The real reason for school shootings

There were two school shootings yesterday. There’s been a comparatively large amount of mass shootings in the news over the last five years. These have been cases where young men have taken guns to public places to shoot and kill fellow citizens. Many of these high profile cases have been at schools where gunmen have brought death and destruction to children – usually fellow children.

The response from liberals and conservatives has been inappropriate. The left says ban guns and this won’t happen. Conservatives say keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people and this won’t happen. They are both wrong.

We can’t ban guns in America. They have been a part of our culture since the nation’s founding. They are a right in our constitution to protect from tyranny and other people with guns. As a result, there are hundreds of millions of guns in our country. Hundreds of millions of guns don’t just go away. Nor should they. Also, we won’t be able to identify shooters using mental health tests. While mental illness is linked to higher rates of suicide, it does not correlate to higher instances of violence inflicted on others. Dismissing the rise in shootings as a result of mental illness is lazy, but it’s an important concept to understand.

The mentally ill live worse lives than the rest of us. Depending on the illness, there can be physical problems or mental. Either way, life’s better healthy. It’s harder for the mentally ill to find their role in society. In a sexual marketplace that rewards value (good emotions, money), the mentally ill don’t have access to things like sex and intimacy and friendship because they have a difficult time relating to other people. It’s a struggle to find a way to give value when they are at such a physical and mental disadvantage from their illness.

This – the decreased perceived value of men, is what I believe to explain the increase in mass shootings. The increase in mass shootings is caused by a decreased perceived role of men in society.

Not all killers are schizophrenic loonies that “just snap”. Elliot Rodger, the college student that shot and ran over students at UC Santa Barbara, wrote a manifesto that detailed his anger at the world and at women, and he intended to bring harm to others.

While Rodgers did go in and out of counselors and medications, which does point to mental illness, his frustrations are not unique to the mentally ill, and they are becoming more common frustrations among Western men.

There are several reasons men are perceived as less valuable and less needed in society.


  • Decreased perceived utility of fathers.


Men are not seen as a necessity in the home. There are more single mothers in the United States than anytime in history. Any psychotherapist worth her salt will tell you how terrifying that is. Children raised without a dad in the house are far more likely to commit crimes, end up in poverty, and be removed from socialization due to early developed narcissism instilled by the single parent.

There are a couple reasons we see the decrease in perceived need. Mothers are incentivized to leave and take the kids. Modern child protection and divorce laws actually give money to mothers that leave their husbands. These laws have the right intention – that families aren’t destroyed financially when a parent leaves, but they have the opposite effect in many cases. Mothers see a means of independence funded by child support court.

Related, there is an increase in divorces, and marriage is way down. Kids aren’t being raised by their fathers. Divorce is incentivized by moving half of a man’s assets to the woman after a breakup. This incentivizes women to get married, even without honoring the marriage, because they have an out that pays if they decide they no longer want to work on the relationship.

Relationships are hard work. Bouncing from person to person is easy. It’s even easier when it’s funded by an ex.

Elementary and middle school teachers are more than 80% women (US). Not only are children being raised without a father figure at home, but they are being raised without a father figure at school. I’m not saying teachers should play a role in parenting, but they do play a role in shaping the future and acting as role models for children.


  • Decreased opportunities for the average man to experience intimacy.


Only the top few percent of men are the ones having all the sex. The top percent are the ones women find attractive enough to have sex with. Women find, generally, the same traits and therefore the same men attractive. Attractive men are strong, socially savvy, (generally) good looking, and have no insecurities – looks, financial, or otherwise. Also, attractive men spend time with attractive women. That’s a reinforcing loop – men are perceived more attractive when they are with beautiful women.

This benefits the top few percent of men in the modern dating marketplace. The United States has a strong hookup culture, spearheaded by feminism and attractive men. The hookup culture dictates that you should “have fun while you’re young” and bang attractive men, then “get serious when you’re older” which basically means marry a guy that can pay for you and your children. She can leave this less attractive man any time, which, when she’s had multiple sexual partners, greatly increases her chances of not staying in the relationship. It also increases the likelihood that she will settle with an attractive man, because attractive men that have options will opt for a woman that’s less “worldly”.

Whether it’s Tinder or bars or the office, it’s the cool, sexy guy that’s likely to make his move and be confident and attractive to women he comes into contact with. Once she is attracted to him, he can do anything he wants and she will find it intriguing. HR departments and hashtags the likes of Metoo will never hear of cases involving the attractive man.

This is dangerous for men that don’t have the sexual charisma to behave confidently and attract women. These men see the attractive men doing something and try to emulate it. They go out and say the same things and get turned down, and reported for sexual harassment and tweeted to the world. This greatly discourages men from trying to flirt with women. When you don’t try to flirt, you don’t get better at flirting. When you don’t get better at flirting, you remain a virgin that still wants to have sex. The man without social skills is discouraged from building the social skills required to be sexy.

One of the recent trends is for parents to raise their children to not be masculine or feminine. This means gender-neutral toys or toys that do not align with one gender (the GI Joes and the Barbie). The point of this is that men and women can be more free to be gay if they realize heterosexuality isn’t for them. The problem with this is that boys and girls aren’t raised to develop masculine and feminine traits that the other sex finds attractive. This is fine for five year olds at play time (maybe), but it is not fine when those boys grow up thinking it’s fine to express feminine qualities when they do want to attract women. It’s the boys and girls that grow up straight (95% of the population) that lose during this style of parenting. Masculine qualities are attractive to women. Feminine qualities are attractive to men.

