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.

@godmum56 because it's painfully obvious. You've come into a thread about a self confessed misogynist who went on a shooting spree and your only concern is that men aren't tarred with the same brush and that women could possibly do it too one day

@Blossomtoes

I thought my point was pretty obvious sorry not sorry you didn't quite understand it

Not only was it not obvious, it was wrong. Whereas mine passed right over your head.

So you know for a fact that if Begum had been a white woman she wouldn't have been brought home.

You do Understand these things are solely at the discretion of the Home Secretary don't you?

@Balonzette

Agree with your post.

Dd has a MH condition. Luckily not too serious yet. I'm having to go private as it's a two year wait and then pot lock as too who we might get treated by.

It's not good enough

This SHOULD be a massive wake up call but sadly it won't be. 😢

@wherethewildthingis

Let's not latch onto the potential for mental health issues being a reason for this. That is not known, its just speculation at this point from a neighbour. In any case these "mentally unwell" violent males who take lives in this way never lose control and attack a group of large, burly men who can fight back, do they? No. They go for women and children. Or they also use a gun, like this one did, to make sure those they kill cannot defend themselves. It's internalised mysoginism that makes us leap to "he must have been unwell". No-we need to recognise that these types of men are actually common and they do what they do because they choose to. No other reason

This. Some people do stuff which is bad because they are bad, not because they are mentally ill. People with mental health problems are more likely to be harmed than harm others. It is normal for people to want explanations for terrible events - but putting it down as mental health is a cop out. There are people I see as a mental health professional who I cannot help because the problem is not their mental health - it is that they cannot accept that they cant do exactly what they want and that the world will not give them exactly what they want when they want it.

@Dontwatchfootball yes I agree. People really need to square it with themselves the some other people are just bad people. What a disservice to people with MH to badge every shitty human being with that status.

There are people I see as a mental health professional who I cannot help because the problem is not their mental health - it is that they cannot accept that they cant do exactly what they want and that the world will not give them exactly what they want when they want it

This is the point I’ve been trying to make but you’ve summed it up pretty succinctly.

@Cornettoninja

There are people I see as a mental health professional who I cannot help because the problem is not their mental health - it is that they cannot accept that they cant do exactly what they want and that the world will not give them exactly what they want when they want it

This is the point I’ve been trying to make but you’ve summed it up pretty succinctly.

This should be printed on a t-shirt or something for anyone who thinks "well just get them MH help" is the magical one-fits-all solution.

I do know the value of good MH support but I also know it's not for everyone

It's really upset me too. Because it wasn't domestic, gang related, personal... It could happen on any quiet cul-de-sac, taking your little one to the park. Who knows how many young men are sitting in houses around us being brainwashed and filled with hate.

At the end of the day we do not know all of the reasons behind this. Normal people do not just go around shooting people. Something may of happened in his life for him to do this. The human mind is very complex. What makes people snap? What makes them think I'm going to kill myself or I am going to kill others? What I do know is you would not give a gun to someone who is mentally ill or depressed.

@KatherineOfGaunt

I was really upset when I found out a 3-year-old had been killed. I know that sounds OTT, but my DS is nearly 3 and it just made it feel so close to my heart. I can't imagine what her mum is going through, with her dad shot as well.

Something needs to change. Whenever I think women are making advancements in equality I come across examples like this and new groups "incels" that are so against women.

It's really upset me too. She was outside pushing her pram . Imagine her poor mother. It doesn't bare thinking about

@Meltinthemiddle

At the end of the day we do not know all of the reasons behind this. Normal people do not just go around shooting people. Something may of happened in his life for him to do this. The human mind is very complex. What makes people snap? What makes them think I'm going to kill myself or I am going to kill others? What I do know is you would not give a gun to someone who is mentally ill or depressed.

We know most of them, this guy spilled his guts on the internet multiple times a day. He’s hardly keeping his hatred of women and revolting ideology a bloody secret…

@Fleek

'He seems like a really sad young man who desperately needed mental health support and treatment'

A really sad young man? He has murdered 5 people. There are so many sad, lonely people who are in need of mental health support who will never harm anyone.

I think there comes a time when we have to stop trying to understand these men and frame the discussion around the help he might have needed.

No, he was a violent male. We have a significant problem with men who feel entitled to go around harming others, abusing people, raping women, committing crimes. They are seemingly everywhere. They do not need better mental health support.

@Fleek Here here. It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it. I’m sure lots of people on here have felt sad and lonely, our life’s have been shit at times and things haven’t worked out as we planned. But have you gone out killing other people? I’m fed up with hearing we need better MH facilities, I don’t think they would have made an iota of difference.

Define ‘normal’ @Meltinthemiddle.

‘Normal’ people do terrible things all the time. History is full of them. ‘Normal’ people have varying degrees of mental health issues and/or personality traits and wouldn’t dream of taking violent action.

The scariest people in our society are often the some of the most ‘normal’.

Have a look at the #Alan trending on Twitter. This is the sort of crazy crap we are up against.

I think the problem is that the incel movement hasn’t been taken seriously.

You have a young person who feels that they are weird and wrong. Like they don’t fit in. They don’t fit the social norms.
In the past they would have either changed as they matured and found their place or always been that slightly odd person that you know.
The problem is that now they go online and find groups of people that tell them that they aren’t weird or odd. That the whole of society that is wrong , not them.
For the first time they find companionship and belonging.
Remember this man was 22, he hadn’t just joined these groups last week. It’s not like this had only been a month. He’d certainly felt this way since school.
He was radicalised by this group. These people told him that the way he felt was acceptable and that doing what he did was the best answer.

