momentum, but the bullet has much higher velocity. And velocity is the primary driver of kinetic energy (because it is squared). In fact, between two objects with equal momentum, the smaller object will have greater kinetic energy. 

Edited May 21, 2018 by Dahobbs

[jimmyjazz 45990]

Yes, if we take conservation of momentum as a given, then the kinetic energy of the lighter object will be higher than that of the heavier object by the mass ratio (heavy to light).

[bernorange 8362]

Semi-autos by design use some of the recoil energy to cycle the next round into the chamber.  I don't know how much, but IIRC, the AR15 in particular is lauded because of the engineering that significantly reduces recoil.

I have a Mossberg 500 12 guage shotgun.  I installed a Knoxx stock on it and that simple device really works at absorbing recoil energy.

I mention these things, because the recoil energy transfered to the shooter isn't going to be the same as what is transferred to the round (bullet).  The recoil energy gets distributed across many variables.

[jimmyjazz 45990]

Correct.  Some weapons have essentially no recoil -- they vent the combustion gas out the back.  That comes with a whole host of other compromises.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

An AR barely has any recoil.  It's one of the main reasons I use it as my truck/jeep/quad gun when I am at the ranch.

[Armybrat 40851]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Correct.  Some weapons have essentially no recoil -- they vent the combustion gas out the back.  That comes with a whole host of other compromises.

Nope. The AR has a gas block on top of the barrel that vents some of the combustion through a little tube back to the bolt to cycle the action, while most of the gas expansion continues propelling the bullet out of the muzzle.

Edited May 21, 2018 by Armybrat

[jimmyjazz 45990]

10 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Nope. The AR has a gas block on top of the barrel that vents some of the combustion through a little tube back to the bolt to cycle the action, while most of the gas expansion continues propelling the bullet out of the muzzle.

OK, I don't think I actually said anything that contradicted that, but I was specifically referring to large shoulder mount weapons that are essentially an open-ended tube.

[Armybrat 40851]

Oh, those are the Bazooka type weapons.

[jimmyjazz 45990]

11 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Oh, those are the Bazooka type weapons.

Right.  Just an example of how to mitigate recoil.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13515]

3 Houston area kids either brought a gun to school today or threatened to bring one.  Never underestimate the stupidity of people.

[PRONG HORN 3148]

18 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

3 Houston area kids either brought a gun to school today or threatened to bring one.  Never underestimate the stupidity of people of this younger generation.

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19120]

So, to get back on topic, the more that comes out about this shooter, the more sociopathic he seems.  Just absolutely nuts.  

[Guest]

Which pop psychologists was it that a wrote a book and highlighted the Malaysian male suicide social phenomenon? That’s what this school shooting thing reminds me of; a psychological disease being spread by the rodents of media and internet.

[UDontKnow 10447]

1 hour ago, PRONG HORN said:

 

Younger generation? Are you saying copy-cat behavior was invented by the younger generation? Shut the fuck up.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

Which pop psychologists was it that a wrote a book and highlighted the Malaysian male suicide social phenomenon? That’s what this school shooting thing reminds me of; a psychological disease being spread by the rodents of media and internet.

Here it is:

 

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell shares the story of a young man, a scion of a wealthy family, who in the mid 1960s secretly became involved with two women at once. He ultimately fathered children with each woman, and the result was a Shakespearean tragedy. Gladwell writes:

Unable to make up his mind between them, he hanged himself in romantic despair. At his funeral, his two lovers, learning of the existence of the other for the first time, fainted on his grave.

The community, an island named Ebeye which had a population of about 6,000, had not had a documented suicide from 1955-1965. But three days after the scion’s death another love-torn young man took his own life. He was followed by 25 young people in Ebeye who took their own lives over the next 12 years, and soon the practice was almost a fad throughout Micronesia.   

Anthropologist Donald Rubinstein, quoted by Gladwell, said this:

Thus as suicide grows more frequent in these communities the idea itself acquires a certain familiarity if not fascination to young men, and the lethality of the act seems to be trivialized. Especially among some younger boys, the suicide acts appear to have acquired an experimental almost recreational element.      

