UCSB Shooting

This weekend I have read some things that have made me feel sick.
On Friday yet another mass shooting took place in the US. What happened on Friday evening in Santa Barbara, California, is truly frightening and the cause of grief for many people. Seven people died, including the shooter, and thirteen have been injured. Read more here. I don’t want to go into what has happened during the shooting but want to address some other issues.
As I found out about the shooting this weekend every article was accompanied by a video or at least the transcript of said video. The content of it being the shooter telling his YouTube audience about what he is going to do and why. You can find the transcript here. In the video he talks about how he is still a virgin at 22 and has never kissed a girl in his life. He keeps on going how he is the supreme gentlemen and how he hates all the women who rejected or ignored him. He talks about how unfair it is and that he will kill every woman and everyone who has a sexual active and better life than him. What scares me about this is that this young man felt so entitled to sex and women that he thought shooting people was the best solution. And to make it perfectly clear, people like that aren’t only a danger to women but to every single person. If you read the article you will find that two of the dead victims are female and four are male. Something that only adds to my fear is the way some people react to what has happened. I have read comments from a man who thought what the young man did was perfectly fine, except crashing his BMW (sadly I am not even joking). I am sure this man isn’t even the only one who thinks that way.
Something else that caught my attention was the claim that the shooter was mentally ill.

I can’t support that claim as I know too little about it. Nevertheless, I still want to talk about it for a bit as I have also read about problems that come with it. First of all it makes all mentally ill people out to be violent, evil and to be the problem. I don’t believe this to be true instead I think the way mentally ill people are (or aren’t) treated is the problem. It is important that people and society stop telling others, especially men, that it is wrong to seek out help because they are somehow broken, damaged and weak if they do. Instead seeking help should be encouraged as it is a process that takes courage, determination and work. People with mental health issues shouldn’t be made out to be dangerous, instead they should get help if they need it. Also saying someone is mentally ill or disturbed if they, for example, shot people, always sound like an excuse. It is not an excuse for their actions. It’s also important to know that perfectly healthy people kill all the time, the difference is, that we call it war. Murderers shouldn’t lightly be called mentally ill unless there is proof that they are/were. And even then it shouldn’t be used as an excuse or to take off all the responsibility from the victim and society. (Please, this is a very sensitive topic and if I wrote anything offensive or plainly wrong, don’t hesitate to tell me!)

The third topic I want to mention is that three handguns and 400 unused rounds were found in the shooters car, all legally purchased. It makes it undoubtedly easier to go on a killing spree if weapons are so easily accessible. Alone to think about how many more people he could have killed with all those rounds makes me shudder.   
Lastly I want to mention another incident that only happened a month ago and that is the stabbing of a 16-year-old girl from Connecticut. This shows that gun control isn’t the only thing people should be concerned about. In this case the girl was stabbed at school because she supposedly rejected to go to prom with the suspect.

It shocks me what reasons people can have to kill one another. There is no excuse for doing so, not if it comes to murder, war or anything else. Yet violence is everywhere, seemingly never stopping.
Also, here is a video from Lacy Green talking about the shooting.

ATTENTION: I said it before but please tell me if I wrote anything offending or wrong! This is a sensitive topic and I just wanted to write down my opinion.