It is no different to someone who is a follower of a religion/political group going online and finding people who reinforce the way they feel, encouraging them to take the next step.
They feel they don’t fit, no one understands. Then they find a group online who listens to them.

The incel movement is as serious as extremist religious or political views, as can be seen through what this man did.
It should be taken as seriously.

We have seen cases where people have posted much less ‘controversial’ views and have had a knock on the door from the police. Yet you can have groups like this encouraging and inciting violence which no one seems to have noticed.

Well yes what is normal. I don't know and I can't understand it. But was he born this way or did something happen to make him this way? Could it have been prevented? We do need to understand this behaviour to try and prevent it from happening again. I don't want to blame the police or NHS as ultimately the person who commited the crime is responsible. But he should never have been given a gun licence and gun and that definitely needs investigating. Some people are just born evil I guess.

@Meltinthemiddle 'What I do know is you would not give a gun to someone who is mentally ill or depressed' - no, because they will probably kill themselves. Not because they are likely to kill others. That is a different thing entirely.

Agree with you @Fleek

You do Understand these things are solely at the discretion of the Home Secretary don't you?

Yes, which is kind of my entire point.

@Meltinthemiddle

Agree without any hope or a path anyone can become vulnerable to these groups. A place where they are understood, listened to and accepted.

The internet companies can very easily pick i looked at a sofa and bombard me with adverts from DFS but if i join extreme right wing misogynistic groups, they powerless to do anything about that????

Men murder 2 women a week in the UK, in a domestic setting, been going on for years.... absolutely nothing is being done about it.

So what society has told men is its ok to abuse and kill women, indeed its normalised -so jeez you can even get away with killing your partner by saying it was rough sex that went wrong and accidently strangled her FFS :(

I think male violence and the violent misogynistic porn that younger men take to be normal sexual encounters are a big part of the growing incel movement.
And the fact that we can’t name misogyny as a hate crime, which it clearly is.
This added to the institutionalised racism in our media (poor, lonely sad man etc) all contributes to these angry entitled white men resorting to killing sprees.
I don’t feel in the least bit sorry for that man, it’s his victims and his family we should be thinking about

I suspect that I am in a minority, but if he had a learning disability (ASD?) , or a personality disorder or undiagnosed psychiatric condition, then he has been let down. Yes, what he did was horrendous, my heart goes out to the deceased and their families. I admit quite freely that I cried when I saw that a 3-year-old had been killed. But I also feel that something catastrophic has happened to the perpetrator in his life; we don't KNOW what that might be, but I hope that over time there are some answers.
If he does have a learning disability, and he does, by some reports, seem to have attended a special school when young, then that might give some clues.
I can only tell you about my son, who has an ASD. He was badly bullied at school, and despite what he told the teachers, he was labelled the perpetrator of the bullying. He would sit all day with people doing awful things to him and when he lashed out he was punished. it seems that because the bullies were female or from an ethnic minority, they were deemed to be incapable of being bullies. Eventually, a well respected teacher saw the whole of an episode of bullying, and that stopped the bullies in their tracks. He was then seen, quite rightly, as the victim, but oh my god, did it take a long time! As a consequence of this my DS has been left with severe anxiety, I have spent the last 2 years trying to get some help, we were just getting somewhere when the pandemic hit, so we are back to square one. And I won't even start on the knock-on effects to the rest of the family. It seems almost impossible to get any serious help, waiting lists are just ridiculous and from where I am standing mental health services have always been a Cinderella service. When people with learning disabilities leave education, it seems that too often they are abandoned. No-one wants to know.

Why am I saying this? Because we don't know what was happening; we don't know if the shooter has himself suffered. We don't know if he had some psychotic episode, we don't know if he just wanted to end his life and go out with some infamy. We don't know if he was evil or ill. Of course, he shouldn't go out and kill 2 men,2 women and a toddler. I am not defending his actions, but perhaps we should understand that there many people who don't fit into the model of society that we have, and they don't get any help either.
I know all of this is a long, probably incoherent ramble. It's clearly my own frustration coming out, but I do think I might have a bit of insight into why some people just snap. Instead of condemning him, I want to await some answers from the professionals who should have dealt with him.

^I don’t understand why people can’t see what’s staring them in the face.

MALE VIOLENCE.

Mental health or lack thereof plays a part but women don’t go on killing sprees; we don’t terrorise, injure and kill our partners at horrifying rates; I can think of one family annihilation case in the US where a lesbian couple killed themselves and all their children but generally women are not family annihilators.

There are so many women on MN who have or are suffering DV, it’s truly shocking.

Male violence is the problem. Men need to start taking responsibility for it at every level - in the pub, in schools, online, at work, in the police, in government.^

What about this feller. Does he need to take 'more responsibility' for Jake Davison's behaviour? He was killed shielding his adopted daughter (apologies for the Sun link): www.thesun.co.uk/news/15865238/brave-lee-martyn-died-shielding-daughter-jake-davison-plymouth/

I know I'll be accused of NAMALTing. But can we please remember that two of Davison's victims were male, and one of them died a hero. The victims will have male relatives who are grieving. They had done nothing to deserve this.

Male violence is a problem but the vast majority of men are no more or less perfect than you and I, and have little or no individual capacity to stop someone going postal like this. Most men will be shocked and horrified, the same as you. A Man Bad-based rant disrespects the male victims, and moves us nowhere forward.

But why do males commit more violent crimes then females? Why are they statistically more likely to commit suicide then women? I work with really young children aged 2 upwards and most of the behaviour we see is from boys. The anger and aggression. The lashing out rather then communicating. I see teenage boys behave the same, where girls can vocalise their feelings more.