We overlook a significant factor in mass shootings: fatherlessness
This comes as no surprise. I am glad that they say it that clearly. Children need fathers for stability and structure and mothers for flexibility and warmth. A healthy character balances both.

purplepansy88 3y ago
I'm not a big advocate of divorce under most circumstances and I think people are far too quick to divorce, but to say that it automatically makes children fatherless is very false. Divorced fathers can still parent their children. Fatherlessness is only the case when the father is not interested in the child, the father is incarcerated in prison or unwell and is physically unable to actively parent the child or there is a situation of parental alienation by the mother. A couple can be divorced or separated and they can both still actively parent their children. It's not as ideal as a couple who are both together but it's not fatherlessness. Also most situations of fatherlessness arise when the couple were never married to begin with.
Protocol_Apollo 3y ago
After say age 4, the father makes all the difference.
Fatherlessness is almost a death sentence for kids.
Without a father, kids are way more likely to do drugs, drop out, commit crime, and a whole host of other shit that isn’t conducive to them or wellbeing.
HattersPretzel 3y ago
Parents have no influence over their children's personality. It's about genetics - whom one had been conceived by.
Protocol_Apollo 3y ago
And I thought my jokes were bad
HattersPretzel 3y ago
Out of curiosity, did you have a lot of contact with your father in your childhood?
Protocol_Apollo 3y ago
Imagine thinking upbringing and environment have no effect on kids.
HattersPretzel 3y ago
Environment might have a small effect, but certainly not upbringing. And it's a well-established fact. I'd recommend reading Harris' "The Nurture Assumption", or Plomin's "The Genetic Blueprint".
CountTheBees 3y ago
I've done a lot of reading on this topic recently. And wrote a very unpopular post on the effect of childcare.. I haven't read the books you mention, but I am keen to investigate, especially since recently I engaged in a discussion about the effects of mother's education on child outcome (once other factors are controlled for - it is negligible).
But I still firmly believe childcare makes or breaks an upbringing. Can you comment whether those books addressed that topic?
HattersPretzel 3y ago
I've read your post on childcare. My comment is that the effects of environment tend to wash out over time, while the influence of genetics becomes more and more dominant as one approaches adulthood, a phenomenon often referred to as "heritability/heritabilities increase with age".
As for whether the books address the topic, I'll just dump some quotes. Plomin first:
Harris:
CountTheBees 3y ago
Hmmmm. Not quite the same as childcare because;
The effects are very age dependent. Schooling beyond a certain age, I will happily concede, doesn't really matter.
I'd love to see whether any differences could be found between families who used childcare and families that didn't.
The Quebec study I discussed in my post found that youth crime rates and scores for aggression increased in the cohorts exposed to universal subsidised childcare. There is likely a genetic component for that effect:
However, genetics does not explain why youth crime rates in the state of Quebec would jump based on child's birth year. Even though genetics may explain why a child is aggressive, exposure to certain stressors may make that child who is already aggressive, more aggressive. If the research on heritability increasing with age is qualitative rather than quantitative - then it may have not considered whether upbringing or environment may make someone more aggressive, or more anything, than they already are.
Another study I quoted in my post noted that childcare didn't affect the average outcome of children, however, it did change the distribution of the data:
Meaning that the extremes got more bunched up and skewed, while the averages remained the same. If the researchers you quote only looked at the averages, and did not look deeper, they would not have found these effects.
TheBunk_TB 3y ago
Coupled with denigration of men all over, fatherlessness does not help
salafimuslimah1 3y ago
Easiest target to destroy societies is to attack the institution of marriage.
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CCloudds 3y ago
That's not entirely true. You might have two parents who are crazy as hell and make your life miserable. You can have parents who neglect you and belittle you everyday. What we need is good parents. Not all people deserve to be parents.
