Enemy Mind

As I hope most of you know, there was sadly another mass shooting in America, This time in Roseburg, Oregon. As expected, the conversation about gun control and mental illness is all over our ridiculous news cycle. I can understand the gun part because you know, he had fucking guns. But why do we assume that a person who goes on a murderous rampage is mentally ill?

What is Mental Illness? Well, lets ask Merriam-Webster:

a mental or bodily condition marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, and emotions to seriously impair the normal psychological functioning of the individual

That's a very important definition to me. Looking at the definition, a mental Illness impairs the normal psychological function of the individual, I.E. it causes them to act differently than what they normally do. So if I normally eat people for brunch, if you find me eating someone between the hours of 8 AM and 3 PM on the weekend, I AM NOT CRAZY.

Pictured: Brunch

There are legit mental illnesses, things like Epilepsy, dementia, Tourette syndrome etc, but what do you call the mental illness which causes you to not like black people and willingly plot to kill a church full of them? What do you call the mental illness which makes you want to be cooler than the OK Bomber by shooting up your school? Why do we consider these people mentally ill? "Well we saw some very disturbing things in their personal belongings." Disturbing to who exactly? It's not like Dylann Roof would read his journal and shudder at all of the terrible things he wrote down. HE WAS THE ONE WHO WROTE THAT SHIT.

For the most part, mental illness is the scapegoat when a non-PoC is the perpetrator in these mass shootings. If they are one of the many demonized demographic (Black, Middle Eastern) their action is attributed to their demographic as a whole. But white people are always treated as an individual, albeit a disturbed one. Once again, why are they disturbed? What is it about white people that makes them only capable of destruction if they are "Mentally Ill".

Who would have thought modern psychology would have prevented these fiends?

We really need to stop considering "Person who doesn't think like everyone else" as a mentally ill person. Do you consider a person with a fetish mentally ill? We don't all share the same fetishes. While some fetishes are different from a social contract stand point (pedophilia, necrophilia vs foot fetish, clothing fetish) they are still a fetish: person sees X and they get all tingly inside, You can have a person who is attracted to children but never act on it, but I'm sure there's some weirdo running around sniffing people's feet or has a rotting foot collection somewhere.

There's someone out there right now (read: me) who would already have probably murdered every stupid person in a 10 mile radius if they didn't want to suffer the consequences of that action. Is that person (read: me) mentally ill for thinking that, or are they sane for not acting on it? So if the insane thing is not conforming to social norms and committing a crime, are all criminals mentally ill? Or if wanting to kill someone is a mental illness, is a man getting revenge for the rape of his daughter mentally ill? "I will murder anyone who dares harm my loved one" is as sane as a person could be. If I "lose it" because someone hurt my honey badger, I haven't lost my mind, I lost all regards for the social contract and I will fucking kill anyone I please at that moment.

A real American Hero and non-crazy person

When you claim that a mass shooter does so out of mental illness, you take away all of their accountability and turn the issue into a random act of violence. It's not. None of these people were walking down the street minding their own business when suddenly a bunch of guns dropped out of the sky and the voice of Ares, God of War whispered in their ears "You know what you must do". They procured the guns, they chose their location, and then they started shooting.

People have had mental illness issues way before someone decided a pick up a gun and start shooting people, and unless we do something about it, we will continue to have them. If you want see the people that show our need to have better mental health awareness, look no further than all the bat-shit crazy homeless people running around our major cities. Look at our Veterans who come home and can't sleep comfortably with their loved ones.

Look at this fucking guyE