What can we make of this?

Gladwell’s book, which is worth reading, examines how ideas often go viral and spread like a contagion, which is fine when the idea or product spreading is something benign, such as a book or trendy sneakers. But suicide?  

And then it occurred to me that the suicide statistics of U.S. veterans is pretty alarming. While it has yet to reach “epidemic” proportions (the 22 per day figure disseminated in 2012 by the VA and advocacy group was not accurate), the VA Secretary Bob McDonald said rates have risen steadily since 1999. (Indeed, the suicide rate of middle-aged white men in general is a disturbing trend.)

Additionally, it’s not hard to find the many ways Americans are also influenced in extremely harmful ways by trends, such as drug use and smoking.

The most salient takeaway of the Micronesia suicides for me, however, is this: it shows the creepy degree human behavior can influence behavior. And, if you’re like me, you are probably already wondering how and to what degree you are being influenced.

 

[GringoSalado 1651]

How School Shootings Spread

 

Quote

Then came Columbine. The sociologist Ralph Larkin argues that Harris and Klebold laid down the “cultural script” for the next generation of shooters. They had a Web site. They made home movies starring themselves as hit men. They wrote lengthy manifestos. They recorded their “basement tapes.” Their motivations were spelled out with grandiose specificity: Harris said he wanted to “kick-start a revolution.” Larkin looked at the twelve major school shootings in the United States in the eight years after Columbine, and he found that in eight of those subsequent cases the shooters made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold. Of the eleven school shootings outside the United States between 1999 and 2007, Larkin says six were plainly versions of Columbine; of the eleven cases of thwarted shootings in the same period, Larkin says all were Columbine-inspired.

Along the same lines, the sociologist Nathalie E. Paton has analyzed the online videos created by post-Columbine shooters and found a recurring set of stylized images: a moment where the killer points his gun at the camera, then at his own temple, and then spreads his arms wide with a gun in each hand; the closeup; the wave goodbye at the end. “School shooters explicitly name or represent each other,” she writes. She mentions one who “refers to Cho as a brother-in-arms”; another who “points out that his cultural tastes are like those of ‘Eric and Dylan’ ”; a third who “uses images from the Columbine shooting surveillance camera and devotes several videos to the Columbine killers.” And she notes, “This aspect underlines the fact that the boys actively take part in associating themselves to a group.”

 

[PRONG HORN 3148]

43 minutes ago, UDontKnow said:

Younger generation? Are you saying copy-cat behavior was invented by the younger generation? Shut the fuck up.

You think that's what I'm saying?  Maybe it's time for a nap.

[MillerEP 30492]

My personal take is that as more and more people are becoming secular, and the world is rapidly homogenizing culture into a globalized one, people are losing their connection to the old societal foundations that they used to use as a basis for shared morals, ethics, and laws. I think that’s really damaging to the psyche of people. In the past societies had shared cultures, religions, and traditions to tie themselves to which informed their theories of what’s acceptable or not. Today we’re being told all of our foundations are wrong and racist, or sexist, outdated, backwards, etcetera etcetera etcetera. We’ve become unmoored and so people don’t know where to turn or find meaning in their lives, so they’ve either become nihilists or epicureans (constantly chasing pleasures as the key to happiness). And boy does modern society really help if you’re one of those two things. It’s very unhealthy. It’s one of the reasons I turned to Stoicism a while back. Think about it, what morals or virtues do you impart on people if you have none of your own? In the past you had philosophy or religion to build your ethics, morals, and laws around, both of which are increasingly shrinking in global importance. Now we have a cultural crisis where people’s upbringing is either non existent, being abolished, or being overwritten by other people with agendas or through sheer evolution. It’s no wonder you have people looking for an identity by joining gangs, or by following unbridled emotion shooting up a classroom because he was bullied or had unrequited feelings for a girl. It’s one thing to know the laws as they are written on paper, quite another thing to fundamentally believe it’s wrong to murder another human being.

[Huckleberry 33035]

What a total load of horseshit. The idea that morals can't exist in a secular society is about as absurd as it gets.

