Multiple casualties reported in San Jose shooting

[Shadow Wolf]

Many mass shooters are/were either severely mentally ill (many were extremely psychotic, depressed or some mixture of both) or have severe personality disorders (narcissism to full-blown psychopathy).

The Columbine killers are an example of this. Harris was a full-blown psychopath full of charisma and charm who lied to everyone while producing some of the most narcissistic, hateful screeds you can imagine in his private journals where he gloats about lying to everyone and believing he has the right to do what he wants to anyone, including kill most of the human race. Klebold was a suicidal depressive who planned to kill himself, anyway. He appeared to be a "sensitive sort" who fell apart over time. (All the weapons used in that attack were illegally aquired and/or modified, too. Not to mention the homemade bombs and other explosives that they intended to kill hundreds with.)

Peter Langman is an expert on school shootings, but his work goes beyond just them. His psychological profiles of them (he's a psychologist) are very illuminating:
School Shooters .info | Resources on school shootings, perpetrators, and prevention

But, no - being a murderer doesn't mean that you are necessarily mentally ill or that mentally ill people are a disproportionate danger to others.

Another factor to consider, is that many of these shootings are actually a form of grandiose suicides. They wish to vent their rage at the world. "I'm going to die and take as many with me as I can!" is that mentality. Multiple of these shooters were failed by society and fell through the cracks as their mental state demonstrably deteriorated over a number of years (such as Lanza, Cho, Holmes and others). Others had really awful life histories full of severe trauma, such as teenage Jeff Weise, and they get sucked into a gradually intensifying abyss of despair, anger and hatred. Those types could've and should've been helped as there were many warning signs that things were going very wrong with them.

(This is also very much a male thing. Female mass shooters are almost unheard of. It tends to require a certain fascination with violence and destruction that females aren't generally known to have.)

So mental health does need to be part of the discussion, but in a more nuanced and informative way, not in a "crazies with guns" way. This is really a symptom of social breakdown. Something is wrong with this society that it is producing such violent, nihilistic individuals, and in such numbers. (There's many who feel the same way but either never commit the act or are caught before they can.)

I don't disagree with that. It is, as I suspect you picked up, this constant throwing out mental illness every time there is gun violence in the news, especially when in the larger picture much gun violence doesn't fit the description. It's really nothing more than a fantasy so people pretend the issue with gun violence is as simple as keeping guns out of the hands of a group who largely and mostly aren't perpetuating violence.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I don't disagree with that. It is, as I suspect you picked up, this constant throwing out mental illness every time there is gun violence in the news, especially when in the larger picture much gun violence doesn't fit the description. It's really nothing more than a fantasy so people pretend the issue with gun violence is as simple as keeping guns out of the hands of a group who largely and mostly aren't perpetuating violence.

Definitely. Even those murderers are very extreme examples of those personality types and disorders. It's the same with serial killers. They aren't representative of people with those disorders.

 

[McBell]

What substantive solution do you offer in order to prevent most mass shootings?

I have said for years that actually enforcing the current gun laws would be a most excellent place to start:

In both cases, the violations were serious enough to warrant stripping Uncle Sam’s of its license to sell guns, according to ATF records. But agency officials decided to spare the shop, issue an official warning to its owners and give them another chance to prove they could follow the rules.

As the investigator leafed through handwritten ledgers in the spring of 2014, she discovered that things had hardly improved. Sales records were incomplete, the store failed to report required information to law enforcement, and safety notices still weren’t going out. The inspector typed out her findings and sent them to her superiors.

Their decision: Issue yet another warning.

Months later, the ATF learned that Uncle Sam’s was the backbone of a sprawling gun trafficking scheme. Witnesses told the agency that Steven Adkins, a longtime shop employee who’d purchased a stake in the business, had enlisted a host of people, including a colleague’s girlfriend and his brother-in-law, to falsify paperwork so it would appear they had purchased guns in legitimate transactions, according to court records. In reality, the guns were used to bribe coal officials in a pay-to-play scheme at a local mine. Others were sold on the black market, witnesses said.

...

In one of the most sweeping examinations of ATF inspection records, The Trace and USA TODAY found that the federal agency in charge of policing the gun industry has been largely toothless and conciliatory, bending over backward to go easy on wayward dealers such as Uncle Sam’s – and sometimes allowing guns to flow into the hands of criminals.

...

