Struggling to Coe to terms with shooting in plymouth

[Thomasina79]

Not an AIBU I know, I’m sure we all are. This was a misogynistic man who identified as an ‘incel’. I’ve never heard of this phrase, but this man”s attitudes to women are common enough. Ok he hated his mum, not unusual, but no reason to kill her. But why kill the others, especially the child? This is all so sad and shocking and it seems that violence against women is becoming so prevalent again.

Women go through agonising childhoods and mental health problems too. The difference is, when they decide to kill themselves they very seldom (I know there are exceptions) decide to kill other people on their way out. They basically never kill non-dependents, let alone strangers, before taking their own lives. Yet men comparatively frequently feel entitled to kill their whole families, parents, siblings, exes, neighbours, strangers in the street before killing themselves. There’s been research into this. It is a male phenomenon. And in this case and many others clearly driven by hatred of women and a belief that a world where women have free choice in who to shag is a bad one.

@wherethewildthingis

Exactly Fleek I agree with you entirely. They do not need better mental health support. What they need is locking up where they will no longer be a danger to women and children.

Better mental health support would stop them murdering in the first place and stop there being innocent victims.

Your view is incredibly childish and naive.

@ Lockheart I don't think people actually understand how stretched MH services are. I regularly see posts about people waiting or needing MH, the numbers shoot up and keep doing so. Where do we think this help is coming from? There's a shortage of MH beds and professionals to help. It's not as simplistic as someone should have seen him, there needs to be someone available and there are thousands who now feel they are bad enough that they need help. People are leaving the profession because it's so pressured. If anyone has any quick solutions please share them because I would love to see an improvement for the population.

[quote supermoonrising]@FoxgloveSummers
Every nutter to ever fire a gun has an “ideology”. If the sad incel groups weren’t around he’d have wasted his hours on some other shit Internet forum. Don’t glamorise the actions of a sad and pathetic and mentally messed up individual who was acted entirely alone without any financial aid from any organisation etc[/quote]
You’re right he would have been on another forum and if it was around hatred for another group this would be labelled terrorism related. I don’t see that as glamorous at all, do you?!

The fact is the police don’t see domestic violence or hatred against women as “terrorism” because in most cases it’s not centrally organised, despite them creating more actual terror in more of the population than any other form of violence.

You're underestimating the scale of this problem. It's not just a few thousand men - it's estimated as hundreds of thousands worldwide (though mainly in the Anglophone sphere). And it's a rapidly growing movement, which is actively radicalising young men online. I've even started to notice it amongst some of my students in the last few years

Sorry, don’t believe it. Unless you’re creating new definitions whereby equating any man who disagrees with certain claims of radical feminism as being an incel.

I’d love to see a reputable source showing hundreds of thousands of men self identifying as incel. Don’t believe you have one.

@crossstitchingnana

I see him as having been radicalised and therefore this WAS terrorism.

Totally agree. Incels are very dangerous.

Sadly it's another case of the authorities and the police checks going wrong. Having a firearms license revoked then returned to that man was madness especially as social media showed what he was capable of too.
I bet nobody will lose their job over this , but people have lost their lives and for others life will never be the same again. It couldn't be any worse really.
My heart goes out to the innocent victims and those left behind. So so sad.

@eeyore228

@ Lockheart I don't think people actually understand how stretched MH services are. I regularly see posts about people waiting or needing MH, the numbers shoot up and keep doing so. Where do we think this help is coming from? There's a shortage of MH beds and professionals to help. It's not as simplistic as someone should have seen him, there needs to be someone available and there are thousands who now feel they are bad enough that they need help. People are leaving the profession because it's so pressured. If anyone has any quick solutions please share them because I would love to see an improvement for the population.

Absolutely, they are incredibly stretched.

It's not the failing of the MH services, it's the successive governments constantly slashing service budgets which are to blame.

I can't get past the idea that there is a woman out there whose partner and three year old daughter went out for a walk and never came back. She must have been terrified, hearing the news and knowing they were missing.

It's easy to say that he was a monster and the only person to blame. But I work in social services and the cuts to our services and to mental health are making our jobs impossible to do. This may have been prevented if we had the resources to do our jobs properly. But we don't and six people are dead as a result.

@FoxgloveSummers

Domestic violence isn’t terrorism. A significant number of victims of domestic violence are male. Is that also terrorism? I once came home drunk and noisy at 2 in the morning and my partner threw my iPad against the wall in anger. Is she a terrorist? Purposefully Injuring someone is a serious crime. There’s no need to start twisting definitions.

@Lockheart my view is neither childish or naive. It's the result of almost 20 years spent working first with offenders, and later in safeguarding children. I have been directly involved in 100s if not 1000s of cases involving serious violence by men against women and children. I have personally worked directly with men who have killed and they were not mentally unwell.
The drive to excuse and justify these acts - instead of holding the perpetrators responsible-makes me sick. And is actually a factor in why the cycle continues. Unless perpetrators know they will be vilified and appropriately punished, unless society actually values women and girls enough to say "no, we aren't going to make excuses for this any longer" - perpetrators have no reason to change.

@supermoonrising

You're underestimating the scale of this problem. It's not just a few thousand men - it's estimated as hundreds of thousands worldwide (though mainly in the Anglophone sphere). And it's a rapidly growing movement, which is actively radicalising young men online. I've even started to notice it amongst some of my students in the last few years

Sorry, don’t believe it. Unless you’re creating new definitions whereby equating any man who disagrees with certain claims of radical feminism as being an incel.