Social media magnifies the attractive men getting all the sex – it is sexy to have a large following and command attention. So women find them more attractive, but other men who are still becoming attractive have that to compare to. While some may be motivated to work harder or learn from the social media heroes, it’s also possible to be rejected by the pressure of social media. Also, social media sexualizes everything. Women get “likes” by sexualizing themselves. Porn has made its way into social media. Leggings and sexual clothing are advertised on the different platforms. Not only are men not getting sex, but they are seeing sex everywhere, which leads to the feeling that they are missing out, and that they are the only few individuals missing out, when really it’s over 90% of men missing out.


  • Decreased perceived need in the workplace.


The rise of women in workplace has done wonders for our economy. We moved way beyond countries that don’t have women working. Output is high. We are productive. But, it’s not all roses and sunshine, as you may be starting to see.

The increased numbers of women in the workplace removes man’s need to provide finances. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. Everyone is free to compete in a capitalist marketplace, which I’m a fan of. However, financial provisioning was historically a way for men to exhibit sexual market value. Without this, a man has to come up with new ways to provide value, if value is what women are looking for.

In relationships, people either look for value or virtue. And we aren’t going to start having virtuous relationships any time soon.

The problem with women in the workplace is that even if we wanted to – which we don’t, the economy may is not reversible for people that want to maintain a standard of living. The Western world is expensive, largely because we have twice as many people producing than other countries. The expensive urban cities in America do not offer the luxury for a woman to just stop working if she wants to and be supported by her man. Two incomes are required in many places to meet rent or mortgage.

Women better educated getting good jobs.


  • Decreased success in education.


Boys that cause trouble are “disruptive”, not boys that are different from their female classmates.

More than 80 percent of teachers in America are women. These teachers will teach to feminine because it’s what they know. It’s the role of the feminine to keep children safe and away from danger. But experiencing danger and chaos and learning how to deal with it is how children grow.

We aren’t teaching boys to develop their ability to deal with chaos and to deal with their anxieties and to deal with women. We teach them to behave like girls. This goes against every instinct in them, it’s not rewarded in the sexual market, and it limits their ability to deal with their true feelings.

What about guns?

The left says take their guns away. What will guns do to this? One argument is that men without perceived value should not have a gun. That without access to a firearm they will not kill many people.

That’s not unreasonable, except for the fact that it violates the constitutional rights of those individuals that otherwise aren’t mentally unhinged.

In addition, a perceived role of men, and a biological impulse, is to protect himself and his family and his tribe.

By removing guns and a man’s ability to protect, you remove one more instance of a man’s ability to be valuable to his loved ones.

I argue that removing guns would actually increase the number of men that carry out violent attacks to others as a backlash for their removed value.

I explained why men have a decreased perceived sense of value. How does decreased value jump to violence?

These pained individuals want to cause the most pain and destruction possible. Elliot Rodger saw the smart, handsome, fun person be evil. It wouldn’t have mattered as much if some nerd punched him. He would have been mad, but he wouldn’t have experienced evil. Rodger experienced evil when the jocks at the parties bullied and hit him, and were then rewarded with sex from the pretty ladies.

Not only did Rodger see evil in the world in the bullies, he saw that evil being encouraged by women. The jocks were evil. The women were evil. We all have evil in us. When people understand that there is the possibility of evil in all of us, we can do one of two things: act on it and bring destruction, or choose virtue despite of a proclivity to evil.

Another incentive for someone in this situation to bring destruction is the lack of attention they experienced. The Isla Vista shooter in 2014 articulated this quite nicely (hah). He wasn’t even seen by hot girls walking down the street. He wanted them and they didn’t even know he existed. That’s not the hot women’s fault, but it is a let down that the man doesn’t know how to go about getting their attention in a healthy way.

Elliot Rodgers knew one way to get attention. He knew his actions would end up all over Facebook. He knew the blonde hottie would notice him. He had an opportunity to become famous on Facebook, noticed by the people he always wanted attention from. And he took it.

So. Men have no perceived value and that perception is harmful to both themselves and innocent people.

  1. Family and parental values. Glorify the father and the mother.  Marriage and parenting are foundational aspects of every religion for good reason. They provide meaning. They aren’t results of being someone of value. They have value in and of themselves. Disincentivize divorce by changing alimony structure, removing the punishments that fall largely on the man, and punish those who leave for no reason or poor reason.
  2. Actually accept diversity between the sexes. Value it. Men and women are different. Allow men to be their strong, masculine selves. Allow them to manifest their sexual identities just as women have. And allow them to try. Allow men to build social skills. We have given resources to women to allow them to be confident and successful, but it’s men who are now left without perceived meaning. We need to give men the skills to succeed in a world that no longer values their old skillset.
  3. Get off Instagram and Facebook. Instagram and Facebook create mass negative emotion do to our proclivity to compare and to seek validation from others, that can never be fulfilled by more “likes”. It gives a platform for horrible people, and silences the majority of moderates who “aren’t interesting”. Life is lived by the average but we compare ourselves to the outliers that rise in popularity because of their wild ideas and actions. Sometimes, like in professional sports, that is inspiring. Sometimes, like the 17 year old with fake tits or Elliot Rodgers, it’s damaging and sad.
  4. Value the individual. We are all unique and all have our contributions. Allow the individual to try and fail. Again, don’t stop him before he can try, without giving him a chance to see what doesn’t work.