[Helobious 9463]

41 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

My personal take is that as more and more people are becoming secular, and the world is rapidly homogenizing culture into a globalized one, people are losing their connection to the old societal foundations that they used to use as a basis for shared morals, ethics, and laws. I think that’s really damaging to the psyche of people. In the past societies had shared cultures, religions, and traditions to tie themselves to which informed their theories of what’s acceptable or not. Today we’re being told all of our foundations are wrong and racist, or sexist, outdated, backwards, etcetera etcetera etcetera. We’ve become unmoored and so people don’t know where to turn or find meaning in their lives, so they’ve either become nihilists or epicureans (constantly chasing pleasures as the key to happiness). And boy does modern society really help if you’re one of those two things. It’s very unhealthy. It’s one of the reasons I turned to Stoicism a while back. Think about it, what morals or virtues do you impart on people if you have none of your own? In the past you had philosophy or religion to build your ethics, morals, and laws around, both of which are increasingly shrinking in global importance. Now we have a cultural crisis where people’s upbringing is either non existent, being abolished, or being overwritten by other people with agendas or through sheer evolution. It’s no wonder you have people looking for an identity by joining gangs, or by following unbridled emotion shooting up a classroom because he was bullied or had unrequited feelings for a girl. It’s one thing to know the laws as they are written on paper, quite another thing to fundamentally believe it’s wrong to murder another human being.

The Santa Fe shooter seemed pretty involved in his church.

[gsoda3 3263]

what's your moral anchor? yourself?  that's the way society is trending.  do you.  be you.  who's to say someone else's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction? 

[MillerEP 30492]

What a total load of horseshit. The idea that morals can't exist in a secular society is about as absurd as it gets.

I don’t necessarily disagree with your last statement, I didn’t mean to imply it can’t exist, I know it can, since it was well before the popular 3 came about. I was trying to say that we’re in a crisis right now, where people are abandoning their old structures and there isn’t a readily available alternative to turn to.

[hayden_horn 11362]

i've heard and read takes about the morals of society, and bemoaning that we have become unmoored. that's, frankly, ignorant. 

video games did not cause this. subversive music did not cause this. beatnik literature did not cause this.

this is an uniquely american problem. 

[gsoda3 3263]

5 minutes ago, Helobious said:

The Santa Fe shooter seemed pretty involved in his church.

the atheist was involved in church?

[MillerEP 30492]

what's your moral anchor? yourself?  that's the way society is trending.  do you.  be you.  who's to say someone else's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction? 

 Mine is, because I’m a practitioner of Stoicism, underpinned by its principles. However, that’s not the case for everyone. Your last question is an important one, and I think that reason and logic can determine that it’s not virtuous within the nature of man to murder other human beings, since it’s not beneficial to cooperation of the species. A religious person underpinned by its morals and values would say it’s not morally right to kill another person for whatever logic they follow, and since they were the majority when our laws and morals were founded, they have the force of law behind them that says it’s not right currently.

What then, does somebody who lacks those underpinnings say?

Well in the case of school shooters they obviously saw it that it was profitable enough to them to go through that venture of murdering over a perceived grievance. What causes that? What do we say to somebody who makes up their own morals and ethics that it is ok to murder? Or what if somebody was brought up within some community with shared morals and were suddenly told those were all wrong and racist and patriarchal, sexist, etc? Where do they turn for a replacement?

I think your first statement is the cause and that it is correct to say that people are increasingly trending that way. What happens when you have a community of 100 people, and no shared morals, ethics, or values? You may end up with 100 different views of what is right and wrong, and some of those will naturally conflict.

 

 

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28791]

On May 21, 2018 at 12:51 AM, freyguy said:

I’m almost there guys, keep it up..

 

That's what your mom said. 

[Helobious 9463]

26 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

the atheist was involved in church?

Yes. 

Quote

Classmates described Pagourtzis as quiet, an avid video game player who routinely wore a black trench coat and black boots to class. He had played football on the school’s junior varsity squad and danced as part of a church group. Those who know him expressed shock he might be involved in the killings.

 

[gsoda3 3263]

2 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Yes. 

