Have you ever been compared to a murderer?

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I think you misunderstand me.

I’m not trying to dismiss people’s feelings.

All I’m trying to say is that it’s ridiculous to think autistic people could be murderers by virtue of their autism.

I feel like people say you might be a serial killer in order to bully you. They don’t actually mean what they say.

Whom are you addressing in this post?

So far I think people in this thread agree with both things. I don't really think anyone associates autism with becoming a serial killer/school shooter, just that they attribute traits to those things and then bully autistic people for having those traits. I also don't think autism causes anyone to kill people, though I can see how maybe emotional control issues we can have and abuse we're faced with (which would worsen those control issues) could cause some of us who develop other problems, or who were born with other comorbids, to consider things like that or do them out of impulse. Though that doesn't really have anything to do with "autism" specifically, and is more about how people, NT or autistic, who are abused and have emotional issues can act in general.

One of those things that often leads to bullying for kids with ASD or NVLD is poor emotional understanding and regulation. They get wound up and angry or have meltdowns. If it's expressed as more of the former it's likely to reinforce the OMG UR GONNA KILL PEOPLE trope among your peers.

I've definitely noticed this. I eventually learned to not react and to "hold in" meltdowns until I got home so I didn't get ridiculed more, but some peers that didn't got harassed over it and were joked about sometimes more actively than me. I think for me it was teasing to get a reaction out of me ("maybe if I call this kid a school shooter he'll finally freak out at me and it'll be funny"), and for those other kids it was teasing due to their reaction ("this kid easily freaks out a lot and throws things, he acts like a potential school shooter").

Maybe you're right. A bit like when my friend's teenage girl got called fat at school, but she literally wasn't fat at all. She wasn't anorexic or anything. She was naturally a small, thin person but for some reason some nasty girls called her fat. Just to bully (she is NT).

But where I come from people don't generally make horrific assumptions or accusations of murderers. Quiet didn't mean suspicious at school. One time a troubled kid in my brother's class snuck into the school grounds one night and set the school alight. Thankfully only one wall was damaged but he fled when the fire engine and the police got there. The next day everyone was talking about it and wondering who it could have been. But I was never mentioned or accused. It was actually the trouble-makers that everyone suspected. The kid who done it got found out in the end.
I know it might not be the same as a school shooting, but I do know a girl who went to a school where there were stabbings going on, but it wasn't the quietest kids that done it. It was the obnoxious, aggressive kids. And whether some of them were autistic or not isn't the point, the point is that people here don't suspect the quiet kids and it is rarely, if not, never the quiet kids that committed these crimes.

It's just America, there's always school shootings there and always by nutters that happen to be autistic. I know this was in the UK but was the nutter that shot the primary school in Dunblane in 1996 autistic like the rest of them? Suppose he was. Are there ANY allistic school shooters?

Most school shooters aren't autistic, and seem to have social issues due to the emotional issues they have from familial abuse (they act out, don't know how to treat other people, get ridiculed for it, get resentful over the ridicule, etc.). Even though I don't think people associate autism with mass shootings, I do hear some people read that they had "social issues" and they immediately speculate whether it was autism, though that's a minority of people and I usually see other people dismiss that as bull.

I learned to hold them in as much as possible. I also learned how to hold on to stuff and retaliate later instead of while I was wound up, or to verbally spar with people who were social bullies, how and when I could get away with using force, etc. I figured since I had already been labelled that way leaning into it at times would be effective means of reducing physical bullying even if it mean more social bullying. I'm not sure if that was the end result though.

I'm pretty sure the main thing that ended up reducing a lot of physical bullying I dealt with was learning how to land a solid liver shot.

Sometimes I am able to hold down meltdowns until it's safe but not often. I also have misophonia which is a nightmare. I think that we are the most self controlled people on the planet. I know that if I could not control my physical expressions of the intensity of what I can feel and the frequency at which I feel it, if I were violent by nature, everyone around me would be dead. The fact that I have never been capable of physically hurting a single person or other being in my more than half century of existence says a lot. I can't say the same for the nts who have physically and in other ways hurt and abused me. Why can't they be compared to murderers?

It would be interesting to break down stats on non-gang related school shootings and see how many have ASD or a NVLD, including where possible how many might be undiagnosed. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable speculation that kids from the sorts of backgrounds you describe but be less likely to be diagnosed even if they do have symptoms of ASD or a NVLD.

I might be mistaken but I hypothesize that injustice collecting is a common trait among undiagnosed folks with ASD relative to NT allistic individuals. We certainly know individuals diagnosed with ASD who display that trait; speaking of my own experience being diagnosed helped me to start dealing with that trait so I assume it's more likely to be more severe in people who have yet to be diagnosed.

The Columbine shooters were “Allistic.” They had emotional problems…..but no mention was ever made of their “autism.”

One of them seemed “psychopathic” to some people. The other seemed “depressed.”

Had I of shot up my school there would have been no mention of having autism, and yet sure enough I was diagnosed as an adult.

I just believe the “autism” angle pertaining to school shooters is overly emphasized on the Internet—leading to autistic folks withdrawing more and more. And to incorrect assumptions about autism.

I can be contradicted up the gazoo about this. This won’t change how I feel

And leading to Joe’s irritations. And her shame at being perceived by others as seeming to be autistic or Aspergian, or whatever. I’m reacting, mostly, to Joe’s being ashamed at being diagnosed with Asperger’s. No shame should be attached to having an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I used to live right next door to a school. I had mental health issues like depression, anxiety and would verbally lash out angrily at my family, and there were sharp knives in the kitchen drawer...but grabbing them and using them to kill my family and the children next door never, ever crossed my mind and I know I'm not capable of doing such a thing. My parents know that too and never have had to hide the knives. I've often had rage outbursts in the kitchen right when there were knives laying about but instinctively and subconsciously I never involved knives of any sort when I was having an outburst. It just isn't in me.

My boyfriend's nephew is definitely not on the autism spectrum but he has bipolar and some schizophrenia traits, and if he feels threatened by another guy he would punch them without thinking first, but then regret it afterwards. So I would feel a bit more uneasy around him than I would any Aspie I have ever met.




I feel intense empathy for any living thing that gets hurt or killed, even the smallest insects. One time I had a spider in my room late at night, and I didn't want to wake other people trying to get rid of it, so I put a glass over it and planned to get rid of it in the morning. But I just couldn't sleep with a spider in my room like that and I kept thinking it might escape from the glass somehow while I was asleep, so I had no choice but to squish it with the rim of the glass. It had to be done. It was years ago now but to this day I still feel bad about what I'd done. So killing humans isn't exactly going to be on my agenda, not in a million years.

I think so far everyone agrees with each other, and I don't think the full-on conversation about a link between autism and school shooters/violent behaviour needs to continue on this thread. If someone wants to continue it they can ask a mod for comments about it to be moved to their own thread.

It’s inevitable that the link between school shooters and autism will come up in a thread such as this.

I didn’t mean to upset any one.