@hawkeye10,
This tragedy was also a hate crime--clearly fueled by extremely misogynist views of women, and hostility toward women, and jealousy of other men who were favored by women.
And, in your posts, you seem to support such misogyny and hostile views of women--you seem to think these are, not only normal and acceptable, but completely valid. But part of this man's alleged "mental illness" is the fact that he held such views in the extreme, and he was paranoid in blaming whatever social problems he did have with women, on all women. He saw women as conspiring to make him miserable, and conspiring to make most men miserable. But you also see an anti-male conspiracy of women making the lives of men, particularly young men, miserable. Your constant blaming of women for the problems of men is not that dissimilar from his. And I'd suggest there is pathology and danger in these virulent anti-women views, just as there is pathology and danger in extreme racist or anti-Semitic views. I don't find anything normal and acceptable about any of it.
I think the conversation about this tragedy has to include discussion of the misogyny and hatred of women that fueled his motivation to commit mass murder, and how such misogyny and hostility toward women is promoted and expressed in all sorts of ways in our culture, and the dangers in accepting such views as "normal" or justified. Elliot Rodger could find confirmation for his paranoid anti-female feelings all over the internet, including in many posts made by you. It was the depth of his rage, and his final manner of expressing it--his "retribution"-- that everyone can agree was definitely aberrant, but I think we have to regard his thinking about women as also aberrant because it involves delusional thinking.
I don't think this mass murder likely could have been prevented. Elliot Rodger had not had any history of harming or hurting or threating behavior, he had never been psychiatrically hospitalized, so he could legally buy his guns. He was delusional in his thinking, but apparently not overtly psychotic or schizophrenic--the consensus, right now, from the mental health experts I've listened to, appears to be that he suffered from a personality disorder.
Until he posted a YouTube video, and e-mailed out his "manifesto" just before he committed mass murders, no one might have had reason to suspect he would act out in this way. He knew how to conceal his more extreme thoughts and his plans. He was functioning, he was a college student. Unless someone could have found his "manifesto" and his guns in his apartment, prior to Friday, I doubt that they could have held him in a psych hospital for more than a 72 hour evaluation, if they even would have admitted him, because he knew what to conceal, and he wouldn't have sounded dangerous. He was in therapy, he was receiving treatment, and that had been the case on and off since he was a child. So I'm not sure the mental health system, or his parents, or anyone else is to blame. It is possible that his roommates became aware of his plans just before he was about to execute them, and that might be the reason he killed them, he stabbed them to death--so he wouldn't be stopped.
This isn't like Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza's overt behaviors, before his mass murders, were far more bizarre. Elliot Rodger also wasn't living a socially isolated life, as Lanza was. He was going to college, he lived with roommates, etc. and whatever social problems he did have apparently were not overly alarming to the other people around him. He was also intelligent, and able to express himself quite articulately, and coherently, in his writing.
Unfortunately, we can't lock people up until they act, or until they threaten to act, or show evidence they are planning to act, to harm themselves or others. As delusional as Elliot Rodger's anti-woman thinking was, he apparently wasn't threatening to harm anyone until just before he acted, and lots of people hold extreme, and biased, views, and neither law enforcement nor psychiatry can really take action just on those views.
But maybe we need to look at why it's so easy for a person to purchase multiple guns, and a substantial amount of ammunition, with no red flags raised about that. So far, it's those multiple gun purchases, and the large supply of ammo, that should have raised the most red flags about what might be coming next. Maybe we should monitor those types of multiple gun purchases.
I'm sure we'll learn more as more information comes out. But, right now I think this tragedy should also be regarded as a hate crime, fueled by irrational rage toward women, and not just another mass killing we chalk up to one deranged individual's mental illness. The ramifications of widely promoted "anti-female" thinking, and the acceptability of hostile attitudes toward women, in our culture, also deserve our attention, because these can become manifest in all sorts of harmful ways and acts toward women--carrying out a mass murder is just an aberrant and extreme example.
Elliot Rodger apparently frequented particular Web sites on which hatred of women was expressed and promoted--along with entreaties to rise up and not take oppression by women any longer. Well, his grandiose and disturbed response to that was to buy his guns. While that's obviously not the response most young men would turn to, we should think about the extreme "anti-female" messages of hate young men are being exposed to on the internet, and talk about those, and their impact, as well as other factors that figured into this tragedy.
