I feel like the real big question is what % of people with the identifiable risk factors seen in these guys actually go on to commit the crimes. Unfortunately (from a diagnostic standpoint) I imagine even among people who say/do severely disturbing things only a tiny, tiny portion ever act on it to this extent. So it seems nearly impossible to find criteria that is both sensitive and specific for this sort of thing.

and, for instance, if we find something, like how this guy talked about wanting to kill aliens or wtf ever, could they just stop talking about it and still get guns or something?

I know its tangential, but I dont think many (any?) of these guys actually had hallucinations.

If these "mass homicidal acts" are anything like suicide (which I suspect they are), then its likely that the urges to commit them are rather transient, although it is a longer time scale of like months in the case of mass homicide. So that if you identified someone who was high risk and hospitalized them, the urge could pass and they would not necessarily immediately go commit mass homicide once they got out of the hospital (not to say they still wouldnt be higher risk than average person though). I could very easily be wrong, but I think when considering the mindset of these single event mass homicides we are going to see they are more similar to suicide than they are to serial killers, serial rapists, child molesters,etc.

Media coverage, the killers know they'll be on the news. I think the kids in Columbine did it to bring attention to bullying.

Sample size is certainly an issue as if there are 3 incidents per year in a country with an adult, possible gun purchasing population of ~ 200,000,000, you have a 10 times better chance of hitting the powerball than going postal.

It happens remarkably infrequently.

But there is a more important issue with young kids that are a little different today, the mores of today make kids internalize things more. 50 years ago when i was a kid, if you were getting picked on at school, your parents would tell you the next time that happened, to bust the kid in the nose and you'd have his back and it would stop. Today, if you give that advice to your kid, you end up in jail or getting sued.

The killers always kill way less people than they could have, before killing themselves. Not sure why.

China has the same problem, except with kinfes. The same day this happened some loony over there attacked 20 kids with a knife. It definitely has something to do with the media/glamorization. They had the first guy do the knife thing in 2010 and now it's like a once every 3 month thing since then.

Not actually true at all. Really good book by a guy with asperger's who developed intricate rocket shooting guitars for Kiss (among other things) http://www.amazon.com/Look-Me-Eye-Li.../dp/0307396185

Reliability and capacity of modern firearms may be a factor imo, but trying to pin this down is an exercise in futility because lolsamplesize.

That's a heck of an interesting observation.

It is. I'm guessing that the ones who kill themselves value the damage they cause as secondary to their own deaths. So maximizing carnage isn't as important as making sure they die. Or something.

Marginal value theorem? If they are in part lashing out with some warped notion of punishing or getting revenge on society, killing as many as possible may not really be the goal.

I have a hard time not believing that a lot of it is related to all these bs drugs they give kids and people in general these days.

The list of disclaimers they read on some of these commercials is ridiculous and yet, they are perfectly willing to pay for the extra time it takes to read each and every one of them.

Diagnosis and prescriptions are profit generators instead of troubleshooting tools.

We, on cue from the "experts", are focusing too much on the personal psychology of the individuals. There is a stunning omission from the discussion of these issues in popular media. The media never seem to focus on the fact that this is an American phenomenon in it's frequency and apparent senselessness. If you were to look at the phenomenon scientifically, the fact that this is strictly an American phenomenon would be very significant- a starting point on the path to narrow down causality. Unfortunately we are blinded by propaganda about our innate superiority to the point where we can't even admit that there is something deeply amiss in our society.

Since, unlike something like schizophrenia for example, this does not appear to be a fundamentally diagnosable mental disorder, we should treat it as a problem of group psychology or social psychology. The question is what is it about America, as oppose to other countries, that provokes these particular crimes?

I can't say I know the answer but my gut tells me it has something to do with a phenomenon called status anxiety. We have a winner-take-all mentality in this country, an outgrowth of our dog-eat-dog brand of capitalism where it's every man for himself. The concepts of "winner" and "loser" are so pervasive that I would bet a lot of people in America just take them for granted as fundamental ways of viewing the world. People constantly compare themselves to others and internalize how they feel others must feel about them. We call ourselves "winners" and "losers". Unfortunately more of us feel like we are losers because we are not rich, good looking, and famous all at the same time. We have a bullying, winner or loser culture that extends into adulthood in subtle ways. The theme is pervasive in our movies, tv shows and music.

I think that once people start seeing themselves as having lost at life and internally labeling themselves a loser in this country they experience a lot of frustration and anger. Combine that with the ease of social isolation here in America and maybe that could explain people lashing out for revenge and, ultimately, attention. I mean the family unit is not as strong as it used to be. Furthermore if you are a "loser" you're family may disregard you as they don't want your loser stink on them.