VasiliyZaitzev 3y ago
The family is the foundation of society, but the marriage is the foundation of the family. This is why people who want to, quite literally, destroy Western Society go after both.
thebeepiestboop 3y ago
If a lack of a father was such a big factor in mass shootings why would they only use Ramos as an example? Both the columbine shooters lived with and had very good relationships with their fathers (I’d say better than most kids their age)
and the sandy hook shooter had a present father who he only stopped living with after childhood and they still communicated. I feel this is a big claim/big shift in the conversation just cause one shooter didn’t have active parents since he didn’t live with his mother either.gd_reinvent 3y ago
Cho Seung Hui had a good relationship with his dad too. And he was from a culture that really pushed intact marriages.
Elliot Rodger had a present father.
The Tops shooter had a present father.
Have to correct you on Adam Lanza though. He had not lived with his,dad since about age 13, and he had not communicated with him for around two years prior to the shooting. Nancy didn't push the relationship and when Peter demanded to talk to him she simply told him Adam didn't want to instead,of insisting he try and talk with him.
EmergencyLive2371 3y ago
My memory may fail me here, but years back, I read about how despite having a present father, Elliot and his dad actually didn’t have a true son-father connection. Same for his mom. Both parents were what you’d call emotionally absent, and didn’t engage on Elliot’s life/problems. Having a present father is a start, but having a present, engaged, emotionally available dad is fundamental.
thebeepiestboop 3y ago
Oh okay, I just remembered reading an interview his dad did and got it mixed up with another case I’d read, thanks for the correction.
Synonym_Toast_Crunch 3y ago
Because that only addresses the "sensational" mass shootings, involving a soft target, generally unprepared victims, and a usually white perpetrator. Most mass shootings are primarily related to gang violence and organized crime, with perpetrators of varying shades of brown.
thebeepiestboop 3y ago
There’s a very obvious difference between mass shootings as most people talk/think about them (adults and children being slaughtered for no rhyme or reason) and organized crime. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say with this comment and how this
has any relevance
Synonym_Toast_Crunch 3y ago
Higher rates of fatherlessness, and composing the majority of mass shootings as recorded by US Crime Stats. No shade intended
free_breakfast_ 3y ago
I've always held a lot of respect for men who wrote about sexual strategy and life between TRP, the pick up industry, and the manosphere.
There's usually a number of women who are aware of who /u/whisper and some of the other prominent writers on TRP are and their promotion for men's sexual strategy in the modern west.
Along with this awareness is usually some mixture of moral superiority, anger, and contempt that these guys are the embodiment of 'evil' for teaching men how to improve socially, how to value themselves, and how to have relationships on their terms (of course with an added dose of locker room talk).
What these women and many people outside of the community fails to see is that these men, who are working with the new cards that society dealt, have been helping turn potential Elliot Rodgers from going on a shame, apathy, and despair filled delusional murder revenge rampage.
Our country does not have a gun problem. Our country does not have a prescription medicine problem. Our country has a mental health problem.
Reddit's favorite red haired ginger (incels) that everyone loves bullying are the young men who are being told that their toxic masculinity is the root of their problems, which is a super encouraging method in bringing these young men to therapists and psychologists who are the only members of society that's willing to help these types of people as long as they're paid to do so (and often lack the ability to help).
Other than that, nobody else is willing to give a shit about these men because men are only as useful as what they can do for society.
These 'evil' men became the internet fathers and uncles to a generation of young boys where society said, ''you're on your own''. Everyone is willing to give the two second platitude of 'just be yourself' as advice when they ask for help, but these men are the people who stepped in and invested years and hundreds if not thousands of hours of offering specific advice and met them at their level so that they would feel heard and encouraged them to grow up and get their shit together. Where was mom and dad when these young men needed help? Where was society when these young men needed help?
When governments, businesses, and society begins canceling, banning, censoring, and silencing the people who's likely done 100x in helping the most detested and marginalized groups of young men become functional members of society that nobody else is willing to reach out to - they're going to begin seeing an increasing amount of young men who turn renegade on society.
