Exactly. I moved away. It doesn’t carry prison terms. Even if killing my abusive relatives had been easy, why would I have wanted to do something that would have put me in (psychiatric) prison, and that would have caused my non-abusive relatives a lot of pain?
Personally I think if a non-abusive relative knows about abuse and is approached by a victim but does nothing, then they should have no right to complain about being shocked that the abusive relative was killed/harmed by the victim. Even in the criminal justice system, why would anyone have any sympathy for a constant abuser even if they were harmed in a relatively gruesome homicide? The victim should not be prosecuted but cautioned and transferred to a better family.
I know it’s an unpopular opinion though.
In this day and age? What if Heather decides to waste her daddy *and *her two mommies?
Most of my non-abusive relatives didn’t know about abuse. Dad knew he didn’t like his parents in law and did his best to protect us from them (short of actually forcing Mom to cut up all family bonds); he didn’t know about Mom’s own abusive behavior.
My brothers are younger than me. It was not their job to protect me, but mine to protect them.
My father was physically and emotionally abusive, and I remember lying in bed, thinking up ways of killing him. I honestly don’t know why I never tried, but if I had, I don’t think there was even one person who knew him who would have blamed me. He was well-known for his explosive temper and verbal abuse. There were even close relatives whom we never saw, because they didn’t want their own kids exposed to him. I even ran away from home a few times, once after he had beaten the crap out of me for no reason (and no, he didn’t drink). But a 6yo kid really had no place to go, so I was dragged back home. Finally, as a teenager, I started calculating the exact number of days until high school graduation, when I’d be able to go to college far away from home. That made it at least tolerable, knowing my “prison sentence” wasn’t for life.
I think the one thing that kept me going was that I never considered his behavior “normal”. None of my friends’ fathers were anything like that, and certainly not Ward Cleaver or any other tv dad. I was imprisoned with a monster, and the only thing to do was to keep my distance until the day of my release.
I think that most ‘normal’ who transition from homicidal ideation to serious action of parracide, school shootings, terrorism and don’t exhibit any psychiatric disorders (psychosis, schizophrenia) are severly distanced from society emotionally.
As you said, you had friends. Almost all kids who kill others after a long time have multidimensional problems [Ii.e.* shitty family, shitty school environment (psychologically not necessarily a financially disadvantaged school), and usually horrible self esteem about race/gender/psychological problems/physical problems etc. In essence, people like Elliot Rodger have no hope in their minds.
In the vein of this thread, ISTM that there is a lot less Islamic terrorism than there mathematically ought to be. If someone who dies in jihad is guaranteed entrance to heaven (but not guaranteed it if they die in a non-jihad way), and there are well over 1 billion Muslims in the world, you’d expect there to be far more Islamic jihadism than there is today, maybe 1,000 al-Qaedas. But there isn’t. And you’d expect it to be people like terminally ill cancer patients, etc., who’d try to go jihad, but they don’t.
Yes, it’s also personal though.
Nothing personal about deciding to suicide by ramming some anonymous person head on, the person you are ramming is someone you don;t even know, they have done nothing real implied or imagined to you, that does not usually fit in with the above.
If one is going to run about just taking out random people, that’s a different game.
And one would probably be seeking out some kind of enjoyment in that game, and the aftermath.
I think in real life those people are in the minority, and the majority get some kind of enjoyment out of it and aren’t particularly fond of offing themselves