Preventing Mass Shooters (With Software)
“The fact that the lone gunman, Ali Sonboly, who took at least 10 lives in Munich was, at least nominally, a Muslim, and that he committed an act of terror did not make this an act of Islamist terrorism.”
True, it was an act of terror carried out by a Muslim, as are 99% of all acts of terror throughout the world but, some acts of terror aren’t about religion and, might be easier to predict by looking at other factors.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Robert Steinhauser, Eric Auvinen, Robert Hawkins, Seung-Hui Cho, Tim Kretschmer, Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Nehemiah Griego, Elliot Rodger, Christopher Harper-Mercer, and Gavin Long; all mass murderers, none Muslims, in fact, all anti religious, particularly, anti Christian; several of them selected Christians for death and allowed others to live. In total they killed 162 people, besides in some cases, themselves.
Some of them lived in countries with extremely tight gun controls, some lived in countries with loose controls. Some were from broken homes, some had great parents. Some were good students, some were failing, some were white, some weren’t.
Were they all just expressing their Kristen Stewart Twilight universal young adult angst or, if we cared to, could we learn something from the one thing they all, every one, one-hundred percent, had in common? They were all young men who shunned society and whom society shunned and who—
— all spent most of their spare time playing violent video games.
Yes, it’s true, even though they had almost nothing else in common, race, education, income, geography, nationality, language, size or shape, the one thing all these mass shooters had in common is: they were all devotees of violent first person shooter video games.
They all spent hours each day killing imaginary people with imaginary weapons.
An update to this piece: 19 year old Allen Ivanov, who shot to death 3 former classmates in Washington last week was an avid Halo player and a developer of Skirmos, a laser first person shooter game. His tweets several days before the shootings alarmed several of his friends, who asked his parents to take away his new AR556.
Imaginary weapons aren’t illegal and killing imaginary people isn’t murder but, were they all predestined to be mass shooters or, was there something about their video gaming that changed them? Was there something we could have done to stop them before they killed large numbers of people?
No, not that, but, how about monitoring them via their games? Is there something their games could monitor that might tell us when a gamer is about to go over the edge? Could we use the game to monitor not just their gaming but, using trojans in the game software, scan their social media pages for keywords and key phrases and, when they occur, alert the gamer’s psychologist (the shooters were almost all seeing psychologists) and law enforcement — before it’s too late.
If you’re a violent video gamer and still reading, thanks. Maybe you can tell us — is it the game or is it the gamer or, is it the nexus of the two? Are there some people who shouldn’t play these games and, if so, how can we tell?
All of these teen (and young adult) mass killers left tracks on social media and with their personal or school psychologists and, after the fact, all were thought by their peers capable of going over the edge but, few said anything until the shooter’d already gone over the edge.
Gavin Long’s friends described him as a legendary, unbeatable first person shooter video game fanatic who wrote books advocating violence and left social media messages about violent revolution, right up until the day he killed 3 cops in Baton Rouge.
If we’d been looking, could we have seen that coming? A first person shooter fanatic who wrote books and social media posts advocating violence — we wouldn’t have caught that if we’d been watching? Really?
They were all seen as awkward social weirdos yet, of the millions of awkward social weirdos, only a tiny fraction of a percent go astray — the ones who play violent video games and — only a tiny fraction of violent video gamers go astray — the ones who shun society.
All these mass shooters fell within the nexus of violent video games and social awkwardness.
Is it possible to monitor this nexus, build something into video games via their licensing software that monitors user’s psychological profiles and social media posts to warn us something is going wrong with the player, before he kills?
Should World of War and Grand Theft Auto tap into players’ Facebook and Twitter accounts to see whether they are about to run off the rails?
I think it’s worth exploring. We license and monitor drivers, we license and monitor teachers, we investigate, license and monitor gun owners, we monitor and sometimes charge people for making threats, why not tell violent video game players “you can play but, if you do, we’re going to monitor your social media interactions just in case things get out of hand.”?
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Schoolmates say, for years Sonboly’d been an angry young man, threatening to kill those around him. We now know he was being treated for neurosis and had been committed to a psychiatric ward in the previous year and —
— he was another devoted violent video game addict!
Who could have known? His schoolmates, whom he’d threatened repeatedly with death. Anyone who read his online posts. His psychiatrist. Yes, he had a psychiatrist, as did many of the others. Might their psychiatrists have asked them whether the people in their care were spending their spare time killing imaginary people? Might they then, with law enforcement and the game have done something about it, monitored their gaming and social media habits?
Monitoring Sonboly’s religious activities wouldn’t have had any effect. In fact, he stopped in mid-rampage to refute the idea he was engaging in Jihad. To one of the witnesses, who accused him of being a foreigner; Sonboly replied “I’m German! Because of you I’ve been bullied all my life!”
He was, German and Iranian and, he might have been bullied all his life but, billions of kids are bullied and don’t go off the rails.
He did and somehow, in spite of Germany’s strict gun control laws, managed to buy a gun with which to do it.
Why then, did he shout “Allah u akbar!” as he fired? Did Ali Sonboly kill 9 plus himself because he was a Jihadi or, because he was a social misfit? If simply a misfit, why use the universal “I’m about to commit an act of senseless violence against innocent people but, since I’m invoking Allah, it’s not my fault” chant, before killing?
Is it, as I’ve said in the past, simply because martyrdom, death while killing infidels, is Islam’s way of atoning for any and all sins, because when life is too painful to go on, killing a few infidels and shouting “God is great” while you do it is the one and only sure way to kill the pain and get to heaven?
But, monitoring Sonboly’s gaming habits and social media posts would have, should have alarmed everyone.
Should we be monitoring the social media behavior of all Muslims or — are we more likely to catch mass shooters before they act by monitoring the social media behavior of violent video gamers? Or, since this is not an issue of preventing religion or video games but, of preventing mass murder, should we be monitoring both?
