Reframing the Southport killings as being about knife availability

[Macrodatarefiner]

AIBU to think that's the least of it?

I can't stop thinking about it, it's so horrific. The poor families and neighbours and everyone involved or touched by this. Hearing it said that its somehow Amazon's fault sounds completely absurd to me. He produced ricin for goodness sake, if he didn't get the knife from Amazon it would have been somewhere else. This incident should (and will I believe) change history. And it has NOTHING to do with where or how he got hold of a knife.

And the Judge made it quite clear the autism had nothing to do with it.

Oh and questions around the internet and content available.

Questions around young people not in school and on the internet all day without the balance of social interactions

…..but no ban selling knives online because that is easier than the above and less awkward

It is. I saw some Lord who oversees anti terrorism get ripped apart on some horrible news channel. It was totally out of his control.

I'd love to see the minutes of the Prevent meetings wherein the referral was discussed. I will eat my hat if there was no reference to mental health support services - no reference to the worrying behaviour beyond being radicalised ( if he even was) and being a terrorist. No reference to the need for some sort of Mental health or psychiatric services to assess him!

Do you know that parents who have children diagnosis Autistic are often turned away by CAMHS because being Autistic is not a mental health condition. This comes up continually on threads here.

There are no easy answers. This is not even CAMHS fault. It's the drip drip destruction of public service provision like CAMHS Via Government. Tories have really been instrumental in this over recent years. Can labour fix it? Doubt it.

Let's talk about Amazon and knives. Oh bugger off Starmer.

Please prove that assertion. "Cases" are not statistics or evidence. If I linked to every violent crime committed by someone who isn't ND then we would be here all week reading them. And that would be just this months list. You are being discriminatory.

I am not here to personally attack anyone. I am merely stating that kids who fall through the cracks in the system, often with ND issues, are being failed by the system. At the same time we are enabling them to access content that can be used to radicalise them.

If you want to gloss over the fact some kids need help in these situations and make it all about you and other ND who are coping, feel free.

Again - please PROVE your assertions with evidence.

By the way - I am not ND and have no ND family. You are again making assumptions based on no evidence.

And that was not remotely what you said - that is evidenced because we can all read what you said.

I am not making it about me but I am going to defend against comments that unfairly focus on ND in the aftermath of that horrific attack. As I stated earlier, you have made this about ND kids out of school but all kids have access to the internet and therefore all kids are vulnerable to the disturbing matierial on there.

Oh OK, because you insist. EVERY ND CHILD IS FINE AND THE SYSTEM IS FULLY SUPPORTIVE OF ALL OF THEIR NEEDS.
Feel better?

No. Please prove the assertions you made about ND people. Nobody said "the system is fine or supportive of all their needs". You said that autistic children were a risk and I am asking you to prove that with evidence. You said it multiple times. So you must have evidence.

Or an apology will do.

I agree we have to be careful because we haven't got accurate statistics at all.

There are things about him being Autistic and possible co morbids that feed into this imo. And it's just an opinion. Please don't think I'm defending or want him free.

He was severely bullied apparently so was at risk of isolation ( being Autistic would no doubt be the reason for being bullied). He was at risk of falling into extreme ideology/ thinking. I believe being Autistic played a part. He was completely isolated because of all this and fell into internet obsession.

I believe he absolutely has a personality disordered state such as psychopathy that I know can't be assessed for under 18 so would not be relevant potentially. People can't easily do what he did and behave that way.

There's no adequate support for personality disordered states, especially if under 18 because you can't be diagnosed as such under 18. All you can have is ' conduct disorder ' which feels meaningless.

Yes I know the Court had nothing to say but I don't buy it. I accept that he needed to be put away forever. I agree. Presenting no mitigating factors makes sure he goes away for the longest time. Everyone knows the resultant outcry if he did not get the harshest sentence.

Ignoring other issues impacting him is damaging to the Autistic community. I think it needs to be discussed. There is no help for parents reaching out.

There was a time nearly every schoolboy in Britain carried a penknife, yet there were very few people getting stabbed with them.