 

it was at a church but had nothing to do with the church.  from that article you linked, "TMZ, which obtained the video, said the dance was part of a larger Greek festival in a town about 30 minutes away from Santa Fe, Texas, where he went to school."

[Helobious 9463]

1 hour ago, gsoda3 said:

it was at a church but had nothing to do with the church.  from that article you linked, "TMZ, which obtained the video, said the dance was part of a larger Greek festival in a town about 30 minutes away from Santa Fe, Texas, where he went to school."

He was there with a group from his local greek orthodox church. He may have been an atheist inside, but he clearly was "involved" with his local church and grew up in a religious household. 

[Bullneck 19184]

On 5/18/2018 at 11:27 PM, FondrenRoad said:

Nah. We need more and smaller schools. Way too easy for kids to get lost in the shuffle. 1500 kids at Santa Fe. 3200 in Parkland.  4 30 kid classes per grade. Keep the classes together with the same kids through all core curriculum. Everyone should know everyone at their high school. Suburban schools are far too big and operate way too much like colleges.

Education factories.  Economy of scope and scale.

[HoustonHorn 1062]

What a total load of horseshit. The idea that morals can't exist in a secular society is about as absurd as it gets.

What is the basis for your morals? Serious question.

[Ldogg53 514]

What is the basis for your morals? Serious question.

Why do you feel it necessary to have a basis? Being decent to your fellow humans is enough for me. Try to cause no harm to others.

[HoustonHorn 1062]

I don't think that a moral compass without a basis is really possible. A child who grows up mistreated and abused often mistreats and abuses their own children. They didn't have a good basis for treating others with respect and in fact learned the opposite. There is a reason for that.

Some people rely on family/parenting, some on religion, nature, friends, experiences, some on an internal moral compass, etc. There is an infinite number of factors that form the basis for ones moral compass.

What are those for you? Give a top 5. Just saying I'm a good person doesn't qualify because some factors made your a good person. I'm guessing there will be a variety of responses on this.

[HoustonHorn 1062]

Why do you feel it necessary to have a basis? Being decent to your fellow humans is enough for me. Try to cause no harm to others.

Were you born like that? Luck of the draw, nature, God, good parents, wonderful grandparents, great siblings, morally sounds friends, wonderful teachers, what?

 

We're talking about partially undeveloped (in the case of school shootings) teenagers and how they react to their circumstances. They decide to kill people so I would say they don't have the same "being decent" philosophy you have. So let's figure out why they have a different moral compass than you.

 

To start we need to figure out what makes people decent people with your "being decent" philosophy and then figure out why these kids don't have that same moral compass that you have.

 

[HoustonHorn 1062]

The other thing is that a lot of these guys go into it with the intention of dying or killing themselves. So it isn't only about just being kind to others but also a deep seated depression or hated of themselves that they want to transfer to others which may also be a big part of the equation.

[Modessit 5603]

So, after listening to all the pundits and radio guys (local and national) who keep trying to come up with ideas or commonalities between the mass killers (not just in schools or with guns, i.e. the Austin Bomber) they keep dismissing every idea because one doesn't fit.

 

(Skip to the last paragraph if you want a so-crazy-it-just-might-work solution.)

 

But if you take away religious, political or domestic reasons - such as San Bernardino or Ft. Hood, the Congressional baseball game, or someone going after an ex - the main common denominator is forced or voluntarily isolation from positive human contact. These guys are mostly loners with very few close friends or relatives. Either they choose that lifestyle (like the Vegas guy) or become that way due to peer abuse/ignorance (bullying, not including him in social groups, homeschooling, etc).

 

The proliferation of technology had made it much easier to be isolated and still somewhat interact with the world. You can work, be educated, eat, entertain yourself, etc without seeing another person if you want. If your personal interactions tend to be negative (like getting picked on at school), technology becomes your safe zone to some extent. Even cyberbullying can be avoided by deleting accounts and using aliases.

 

Most of the school shooters have one of 2 things in common - either they were bullied and feel this is how they'll fight back, or they are suffering from some sort of emotional pain inflicted by whomever they are attracted to (either a breakup or a rejection).

