Media Suppresses Causes Of Orlando And Texas Shootings Again

Believe it or not there is an enormous amount of good research that could help explain and prevent the root causes so that shootings like the ones in Orlando and Texas and many others are much less common; but for one reason or another the media refuses to report on it.

They also refuse to cover political candidates that do a much better job addressing these issues, although they have provided more coverage to Bernie Sanders than most grassroots candidates that address social causes that could prevent violence. If the media and political establishment have their way they will only give the public two options for president both of whom think the way to stop violence is to bomb more people in other countries even though the reason they often strike out is in retaliation for these bombings. Not that that is the only contributing cause but it is one of the most important ones.

There isn't just one contributing cause of these violent events and various shootings almost always have multiple contributing causes but there is research on many of the most important ones and the media could do a much better job reporting on them.

If they did then much more could be done to prevent the long term contributing causes of violence.

Instead they go through the same rituals only covering one or two of the contributing causes, usually gun control and mental illness; but they don't even do a good job covering those and they ignore other more important contributing causes.

The most important contributing cause is almost certainly child abuse leading to escalating violence; and another one of the most important contributing causes is that our own government is constantly training people to kill for wars based at least partially on lies or flawed ideological reasons; and they're simultaneously inciting retaliation from the opposition and refusing to seriously consider it as a potential cause for this violence.

I've reported on these in past articles before with extensive sources from peer reviewed researchers for a variety of the contributing causes; so instead of repeating many of these sources I'll cite some of the past articles below.

Apparently we're also having a growing problem where at least three years in a row there was an enormous amount of coverage glorying veterans on Memorial Day while only limited coverage has been provided for at least four shootings taking place during Memorial Day celebration involving veterans with emotional problems that almost certainly involved untreated distress from their military service and there are hundreds if not thousands more similar incidents each year. While the media has been providing an enormous amount of coverage of the Orlando shooting they've hardly provided any coverage for last months shooting in Texas, which turned out to be by a veteran; but while they provided most of the coverage for that this was not reported then when it was reported it was only briefly mentioned on national media, as reported in the following article:

Gunman in Houston Shooting Rampage ID'd as Army Veteran, Fired 212 Rounds: Cops 0/31/2016

The gunman who terrorized a quiet Houston neighborhood Sunday before a SWAT officer shot him dead was an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan and was suffering from depression, officials and family said Tuesday.

Dionisio Garza III, 25, had left San Bernardino County, California, for Texas last week to see friends in the area, Houston police said. But the trip turned into a shooting rampage in which Garza fired off 212 rounds and left another person dead and six others wounded, including two officers.

Garza "suffered from some depression," authorities told reporters. "His family indicated he wasn't feeling right and came here to hang out with his friend." Complete article

I reported on this same problem last year in Memorial Day Veteran Shootings Part of Much Larger Problem when there were two other memorial day shootings by veterans that hardly got any coverage from the traditional media. To see if it was part of a trend I Googled a little bit to see if there were more in previous years and found another on the year before, Isaac Sims an Iraq Vet Killed In Gunfight With Police Was Turned Away by VA Hospital. 05/27/2014 This search method turned up mostly more recent news even though I tried to Google for past years so there could be many more that could turn up in a more thorough search.

This doesn't necessarily mean that their military experiences or PTSD are the only causes for these shooting sprees; they almost certainly aren't. In most cases there is also a history of abuse that turns up in more thorough investigations if they're done well, to indicate that most if not all these people going on shooting sprees were abused as a child which taught them to deal with problems through violence. Sometimes this evidence comes out fairly quickly like when it was disclosed that Dylann Roof was abused by his own father who may have also taught him racism. He wasn't a veteran but researchers like Dorothy Otnow Lewis have indicated that when she looks close enough she always finds evidence of past abuse from murders that she researchers, although it takes time and the media doesn't do this research for most of them, especially recent ones. She doesn't just rely on claims of abuse from murderers, who often deny being abused; she also seeks additional corroborating evidence like hospital or police records or independent witnesses that don't have a motive to distort the truth.

In many cases additional contributing causes are added when a child who was raised in an authoritarian manner goes to boot camp and is taught to obey orders without question under extreme emotional distress. This is common in both military training and police training or even in training for security workers.

Our government is routinely training many of the people who go on these shooting sprees to be violent instead of teaching about the most effective ways to prevent violence.

Then they blame it on all the wrong reasons.

For example, there appears to be a significant amount of evidence that Omar Mateen almost certainly wasn't inspired by ISIS, even though he allegedly pledged support to them. He also allegedly pledged support to several other organizations who are often at odds with each others, which indicates that he probably isn't as familiar as the media implies with many if any of them; and he was almost certainly using this as a way to strike out for his own emotional problems.

There's also evidence to indicate that he had emotional problems prior to this incident and that he almost certainly shouldn't have been working as a security guard that occasionally did work for the government including at a court house. His first wife reported that he was abusive and the FBI allegedly asked that he be removed from security at a court house while investigating him, and they still kept him working at other locations.

