Seven dead in drive by California shootings

[Ziggurat]

That argument is just stupid.

He killed twice as many men as women because that's the way things ended up going when he went on his spree, not because he specifically targeted men more than he targeted women.

In fact, his actual intention (as explicitly stated by him) was to target as many women as he could, and when he started his murder spree he absolutely intended to focus on women - he began it by attempting to gain access to a sorority house, and only when he was unsuccessful in that did he turn to opportunistic random shootings.

No. He began his killing spree by murdering three men. These were not opportunistic random shootings.

Yes, it's true that he only said he would target women, but that's not what he actually did. And yes, we don't know whether he would have killed more women than men if he had his way. But we do know that he DID target men, that he DID kill men first, and that killing men was intentional, not random.

My point is not ultimately that he hated men more than women (when you hate both enough to kill both, further distinctions don't seem to matter much), but that he did in fact hate men as well. And yes, events do demonstrate that.

Care to take a guess about the gender balance of potential victims inside that sorority house, Ziggurat?

Care to take a guess about the gender balance of his actual victims at his apartment building, where his killing spree actually began?

 

[marplots]

No. He began his killing spree by murdering three men. These were not opportunistic random shootings.

Yes, it's true that he only said he would target women, but that's not what he actually did. And yes, we don't know whether he would have killed more women than men if he had his way. But we do know that he DID target men, that he DID kill men first, and that killing men was intentional, not random.

My point is not ultimately that he hated men more than women (when you hate both enough to kill both, further distinctions don't seem to matter much), but that he did in fact hate men as well. And yes, events do demonstrate that.

Care to take a guess about the gender balance of his actual victims at his apartment building, where his killing spree actually began?

Did he kill the first three because they were men, or because he had a grudge against specific people? That's a key difference.

I haven't read that his second stop - the sorority house - was anything other than a try at killing women, in the generic sense.

 

[Checkmite]

No. He began his killing spree by murdering three men. These were not opportunistic random shootings.

Yes, it's true that he only said he would target women, but that's not what he actually did. And yes, we don't know whether he would have killed more women than men if he had his way. But we do know that he DID target men, that he DID kill men first, and that killing men was intentional, not random.

Killing his roommates was intentional. That they were men was unimportant.

Conversely, going to the sorority expressly to kill women was intentional; he explicitly calls it a representation of his "War on Women" (his capitalization) and specifies that they are representative of everything he hates most about women.

 

[Ziggurat]

In his rant, he states that it was because women chose them instead of him.

I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that the self-justifying rants of a pathological narcissist should be taken completely at face value.

This is a cheap shot; because most of the people who died during his rampage happened to be male, you're trying to imply an intent there.

I'm outright stating (not implying) that he intended to (and did) kill men. That's not a cheap shot.

However, it requires that we ignore many things about his rampage other than the death toll - for instance the fact that he wounded many more people than he killed, whose sexes we are unaware of currently; the fact that he began his rampage by pounding at the door of a sorority house

No. He began his rampage in his own apartment building, where he killed three men before he killed (or even injured) a single woman.

It requires that we ignore the part of his rant where he mentions that he has to kill his roommates not for being men, but just because they're in the way (and even that if they'd been some of his earlier roommates whom he really liked, he would've been remorseful about it).

They weren't in the way. Again, this guy is making excuses for himself. Why do you believe his excuses so uncritically?

It requires that we leave off his explicitly stating that he had to add his kid brother to his murder plans only after overhearing his mother opine that the boy would be a girl-magnet when he grew up.

In other words, he would be a man.

It requires ignoring the countless number of times that he declares "if just one girl" had given him a chance at a date, the "day of retribution" would never have happened

I never claimed he wasn't a misogynist, but again, why are you accepting his excuses at face value?

Not long ago a rather renowned racist and anti-Semite drove to a Jewish retirement home, walked inside, and shot up the place, fleeing after killing three people. He was caught, and was screaming praises to Hitler for the news cameras. All of his victims turned out to be Christian. Shall we deduce that his hate of Christians was therefore greater than his hate for Jews?

I never made the claim that he hated men more than he hated women. But if this killer had walked into a church and killed a bunch of people before he walked into a Jewish retirement home to kill people there, it would indeed be quite reasonable to claim that he also hated Christians.