VasiliyZaitzev 3y ago
Um, I would like to point out that there are those of us pushing back. Despite my reputation as a Casanova (or cad, if you prefer), the most upvoted top-level post I have ever written is this:
Things My Father Taught Me: Advice for guys raised by single moms
It's rather quite wholesome, if you ask me. When I pop up on the Discord, the young guys keep me there for hours answering questions (like "coping with life" questions) that ordinarily, in times past, would have been answered and knowledge passed down from fathers, uncles and grandfathers.
Young men grow up today in a world where they are hated/scapegoated and what they are "told" to do doesn't work/help. I saw a stat today that the % of men in undergraduate programs is now down to 40.5% - this is LESS than the % of female undergraduates when the gov't decided that Title IX was needed to promote women in Uni.
Does anyone think there will be a "Title IX" for men? I won't hold my breath. This should be concerning to RPW, particularly those that want to spend all/part of their lives as SAHW/Ms.
Say what you want about my writings, but I teach young men to be sexually successful, and sexually successful men (in addition to being better lovers for their future wives) don't walk into schools and blow away dozens of kids.
There is a cadre of young men today who are INVISIBILE in life and ultimately choose to be VISIBLE and HATED, because they think it's preferrable.
OmarNBradley 3y ago
I am by no means disparaging the advice you offer, but as the mother of a 12 year old boy who is very close with his father (we are married), I will say that he has begun to blow off things we say to him, only to treat the exact same advice/statement/whatever like it is Holy Writ when he hears it from literally anybody else.
My husband: No, Eminem was not the first big white rapper, that would be Beastie Boys
Our son: Yeah sure dad
VasiliyZaitzev 3y ago
Some do some don’t. A lot of the guys who make their way to the Discord’s are completely lost because they don’t have any male figure in their lives.
gd_reinvent 3y ago
Roosh V spoke significantly about Elliot Rodger before he converted to Christianity.
In his first post he said that game could at least have bought him time until some kind of intervention could have been made.
His second post said that he had learned more about who he was and he had changed his mind - that he now thought Elliot was an entitled little shit. Not for wanting sex, not for wanting a girlfriend, not for being upset or frustrated at being a virgin, not for wanting a hot girl, not for wanting an actual girlfriend and not a hooker - but for wanting these things and feeling entitled to these things, any of them, without being prepared to do any work or make an effort to get them.
Roosh said in his second article that he had had sex a lot, but he had also been rejected, laughed at and called names by girls numerous times, and he had the choice to develop a victim complex like Elliot, or to give up on that girl, to accept that maybe it's nothing personal and try again later with someone else and to keep trying until he got somewhere. He chose to keep trying.
Roosh said that if Elliot had contacted him and asked him for help before he had done the shooting, he would have asked him what kind of effort he made. He would have told him to at least try to talk to ten new girls and be polite before coming and asking him for help again. He said as far as he knew, Elliot didn't even try and do that, and THAT was what made him entitled, not the things that he wanted from women.
Of course, Roosh is,a Christian now, but these are still very good points.
VasiliyZaitzev 3y ago
Guys who do this are most often malignant narcissists with anti-social personality disorder. ER, in his youtube vids about how he was the "supreme gentleman" or whatever is shows himself to be the former, and his actions the latter.
teampocketrockettt 3y ago
I mean, other countries have divorce and don’t have mass shootings like America does. I think that does come from all the guns hanging around. Can’t shoot without a gun
pearlsandstilettos 3y ago
Someone else dropped this in a different sub last week and it's quite an interesting look at the issue
https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewCFollett/status/1529577079808868352
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VasiliyZaitzev 3y ago
See also Bill Whittle's Number One With a Bullet.
It's not the guns.
pearlsandstilettos 3y ago
But it feeeeeels like it's the guns
teampocketrockettt 3y ago
I think comparing all the countries in the world and their shooting stats VS first world countries and their shooting stats makes this less interesting
Euphoric-Chain-5155 3y ago
To the dear reader:
Often, when encountering a smug know-it-all retort like this, lacking in a counterargument or even a counterpoint, it is instructive to scroll through the commenter's post history.