 

Left to themselves - and here is where positive parental involvement could have made a difference - they fester internally without an outlet for their frustrations. Escaping into a video game for a couple hours doesn't relieve the pain that they know they will endure tomorrow. Most people can process that pain and eventually move on. It seems a select few cannot - or cannot understand that it's only temporary - and they lash out at the cause of their pain in a way to inflict all that built up pain in one fatal blow.

 

So - what can we do about it?

 

Well, nothing really under the current societal norms. If you try to limit certain weapons they'll just find other ways. You can't force kids to be friends no matter how hard you try. More security will just move the target location.

 

So I propose we do 2 things:

 

1) Ban online socializing until age 21. No Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Texting can only be done to or from an adult over 21. They can use the internet for education or entertainment, but socializing must be done in person. The more they are around other people the more people they will find that like having them around.

 

2) This might be the most important - have free brothels where males age 16-20 can go for free sex. Provide the sex workers (ages 18-35) with free lodging, healthcare (including birth control), food, etc for as long as they stay in service. This will give these guys an outlet for their frustrations without becoming violent. Had a rough day at school? Stop and get a BJ on the way home. Flunked your final? Go fuck some chick in the ass. This would probably do more to give us safe schools than any possible new gun legislation.

 

 

 

[cmontexas 3272]

I think public sympathy and speculation/ discussion on WHY he did it only encourages future potential school shooters to do the same thing, martyrs in their own twisted minds.

There is no WHY that makes this bullshit acceptable. These murderers should be called out for what they are: disgraceful, chickenshit, cowardly monsters.

[gsoda3 3263]

10 hours ago, Helobious said:

He was there with a group from his local greek orthodox church. He may have been an atheist inside, but he clearly was "involved" with his local church and grew up in a religious household. 

did you infer that from the article you posted?  it doesn't say that in there. 

[HoustonHorn 1062]

I think public sympathy and speculation/ discussion on WHY he did it only encourages future potential school shooters to do the same thing, martyrs in their own twisted minds.
There is no WHY that makes this bullshit acceptable. These murderers should be called out for what they are: disgraceful, chickenshit, cowardly monsters.

So problem solved then? Let's just stop talking about it and trying to understand?

[MillerEP 30492]

8 hours ago, Modessit said:

Left to themselves - and here is where positive parental involvement could have made a difference - they fester internally without an outlet for their frustrations. Escaping into a video game for a couple hours doesn't relieve the pain that they know they will endure tomorrow. Most people can process that pain and eventually move on. It seems a select few cannot - or cannot understand that it's only temporary - and they lash out at the cause of their pain in a way to inflict all that built up pain in one fatal blow.

This could be seen as supporting my point that they don't have the moral and ethical foundations to put life in the proper perspective (as imparted by "positive parental involvement?"). If your statement is true (and I'm not saying it isn't), then that also could mean that the "just be decent to others" is not a conclusion that is obvious to everyone, and it not universally accepted without proper guidance (from parents/priests/teachers/community leaders/philosophers/whatever) The fact that we have people who prescribe to theories that pain is to be avoided at all costs and chasing pleasure and filling your life with money, drugs, sex, or just more stuff is the key to happiness, also tends to support that not everybody comes to the same conclusions naturally. If somebody values their own happiness or their own sadness more than they value the dignity of human life, then they could rationalize almost anything.  

Edited May 24, 2018 by MillerEP

[Mo Horn 8852]

Just read the article in the latest Texas Monthly about the Pakistani foreign exchange student that was killed. Very powerful story. 

[South Austin 52521]

On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2019 at 10:01 PM, Mo Horn said:

Just read the article in the latest Texas Monthly about the Pakistani foreign exchange student that was killed. Very powerful story. 

That story -- like so many others in Texas Monthly -- absolutely crushed me.

I've subscribed to Texas Monthly for the better part of my time in Texas since 1994, and I suffer through all of the ads, list of best doctors, and other bullshit, for the constant production of quality articles like this one.

[YChang 3455]

Just read the article in the latest Texas Monthly about the Pakistani foreign exchange student that was killed. Very powerful story. 

Yeah, what an amazing article.