Shooting blamed on Asperger syndrome

This is annoying:

The news that Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old confirmed by police as a suspect in the violent rampage which left seven people dead and 13 injured in Isla Vista, southern California, had Asperger’s Disorder – a form of autism – has raised questions about whether the condition was a factor in the man’s horrific actions.

Adam Lanza, the man responsible for the Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 26 people, including 20 school children, dead in December of 2012 had also been diagnosed with Asperger’s. And in times of tragedy like these, it’s natural to want answers for how such senseless, horrendous acts could happen. It’s also reasonable to question whether Asperger’s was a factor in the violent actions of the two men. Yet, most experts will tell you that people with Asperger’s are rule followers, not rule breakers.

While those on the autism spectrum may not come hardwired with the same levels of social understanding as people without the syndrome, and can be involved in some crime, there is no proven connection between the diagnosis and violent behaviour.

I just listened to Michio Kaku plugging his latest book, and he said you can see what Asperger syndrome is by watching the CBS TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. He said the most common symptom are an inability to make eye contact and misunderstand women.

But if you watch the show, the nerdy characters are all good at making eye contact, and they understand women very well. In the last episode, the most supposedly Asperger character runs off and abandons his girlfriend, but it is not because he does not understand her. He goes because of his own problems, which have little or nothing to do with Asperger. Kaku claimed that the famous physicists Newton, Einstein, and Dirac also had Asperger, but none of them is known to have had trouble making eye contact and 2 of them had long-term marriages.

Asperger syndrome is just a personality characteristic, and a big fad. It has been dropped from the DSM-5.

You can expect the shrinks and medicos to use tragedies like the Santa Barbara shooting to to expand their power and influence. Currently,

The National Rifle Association is blocking the nomination of Vivek Murthy, a doctor at Boston's Brigham and Women's hospital and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, for surgeon general. The reason? Murthy was one of the authors of a letter saying that "strong measures to reduce gun violence must be taken immediately." So despite a bipartisan recommendation from the Senate HELP committee in February, the NRA promised to "score" any vote on Murthy confirmation, meaning an affirmative vote would pull down a senator's annual rating from the group.

Murthy ought to be blocked. We need a surgeon with medical expertise who is concerned with medical problems within that expertise. His anti-gun letter is almost entirely political and is not based on any medical knowledge or facts. This is just a nomination to push Pres. Barack Obama's leftist anti-gun agenda.

Update: It appears that Eliot Rodger had a history of misdiagnosis and mistreatment from shrinks, and bullying from classmates. He posted his life story, and he describes a bad case of social anxiety. A blog comments:

The key factor in understanding Elliot’s personality is that he was very high on the “neuroticism” scale. People, including “professional” psychiatrists who should have known better, seem to think that he had all sorts of other mental “illnesses” such as Asperger’s Syndrome, or later in his life schizophrenia. Elliot knew that he didn’t have schizophrenia, because he was quite introspective about why he was messed up, and that’s why he refused to take the Risperidone that was prescribed for him. I think that Elliot really wanted help, but he had too much social anxiety to ask for it properly, or maybe the people who were supposed to be helping him were just too clueless. ...

Neuroticism is not a very trendy psychological diagnosis. Every kid is being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but kids who simply have very high Neuroticism are ignored and don’t get the help that they need. Yet anyone who bothers to read all of Elliot’s autobiography will see that the Wikipedia explanation of high Neuroticism perfectly matches what Elliot experienced.

The SPLC, a Jewish-led hate group, ignores this in order to push its leftist agenda.

Update: There are some racial and other angles to this story that I ignored. Eliot's birth mom was Malaysian and his step-mom was Morrocan. His biracial sister had no trouble getting laid, but he was a misfit. He was attracted to blond white women, but they ignored him. His first three killings were knife stabbings, and he tried to run down bicyclists with his BMW, so it is not entirely a gun story.