This commenter is chronically single and unable to maintain personal relationships, is dependent on multiple psychiatric medications, has BPD, and posts an excessive number of unimpressive nudes to the internet.
Teampocketrockettt's opinion on the second amendment is worth about as much as she charges for pictures of her butthole, although it is amusing that she's leading with the same arguments on shooting stats that you'll find on race realist websites like unz.com and vdare.
Kaleidoscopiquant 3y ago
I didn't see her response as smug or know it all. She just disagreed. Going through her post history to make personal attacks is childish.
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pearlsandstilettos 3y ago
Well if you are set in your beliefs then I guess it wouldn't be.
teampocketrockettt 3y ago
I mean if you’re content to live with the comparable dangers of a third world country while paying a first world cost of living that’s you’re right I guess?
pearlsandstilettos 3y ago
I believe the Twitter thread addresses that though. Anyway I'm not looking to debate with you. I know your arguments, they are based on feels. I just wanted to provide information that seemed to be backed up by stats.
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SunshineSundress 3y ago
Never realized this. The way the media portrays it, it makes it look like the US is a far outlier.
pearlsandstilettos 3y ago
Yes. Like I said, it was an interesting Twitter chain and I read some points I didn't realize. No one has to take a particular stance but all information is worth having
growingstronk 3y ago
The US is a far outlier, relative to other developed countries like Germany and South Korea
Comparing the USA to the entire world is not a fair comparison
DelicateDevelopment 3y ago
It is just so funny that with the recent waves of immigration we have dozens of people killed by crazy men with knives.
Does this mean we should not allow people to own knives?
The problem is the mindset of the person owning a tool and not the tool itself.
SunshineSundress 3y ago
The UK has gotten very weird about vilifying knives in the same exact way. They encouraged people to hand in their knives.
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DelicateDevelopment 3y ago
Amazing.
While typing, I was wondering if the increased reporting of knife-incidents indicates that knives will be licensed too.
They really want us to be as defenseless as sheep.
SunshineSundress 3y ago
It definitely seems like it could be headed that way.
SunshineSundress 3y ago
Did you bother to check the thread that Pearl linked at all? Plenty of developed European countries have a higher death rate per capita by mass shooting than the US.
DelicateDevelopment 3y ago
I did not have time yet to look at it but planned to do so as soon as I had read all the comments.
But here I could not resist because the logic is so flawed and I am not sure what is better, to have your kids killed by a guy with a knife in a supermarket in Germany or in a mass shooting at a school in the US?
Irrespective of the number of incidences, it is the mindset that makes a tool dangerous or not.
SunshineSundress 3y ago
Agreed. And I’m not even completely against certain kinds of gun control. I just don’t like seeing the way the media very purposefully skews the data to fit their narrative.
DelicateDevelopment 3y ago
I think people should be taught how to use tools
SunshineSundress 3y ago
I’m in the same boat as you there. Don’t worry about the rant. It’s absolutely necessary to show that we aren’t all a “hurr durr gun bad republican fault” monolith. Like the point in your post, why are we not focusing on violence prevention by mitigating the problems caused by broken families?
python834 3y ago
Unfortunately this situation can no longer be fixed on a broad scale.
Couple reasons:
1) rampant hypergamy: 80-90% of the women are only giving sex to the top 20% of men. Since women prefer sharing top men rather than settling for an average man for themselves, it is normal that some will become single mothers.
2) economics: stagnant wages, rampant inflation, and higher taxes means that the average man cannot afford a family, let alone a wife. Men that cannot afford a family typically will not intentionally have children. Assuming that every man that cannot have children economically is one less man a woman can have children with, if that particular woman wants children, she would effectively need to be a single mother if she cannot marry.
3) average/bottom tier men: if men aren’t getting sex and not getting the money they need to succeed in having a family, they will typically opt out of society. The ones that choose to not opt out either succeed, or become dangerous.
Easy-Distance1 3y ago
Choose life.