 

[Ziggurat]

Did he kill the first three because they were men, or because he had a grudge against specific people? That's a key difference.

I haven't read that his second stop - the sorority house - was anything other than a try at killing women, in the generic sense.

This loser only had real social contact with men. So of course his "specific" grudges are going to be against men, not women. But he still made it clear that male attributes led him to hate people enough to want them dead.

If you were a woman, he hated you because you were a woman. If you were a man, he made up an excuse to hate you, but he hated you nonetheless. Is that really any better? I don't see how. He seemed to hate everyone, and he was willing to kill anyone.

 

[Checkmite]

I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that the self-justifying rants of a pathological narcissist should be taken completely at face value.

Because he is the only expert on his on thoughts, and thus has more credibility in describing his motives than you or I do.

I'm outright stating (not implying) that he intended to (and did) kill men. That's not a cheap shot.

It's a cheap shot to imply that the fact he killed a few men is indicative of some kind of equivalent hatred of men simply for the fact of being men, as he explicitly describes having for women because of the fact that they are women. That is a narrative that you are trying to force that is not supported by his confession and is in fact directly contradicted by it.

No. He began his rampage in his own apartment building, where he killed three men before he killed (or even injured) a single woman.

You are attaching special significance to their gender that is not justified by the facts in hand. Rather, you're doing it in response to people pointing out his raging misogyny after the fact, making it a defensive counterargument rather than a statement of fact. The idea that being sexually active defines "being male" in such a way that when he expresses hatred for men who are sexually active he's really expressing hatred of men for being men, is entirely your unilateral application of your own train of logic to his thinking that he never himself endorses.

They weren't in the way. Again, this guy is making excuses for himself. Why do you believe his excuses so uncritically?

He is the only witness to his thoughts. Given that he has no compunction about stating that he wants to kill the chosen partners of the women who denied him sex, it seems likely that if that was the reason for his killing of his roommates, he would've included it. Contrarily, he explicitly says that he has to do it "to get them out of the way". He also says that he won't feel bad about it because these particular roommates are "annoying" (as opposed to "because they are men", as you would rather us believe).

Of course they weren't really "in the way". He certainly could have left for his rampage and left them alone to never be the wiser. But it doesn't matter whether his judgments and beliefs were correct - obviously a great deal of them were invalid, or else his killing plan would sound perfectly reasonable to all of us - what actually matters is that they were his judgments and beliefs.

In other words, he would be a man.

Obviously untrue; if "being a man" were enough, he would've already included his little brother in his murder plans independently of hearing someone suggest a connection between the kid and "girls". Again, that's you trying to impose your own thought process on someone who can't be shown to actually have shared it.

I never claimed he wasn't a misogynist, but again, why are you accepting his excuses at face value?

There is nothing in his screed that is an "excuse". He makes no apologies for anything he's about to do.

But either way, you're missing the point which is not to accept that his logic or choices are accurate or valid. The point is, this is what he was thinking. And he spent so much time and energy giving a detailed breakdown of his thoughts that there is no room left for ambiguity, really.

I never made the claim that he hated men more than he hated women. But if this killer had walked into a church and killed a bunch of people before he walked into a Jewish retirement home to kill people there, it would indeed be quite reasonable to claim that he also hated Christians.

But this guy didn't "walk into a church". He didn't walk into a frat house. He didn't visit a biker club or a men's gym or a boy scout meeting, a place where an exclusive or predominantly male crowd would gather.

He killed his roommates because they were there in his house when he began. He did specifically visit a sorority house. The rest of his crime scenes were public places where he had no control over the gender ratio of the victims; which leaves us with his monograph to reveal his intentions.

 

[Dissolution]

Can anyone explain the thinking behind killing his roommates?
He claimed that it was to get them out of the way, I believe. Out of the way of what? He wasn't intending to kill anyone else in their apartment, was he?

Attempting to analyse the logic here might be a little pointless, but I don't really see what that part was about, unless he wanted to kill them for some other reason, which wouldn't surprise me.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Can anyone explain the thinking behind killing his roommates?
He claimed that it was to get them out of the way, I believe. Out of the way of what? He wasn't intending to kill anyone else in their apartment, was he?

