Quote:blackaeronaut wrote:Not that I know of, but these events are so rare that you could probably compile it yourself from old news reports in a day or so.
Really, how often does it happen that one of these shootings occurs where at least one of the following does not apply?
1) Perpetrator was mentally disturbed
2) Weapons were acquired illegally
But really, is there any source out there where I can compare this sort of data? I honestly would like to look into this.
You'd need to define your standard for "mentally disturbed," though--it's tough, because there are no objective standards. If you define it as "involuntarily committed as a danger to themselves or others at some time before the killing," I don't think any of those killers would meet it. On the other hand, I think everyone would agree that anyone who kills a large number of total strangers is mentally disturbed (although in the US if the killer is wearing a government issued costume most people would instead call them heroes).
I know that some of them have been on psychotropic drugs (because some people blame the drugs), but given that being a normal kid is defined as a mental illness and treated with psychotropic drugs (there's lots of money in selling those drugs), I'm skeptical of drawing any conclusions from it.
I figure it's pointless to worry about something that's less dangerous than being struck by lightning. If someone wants to advocate some policy change in the US that would save lives, getting rid of the "war on drugs" or ending US military intervention overseas would both do more good by many orders of magnitude.