So that's my theory. Immense status anxiety as a product of American style capitalism combines with the uniquely American ease of social isolation to produce lashings out for revenge and attention.

These recent shootings have been done by mostly folks under 25, right? A bit earlier to let capitalism depress them, no?

I agree that if we never look at ourselves we'll never solve the problem though.

They are not too young to be affected by the deeply entrenched attitudes and sensibilities associated with capitalism. Its not that capitalism depresses them, though it might. It's more that the mentality fostered by our brand of capitalism categorizes people, at very young ages starting in grade school, as winners and losers.

I recall a quote from the movie "The Rock" which I will always remember because the girl I was dating in high school gasped out when it was said. Sean Connery said (little google help for exact quote) "Your "best"!? Losers always whine about their "best"! Winners go home and **** the prom queen."

Do you see that this kind of thinking only goes on in America? I know not everyone has the chance to go around the world but I have been so lucky and I am telling you that a quote like this, which seems commonplace in an American Movie, is outside of the realm of thinking in many foreign countries. They just don't have that mentality to the extreme the way we do.

Perhaps the shooters are just at the age where their sense of doom is optimized as they fear a long life of being on the bottom and ridiculed by those around them and themselves as well.

We praise competition and victory in this country. You have to win and keep winning or you don't matter. That's the message we are bombarded with. You can literally look anywhere and see this. One downside to that is that competition is not just about you doing well. Competition is about beating someone else, which can be accomplished by doing well yourself or by causing someone else to do poorly. Labeling someone a loser is a tactic of the strategy of causing others to fail in order that you win. I almost see these attacks and some kind of cultural blowback.

We want our children to be winners. That's natural given the existing parameters of them being winners or losers. So we try to teach them to fight in various ways and we condone the bullying and labeling culture. We don't want them to be the victims of the ruthless mentality that we have created. So don't tell me that these guys are too young to be influenced by capitalism. It is more likely that they are too young to be able to see through any of it.

It's too bad losers can't be more happy-go-lucky about their situation, accept their lot in life, and not allow their frustration and anger to bother them so much. There's winners and losers in life, I wish losers could get over it and let it go. Losing is not the end of the world (unless you go on a rampage of course.)

nah, the opposite is the problem. Every kid gets a trophy today.

Can we not ruin this thread with the loltastic capitalism and drug arguments?

Best OP in a while.

I wonder if it's a statistical anomaly - (the prevalence of mass public rampage killings)

I have no idea, but it seems possible to me.

I actually like this argument, except the numbers don't bear it out. 'loserdom' is pervasive in America and even if the majority don't see themselves as losers, only one in 70,000,000 adults is going postal each year.

My best guess is most of these people are seriously and traumatically damaged emotionally. And, even then a very select few of this subset actually carry out their thoughts.

right before gizmo went to bed, she was watching a video, i dunno where from, that had a short interview with a forensic psychologist on the bbc. He said something about how he advised every news station in america and the uk to stop doing a number of things - stop showing body counts, stop showing 24/7 coverage of the events, stop having segments that start with flashing cop lights, stop showing completely irrelevant clips of the killer with as many pics of him/her (who am I kidding, it's "him" only) as possible.

All this advice was interspersed with examples of the bbc doing all the wrong stuff. He went on to say how whenever news stations make a huge deal out of some school shooting or what have you, they should expect a few copy cats who want all the attention the first guy got.

Something similar to that.

It was quite interesting. Of course it's hard to know how true it is. But I feel like "glamorizing mass shootings" is a bit more plausible than "we make losers feel bad, or maybe we sorta don't" as a working theory.

But it's what the market wants, if the boring news station that doesn't do all these sensational things, emotional carnage, ect, was dominating in ratings, others would follow. Except the opposite is true, why do you hate market outcomes?

There is certainly truth to this and I do think it is part of the problem. Maybe this interacts with the dynamic I was theorizing about. Maybe kids today get their ego's way puffed up and then can't take when things don't go the way they want them to for a stretch. Maybe they can't take it because the consequence of not being a winner is being a loser. There doesn't seem to be much in between.

Something I heard a psychologist say once is that real self esteem has to be connected with real accomplishment. You can't just suck, tell yourself you're the best, and have true self esteem; deep down you really process the real outcomes.

But we do have a mindset that shifts the scale of accomplishment down compared to other countries. Second place kinda sucks here and finishes down further is just unacceptable. Whereas the correct attitude is "OK I'm not good at that particular thing" in America it's like "I lost I must be sucky to the core".

I could definitely see the false self esteem leading to ego fracture playing a role in the psychology of these mass murderers.