I hope the public inquiry deals with the failures by the state in this and the home life. It is almost impossible to imagine that his upbringing did not have an impact on who he became.

@Moonmelodies excellent point!

So the fact he was under 18 meant that he wasn't even assessed for any severe mental disorders?

I think autistic people are definitely at risk of being groomed/radicalised online and in real life too, they are vulnerable and as such should be guided by their parents and school etc.
BUT there was no evidence AR was being groomed by anyone is there ? Didn't he act alone and the police have said this is not terror related ?
Therefore I don't think being ND applies with him. I think he has some serious issues, but I don't think he was groomed.

Precisely.

You have a generation of kids growing up in a moral vacuum. There's very little community left. They don't feel connected to other people. They are barely parented. School, police, health services etc are simply firefighting. They are eating, drinking and otherwise imbibing absolute shit. Nothing seems to matter except acquiring stuff, by any means. All around them they see the shittiest most degraded behaviour. All their worst traits are easily brought to the fore.

And then the internet is there with a few clicks giving them access to an absolute cesspit. They are total nihilists who don't fear anything.

How is this going to get better?

Edit - obviously not all young people are growing up in these circumstances. But enough of them are to create an enormous problem for the rest of us.

Hmmmm.
Autistic and bullied. How many girls and boys can we categorise in this way? And yet....

This boy was evil and did evil things and I absolutely think he chose his victims because they were little girls. Sure he looked at a massive range of evil material online. Doesn't mean it wasn't a misogynist attack though.

It's been reframed. Boys have carried pen knives for generations. Indeed when my son turned 8 we gave him one for Xmas. He was delighted. Yet hasn't hurt so much as a fly with it. He's now 29 and married ans writes poetry.

Please stop simplifying every valid point. I agreed with all the other points about misogyny, whatever is going on online right now are also really important imo. I don't think every Autistic kid is a killer. I think a multitude of issues are very relevant. That to me is relevant. It is not Autistic=killer.

The definition of mental disorder is something I'm going to go read up on.

If someone displays psychopathic tendencies under 18, what is that? I understand it can be called conduct disorder and that's it. I'll go fact check that. Is conduct disorder a mental health disorder? I think it would not be classed as such tbh. So what do you do? I have no idea.

I've read Starmer's statement and I can't see anywhere about this being a problem with knives bought from Amazon. He talks about the failings of Prevent, of the new type of 'terrorism' which lacks ideology that might need a new approach to tackle. He talks about the proliferation of material that these 'loners, misfits and young men in their bedroom' can access.

Why do you think this won't be tackled properly?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-statement-on-the-southport-public-inquiry-21-january-2025

@Tittat50 - the issue is that saying a child is a psychopath or similar is effectively a permanent diagnosis. Once someone is an adult, then a personality is established. But children change so much as they grow. Particularly during adolescence.

I think the really alarming thing in this case is the degree he was acting independently. He bought knives, bought weapons, and had unfettered access to the internet. None of that had to happen. The last one in particular. What guidance his parents had I l don't know. But unfortunately he is one of a number of offenders who are autistic who become gripped by violence that they can see online. That does not mean his autism cased his crime, but it looks to have increased the risks already there.

This was also a factor in the Plymouth shootings.

They still can.

It's pretty hard to murder someone with a penknife though, let alone perpetrate a mass stabbing incident.

@bombastix yes really good points, I agree.

There are obvious things we are thinking, e.g how did you not notice the weapons, the Ricin in his room. Why did dad not physically drag him out the taxi that first time he called him out to come home.

There's too much to try understand here really.

@EmmaMaria I agree with your points on autistic children / people

Has any politician, even one, mentioned the impact of unrestricted, unregulated availability of violent images on the internet?

Just imagine for one moment there was a fifth tv channel in the 1980s showing a never ending stream of the worst violence you can imagine (or not imagine) with guidance on how to attack, how to make deadly substances etc. That’s what we have now.

I know the tech oligarchs think they run the world but we don’t have to agree with them.