Attempting to analyse the logic here might be a little pointless, but I don't really see what that part was about, unless he wanted to kill them for some other reason, which wouldn't surprise me.

Maybe they were banging the chicks he couldn't.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Were all of the room-mates non-white? IIRC he had blamed his lack of success with women at least partly on the fact that he was mixed race. But then when he saw non-white men (who he perceived as inferior to him) with girlfriends, this threatened that view and probably contributed to his anger.

 

[Checkmite]

Can anyone explain the thinking behind killing his roommates?
He claimed that it was to get them out of the way, I believe. Out of the way of what? He wasn't intending to kill anyone else in their apartment, was he?

Attempting to analyse the logic here might be a little pointless, but I don't really see what that part was about, unless he wanted to kill them for some other reason, which wouldn't surprise me.

In his planning, he says that (independently of his roommmates) he initially wants to lure several people into his apartment so that he can kill and decapitate them, and reveal their heads later during his spree for dramatic effect. He appears never to have ended up doing that; but I assume he figured that his roommates might object to such activity were they around to witness it.

Logically, this suggests that he might've decided not to do the head-thing for whatever reason sometime between killing his roommates and the beginning of his shooting spree.

 

[Dissolution]

Maybe they were banging the chicks he couldn't.

Seems unlikely, going by the descriptions that have been given following their deaths.
Hardworking, quiet, computer engineering/science students who were into computer games.

Perhaps they provoked his jealousy in another way, as they were similar in some ways to him (Asian heritage, the gaming, they were intelligent and he thought he was), yet they still managed to maintain friendships and their educational commitments?

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Can anyone explain the thinking behind killing his roommates?
He claimed that it was to get them out of the way, I believe. Out of the way of what? He wasn't intending to kill anyone else in their apartment, was he?

Attempting to analyse the logic here might be a little pointless, but I don't really see what that part was about, unless he wanted to kill them for some other reason, which wouldn't surprise me.

He specifically said that his plan was to spend the day luring others into his apartment, then torturing them and killing them. He was going to sever their heads and bring them along when he started ramming people with his car. Then he was going to dump the severed heads into the street.

So he needed to kill his roommates to have the apartment free to use as a torture/death chamber.

All of this is in his manifesto.

ETA: Checkmite beat me to it.

 

[Dissolution]

In his planning, he says that (independently of his roommmates) he initially wants to lure several people into his apartment so that he can kill and decapitate them, and reveal their heads later during his spree for dramatic effect. He appears never to have ended up doing that; but I assume he figured that his roommates might object to such activity were they around to witness it.

Logically, this suggests that he might've decided not to do the head-thing for whatever reason sometime between killing his roommates and the beginning of his shooting spree.

Yes, you're right. I forgot about that part of his incredibly disturbing plot.
Presumably he abandoned most of it when he couldn't get into the sorority, due to the ladies inside being sensible enough not to open the door.
So much for his masterplan.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Yes, you're right. I forgot about that part of his incredibly disturbing plot.
Presumably he abandoned most of it when he couldn't get into the sorority, due to the ladies inside being sensible enough not to open the door.
So much for his masterplan.

As terrible as these events were, they paled in comparison to his actual plan, that's for sure. He intended to kill numerous people (besides his roommates) in his apartment, then kill the entire sorority membership, then shoot and kill scores of people on the streets, THEN, finally, kill scores more by plowing into giant groups walking in the streets, as they tend to do in Isla Vista.

I really think he thought his death toll would be in the hundreds. He must have ended his life feeling as though he were a failure even in his "Day of Retribution."

One can hope.

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

Can anyone explain the thinking behind killing his roommates?
He claimed that it was to get them out of the way, I believe. Out of the way of what? He wasn't intending to kill anyone else in their apartment, was he?

Actually he was. He was going to lure people back to the apartment one-by-one and kill them before going to the sorority house.

ETA: Wow, I'm slow.

 

[Snarf]

In his planning, he says that (independently of his roommmates) he initially wants to lure several people into his apartment so that he can kill and decapitate them, and reveal their heads later during his spree for dramatic effect. He appears never to have ended up doing that; but I assume he figured that his roommates might object to such activity were they around to witness it.