A Florida gun dealer got in trouble for giving a Taurus handgun to a convicted felon in the parking lot, and an Arkansas pawnshop was cited for selling a firearm to a customer even though he’d failed the background check because of an active restraining order. In Ohio, one store transferred guns without conducting background checks 112 times; another was missing some 600 firearms. A Pennsylvania gun retailer racked up 45 violations and received eight warnings from the ATF. But the store was allowed to remain in business, and it went on to sell a shotgun to a man who used it to kill four family members, including his 7-year-old half-brother.
​

Gun dealers let off hook when ATF inspections find violations
​

Fair warning, the article linked above is LONG.

 

[Stevicus]

Sheriff Says The Rail Yard Shooting Suspect Stockpiled Guns And Ammo At His Home : NPR

SAN FRANCISCO — The gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a California rail yard had stockpiled weapons and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at his house before setting it on fire to coincide with the bloodshed at the workplace he seethed about for years, authorities said Friday.

Investigators found 12 guns, multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails at Samuel James Cassidy's house, the Santa Clara County sheriff's office said in a news release.

The cache at the home the 57-year-old torched with a slow-burn device was on top of the three 9 mm handguns he brought Wednesday to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, authorities said. He also had 32 high-capacity magazines, some with 12 rounds, and fired 39 shots.

The guns he used to kill his co-workers appear to be legal, officials said. They have not said how he obtained them. Officials did not specify what type of guns they found at his home.

The house was so cluttered with flammable materials that it slowed the investigation, San Jose police Officer Steve Aponte said. Crews finished combing through it Friday to make sure it was safe before opening the cul-de-sac back to neighbors. A suspicious package that investigators found in the attic turned out to be harmless inert batteries and wiring, he said.

Cassidy killed himself as sheriff's deputies rushed into the transit rail yard in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he shot and killed nine men ranging in age from 29 to 63.

What set off Cassidy was still being investigated, Aponte said.

While witnesses and Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith have said Cassidy appeared to target certain people, the sheriff's office said Friday that "it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could."

Taptejdeep Singh, the 36-year-old father of a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter, was on an early shift as a light rail operator when the shooting began. He called another transit employee to warn him, saying he needed to get out or hide.

"From what I've heard, he spent the last moments of his life making sure that others — in the building and elsewhere — would be able to stay safe," co-worker Sukhvir Singh, who is not related to Taptejdeep Singh, said in a statement.

Singh's brother-in-law, P.J. Bath, said he was told Singh was killed after encountering the gunman in a stairwell.

"He just happened to be in the way, I guess," Bath said.

Kirk Bertolet, 64, was just starting his shift when shots rang out, then he heard the screams. He and his co-workers threw a table in front of their door, and Bertolet called the control center.

Then there was silence.

Cautiously, Bertolet left the barricaded office, hoping he could offer first aid. He couldn't. He saw some of his co-workers take their last breaths.

Bertolet, a signal maintenance worker who worked in a separate unit from Cassidy, said he is convinced Cassidy targeted his victims, because he didn't hurt some people he encountered.

"He was pissed off at certain people. He was angry, and he took his vengeance out on very specific people. He shot people. He let others live," he said.

Cassidy's ex-wife said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago. Cecilia Nelms told The Associated Press that he used to come home from work resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments.

He also spoke of hating his workplace when customs officers detained him after a 2016 trip to the Philippines, a Biden administration official told the AP.

A Department of Homeland Security memo said Cassidy also had notes on how he hated the Valley Transportation Authority, according to the official. The official saw the memo and detailed its contents to the AP but was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the memo.

It doesn't say why he was stopped by customs officers. It said he had books about "terrorism and fear and manifestos" but when he was asked whether he had issues with people at work, he said no. The memo notes that Cassidy had a "minor criminal history," citing a 1983 arrest in San Jose and charges of "misdemeanor obstruction/resisting a peace officer."

San Jose police said in a statement through Mayor Sam Liccardo's office that they sought an FBI history on Cassidy and found no record of federal arrests or convictions.

"Whatever this detention at the border was, it did not result in an arrest that showed up on his FBI criminal history, and it was not reported to SJPD," the statement said.

Neighbors, acquaintances and an ex-girlfriend described him as a loner, unfriendly and prone at times to fits of anger.

Cassidy was hired in 2001, according to the transit authority. Bertolet said Cassidy worked regularly with the victims but he always seemed to be an outsider and perhaps couldn't take the rough humor of colleagues.

"He was never in the group. He was never accepted by anybody there. He was always that guy that was never partaking in anything that the people were doing," Bertolet said.