The fact that he might have been a closet homosexual while also hating homosexuals shouldn't be as surprising as most people think; Roy Cohn who was an aid to Joseph McCarthy while he persecuted gays was also gay. He was also a lawyer representing Donald Trump at one point too. As I explained in Cause and Effect of Hatred irrational misplacement of blame like this is often a result of early abuse, although there hasn't been enough investigation into his past yet. It isn't inconceivable that if a small percentage of gay people who were often persecuted by people who thought he might be gay he might have tried to avoid this by becoming homophobic to convince people he wasn't gay. This might be even more common if they were molested as children and couldn't take out their blame on the people that molested them since they're often their caretakers.

The one potentially contributing cause that they do constantly cover is gun control and how it might prevent mass shootings. By spending so much time covering this without covering anything else people might get the impression that implementing gun control might solve all shootings; however this is virtually out of the question since it is almost certainly not the most important contributing factor and it definitely isn't the only one that needs to be addressed. There is a correlation indicating that states with more gun control have lower murder rates but it isn't that big; this shows a much bigger correlation with suicides especially in Alaska and Wyoming, both of which also have high veteran populations.

Even though reasonable gun control correlates with lower murder rates many of these same states also correlate with other contributing causes including the use of corporal punishment in schools which leads to escalating violence. However it doesn't take a genius to realize that if they made it harder to get assault weapons many murders could be prevented from escalating into mass murders.

Rick Scott said that Florida law enforcement was very good at catching people if they go on a shooting spree like this; however this hardly seems like it will be much of a deterrent if the people are suicidal, which appears to be the case in many cases; and Florida is one of the few states that are experiencing rises in murder rates while Most of the country is experiencing declines according to FBI Murder Rates Per 100,000 People by State. The get tough on crime policies that Rick Scott supports clearly don't work at all. State that are most likely to support the death penalty and allow corporal punishment in schools have the highest murder rates while those that don't support either are much more likely to have the lowest murder rates.

States that do a better job providing education, child care, reducing poverty and economic inequality also tend to have the lowest murder rates.

Unfortunately the politicians who support the worst policies often get the most political support from corporations since they enable them to get rich at the expense of the majority; however they also support policies that are much more likely to result in higher murder rates and violent crime. This includes both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who want to respond to these problems by increasing the amount of bombing that we do to ISIS and people around the world that we can't get along with. They also both support increased arms sales to countries around the world and support tyrants that are allegedly our allies, at least for now.

One thing that should be easy to understand is that they don't like it when our military bombs us anymore than we like it when people strike out in anger, often at least partially in retaliation.

This would be an incredibly easy double standard for anyone who had access to reasonable reporting and is capable of rational thinking.

However our media doesn't provide reasonable reporting and a large percentage is routinely encouraged to make their decisions based on emotions by the media and political operatives that routinely try to incite fear about crime and potential threats of war, that are often based on lies.



Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein both do a much better job supporting policies that would help reduce violent crime; however in most cases they support them for different reasons and don't do as much as they could to educate the public about how they could also help reduce violence. Improving education and reducing economic inequality, among other things, are worth doing on their own but they also reduce the contributing causes of violent crime and more can be done to educate the public about it.

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Edit August 10 2016:





Neither Hillary Clinton or the media have followed up on this shooting by reporting on the root causes of violence and how they escalate anymore than they have after past shootings; however according to, Father of Pulse nightclub shooter backing Hillary Clinton 08/09/2016 in an ironic twist they've added to the entertainment value of this story. The Clinton campaign, of course distanced themselves from this the shooters father; however there was little or no discussion about whether his fanatical views were passed on to his son; nor was there any high profile investigation into whether he was abusive in the manner he raised his son.

Seddique Mateen said, "I spoke a lot about that and wish that my son joined the Army and fought ISIS. That would be much better." however there was no consideration about whether abuse that often starts at an early age and escalates later with bullying might have escalated even more during military boot camp training. As reported in other above or other articles listed below many veterans who were prone to violence from an early age weren't screened properly and hazing in boot camp may ahve only added to his violent tendencies if he had joined the army. Hillary Clinton's campaign has disavowed any connection with this man; however even though they don't agree on everything they do agree on some of the training tactics which lead to escalating violence.

I have provided much more research into many of the most important contributing causes of escalating violence in many of my past posts, and they usually provide sources that did more extensive research which is available to everyone. The following are some of the most important ones which could dramatically reduce violence if more people knew about them:

Does child abuse and bullying lead to more violence?

Child abuse and bullying link in study long over due

Cause and Effect of Hatred

Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows

Does lack of education increase violent crime? Religion?

How much does Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates?

States with high murder rates have larger veteran populations

Teach a soldier to kill and he just might

The tragedy of gambling politics in United States

How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?

Politics, not technology, caused botched executions

Troy, Cameron, Gary all innocent? And executed?

Democrats do a bad job on crime; Republicans and the Media are worse!!

Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit

Life Insurance and media companies are encouraging lots of murders

Union Busting adds to corrupt bureaucracy and incites crime