Yes, his plan was to torture and murder both men and women. But first, he needed to clean house:

Two new housemates moved into my apartment for the Autumn semester. They were two foreign Asian students who attended UCSB. These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices. My last two housemates, Chris and Jon, were nerds as well, but at least they were friendly and pleasant. These two new ones were utterly repulsive, and one of them had a very rebellious demeanor about him. He went out of his way to start arguments with me whenever I raised the issue of the noise he made. Hell, even living with Spencer was more pleasant than these two idiots. I knew that when the Day of Retribution came, I would have to kill my housemates to get them out of the way. If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.

Women, men, nerds, family members - it didn't matter. This guy hated everything and everyone. The only thing he didn't hate (or blame) was himself.

 

[Checkmite]

Weird thing is, he didn't hate his father. In fact part of his plan involved going to his family's home to kill his mother and brother, but he freely admits that he would not be able to bring himself to kill his father, and that being faced with that choice would end his rampage prematurely, so he needed to make sure he carried out his plan on a day when his father was away on business. IIRC he actually postponed the "big day" once or twice when he learned his father had come home early from a trip.

 

[Ziggurat]

Because he is the only expert on his on thoughts, and thus has more credibility in describing his motives than you or I do.

That answer makes no sense. He is a murderer and a narcissist. Why should we conclude that he is also honest?

It's a cheap shot to imply that the fact he killed a few men is indicative of some kind of equivalent hatred of men

He only killed a few women too. And why should we not consider his actions as being more significant as his words?

You are attaching special significance to their gender that is not justified by the facts in hand. Rather, you're doing it in response to people pointing out his raging misogyny after the fact, making it a defensive counterargument rather than a statement of fact.

I never objected to labeling him a misogynist, in fact I explicitly said I did not.

The idea that being sexually active defines "being male" in such a way that when he expresses hatred for men who are sexually active he's really expressing hatred of men for being men, is entirely your unilateral application of your own train of logic to his thinking that he never himself endorses.

If someone hates a woman because she is sexually active, we rightly consider that misogyny. That's not simply my train of logic, that's pretty much the common train of logic. Do you dispute that? And yet, hating a man for being sexually active is not misandry? No, that is a double standard.

He is the only witness to his thoughts.

And he is not a reliable witness. He cares what people think of him (or he never would have made the video at all), but he's a monster and a liar, and part of him must have recognized that the world would view him as such. We can expect that he has presented only what he wants us to believe about him, which may be partly true, but we should not expect that it is entirely true or all of the truth.

There is nothing in his screed that is an "excuse". He makes no apologies for anything he's about to do.

Of course it's an excuse. It is his stated justification for doing something he knows everyone else will consider to be wrong. And an excuse isn't an apology.

But this guy didn't "walk into a church". He didn't walk into a frat house.

He didn't have to.

He killed his roommates because they were there in his house when he began.

He killed them because he wanted them dead. He didn't need to kill them in order to attack the sorority, he chose to.

He did specifically visit a sorority house.

Yes, he did. You say that like it contradicts anything I said. It doesn't.

The rest of his crime scenes were public places where he had no control over the gender ratio of the victims;

Which obviously suggests that the gender of his victims wasn't actually as important to him as killing people.

 

[One Tenth]

Didn't he fantasize about wiping out males completely? I recall a couple times, either in the manifesto or his forum posts, when he talked about annihilating them, or releasing a virus that killed every other man, and so on.

 

[Ziggurat]

In his planning, he says that (independently of his roommmates) he initially wants to lure several people into his apartment so that he can kill and decapitate them, and reveal their heads later during his spree for dramatic effect. He appears never to have ended up doing that; but I assume he figured that his roommates might object to such activity were they around to witness it.

Logically, this suggests that he might've decided not to do the head-thing for whatever reason sometime between killing his roommates and the beginning of his shooting spree.

It also logically suggests that he was planning on killing more men ("more" in the sense of "in addition to the ones he did kill"), because there's no chance he was going to be able to lure women to his apartment when he couldn't even muster the courage to ask them out on dates.