What is truly terrifying is not the prospect of a shooters insanity...

[Gravitycollapse]

But is instead the prospect that the shooter is totally, utterly sane. That his actions were considered extensively, plans made diligently, accounts resolved intelligently and the specter of death reasonably accommodated.

We are all so quick to dismiss these shooters as insane. But I think that may be out of the immutable fear that they are not much different from the rest of us.

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

[dkf]

1. We don't know anything yet about his motives. I wonder if we ever will.

[jberryhill]

2. Yeah, um, about your thinking...

You might want to consider not doing it out loud that often, if you know what I mean.

[Skittles]

3. I have a coworker who constantly thinks out loud

he thinks I cannot hear him but I can

[Katashi_itto]

4. I think its a form of nonsanity sanity. When to many rats are in a cage they begin to eat each

other. I think this is like that. We have created a dog-eat-dog society with the availability of weapons that can efficiently kill.

I think it's along that vein.

[LiberalLoner]

6. +1

[loyalsister]

5. The line I hear most often

is "only a crazy person could do such a thing." That statement automatically conjures the images of schizophrenia and\or other mental illnesses.
A pathology such as sociopathy may be present, but it is unlikely that the person has a treatable mental illness.
How many people would understand it if someone shot up a bank that foreclosed on their home? It's hard to imagine actually doing such a thing, but the reason is something that a lot of people can grasp.
There may be some reasoning behind the Alexis' massacre that only he knows or understands.

I think that the more comprehensible a crime, the more frightening.

[CanSocDem]

10. I know what you mean.

I had doubts about my own mental health when I heard that Hinckleys lawyers would plead insanity for his attempt on Reagan.


.

[raccoon]

7. Yep. Just like many people, me included, used to think all the people who ran the concentration

camps during the Holocaust must be criminally insane.

Only they weren't.

[Lurks Often]

8. Insanity isn't a black or white issue,

it is a sliding scale from completely sane to lock them up and throw away the key. Most of us can't conceive of going somewhere and trying to murder as many people as possible before law enforcement kills us.

There does seem to be some common elements in mass shootings: the shooter is very angry, very depressed and suicidal. They want to hurt as many people as possible before they die to make others suffer the way they are suffering.

They are sufficiently sane to function every day in society without making the majority of people they interact with question their sanity or fear that they will try and hurt them.

In the days and weeks to come, there will be those that interacted with the Washington Navy Yard murderer will look back with 20/20 hindsight and realize that they missed a warning sign.

[malaise]

9. In this instance Alexis looks way more sane than

some of the recent killers but since he was receiving sporadic psychiatric treatment at the VA he clearly had problems and his father said he had PTSD since 9/11.

Forget his psychiatric problems, given his misuse of weapons, he should not have been able to purchase a gun.

[Myrina]

11. What I don't understand, is ...

... every single fucking time something like this happens, the entire country goes through a cycle of 'what was wrong with him' 'why did he snap' 'who was his real target' etc etc rather than giving people the encouragement (if that's the correct term) to express why they're at the end of their rope BEFORE they do something like this.

Mental health care -- yeah that's part of it, but our current society is so fucked up in so many directions & nobody (aside from the ER/Trauma doc yesterday) says "Stop this crazy machine for 2 minutes and let's figure out what the hell is making people lose their minds!!!"

And I'm sure the media-conglomo-corporatists don't WANT us to do that because then we'd realize we're miserable in our jobs, in debt up to our eyeballs, trying to raise kids and care for elders, and dealing with dysfunctional relationships that we don't know how to handle and nothing makes sense anymore.


Argh. I just feel like this country has begun its 'spin out of control' cycle.

[bemildred]

12. Crazy people can be quite rational, everything nicely compartmentalized. nt

[Avalux]

13. Call it whatever you want, but a lack of empathy is a huge part of it.

When people make a choice to do something this horrific, they are like a machine - they have no feelings whatsoever about taking another person's life. They are unable to feel.