I’d love to see a reputable source showing hundreds of thousands of men self identifying as incel. Don’t believe you have one.

Estimated at 100,000

www.adl.org/blog/online-poll-results-provide-new-insights-into-incel-community

They have been responsible for more mass murders than any other group in recent years.

@supermoonrising

If we had adequate mental health care and resources in the UK, maybe his mother could have got him the help he needed long before he got to this point

You’ll never stop EVERY angry crazy disaffected individual from criminal acts. But you’re right, this is the way to reduce the number of them. Talk of Incel (a few thousand pathetic lonely men whinging online) as a “ terrorist group” is just unhelpful sensationalism. The solution is boring as fuck - persuade the public that better services are necessary and get rid of Tories and vote in a government that is willing to invest more public money in mental health and social care.

I don’t agree and I think it’s unhelpful to minimise an ideology and communities that have been recognised as harmful for a number of years. I don’t deny that mental health issues are also likely at play with reference to the Plymouth shootings but radicalisation and mental health problems coexist and are separate issues.

This Wikipedia article is well referenced and researched. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel and gives a good overview of the complexities and history of this subculture. It’s a cult.

it's the successive governments constantly slashing service budgets which are to blame.

Elephant in the room. But as long as the Tories satisfy their 20% base, the rest of the country and society at large can go to hell. And I’m not saying Labour is blameless, but there’s only one party which is ideologically driven to slowly slowly cut cut cut every single free at point of access government funded public service to the bone and it isn’t Labour.

@Cornettoninja
but radicalisation and mental health problems coexist and are separate issues

Clearly not in this criminal case or thousands of others.

[quote wherethewildthingis]@Lockheart my view is neither childish or naive. It's the result of almost 20 years spent working first with offenders, and later in safeguarding children. I have been directly involved in 100s if not 1000s of cases involving serious violence by men against women and children. I have personally worked directly with men who have killed and they were not mentally unwell.
The drive to excuse and justify these acts - instead of holding the perpetrators responsible-makes me sick. And is actually a factor in why the cycle continues. Unless perpetrators know they will be vilified and appropriately punished, unless society actually values women and girls enough to say "no, we aren't going to make excuses for this any longer" - perpetrators have no reason to change.[/quote]
We can't hold this one responsible, he's dead.

We can either:

• try to learn from it, identify that there is an issue with young males on these forums, and provide them with proper support not only so that they can go and live happy and healthy lives but also to prevent similar incidents in future, or;

• we just "lock them up" as you say, entirely ignoring the fact that we can't actually lock them up until they have committed a crime - childish and naive, like I said - and the damage is done.

I'd rather there was no damage done and we provide them with proper support early so that everyone is happy and no-one gets hurt. Clearly you'd rather have a punitive system which waits for innocent people to get hurt first just so you can "lock them up".

Childish, naive, and shortsighted.

Our government is recognising the threat of the Incel movement so I’m not sure why posters here are trying to largely deny it. Read this: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/963156/CCE_Operating_with_Impunity_Accessible.pdf

As for how many - before Reddit pulled the plug on the r/incel there was 40,000 members on that board. And that is only one site. Believe it or not - there’s a lot more out there than you think.

"Anger management" is a pernicious concept. Let's look at the source of the overweening sense of entitlement that triggers the disappointment and breeds the anger, not try to manage the irrational anger after it's been created.

If boys and young men could just fully realise that girls and women are real people like them, we'd be more than halfway there.

@supermoonrising you're coming across as slightly ignorant. Did you read about the incel murders in China recently? Canada? The murders in the yoga studio? This is a widely known global issue and it's getting worse.

“I think there comes a time when we have to stop trying to understand these men”

If that time comes, we will be in a complete mess. We must try to understand, not matter how hard that is, so that we can attempt to prevent similar tragedies.

*No sane person guns down their mother and several strangers.

Doesn't matter if you're an Islamic terrorist or an incel. None of these people are healthy.*

Absolutely this.

There are SO many reasons that children are either growing up with mental health issues or they are surfacing in adulthood.

Many children grow up feeling unloved, unwanted, alone, perhaps the child of a parent with unmet mental health needs, victims of bullying, undiagnosed autism, adhd, other SEN, extreme anxiety, health issues, the list goes on and on.

A very high proportion of prisoners have previously undiagnosed ADHD.

I am not in any way excusing this devastating attack, but I think if society focused more on the reasons that people get to this point then many of these atrocities could be avoided.

@Balonzette please do not excuse a murderer’s actions because he was “mentally ill” and “vulnerable” to extreme anti-women views. He did not just kill women. He killed 2 men and a child too. He killed because he wanted to kill.

' lessons will be learnt'
It Seems they never are though.

@AlternativePerspective

He was a psycho.

I have no idea about this movement he was apparently part of, but it’s worth remembering that he didn’t only kill females.

Whatever he was a part of, he made this decision for himself, not for others, and the only positive thing to come out of it is that he’s dead.

This. Mindless killing like Hungerford and Dunblane.

@jasminoide

I'm so bloody infuriated that people/the media are trying to "understand" his motivations, him being labelled as "lonely" etc. If he was brown he'd simply be called a terrorist, which he is in my book.

I quite agree. If he was a Muslim, people wouldn't be umming and ahhing about whether he's a terrorist because he had no specific funding from an organisation. He was radicalised online, he was an ideological extremist.