Lafayette, LA. Movie Theater Shooting

[karaddin]

the point, I think, is that you can't simply say that all, or even most, of these mass murderers are mentally ill. some might be, by the clinical definition of the word, while others are rational calculating people with a clear agenda of doing violence onto others.

Thank you Relic. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Well, to me mental illness would include something like sociopathy/psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder.

 

Meaning that the CEO's of many large companies should be classified as mentally ill.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Rick Perry Thinks Everyone Should Take Their Guns to the Movies...

 

 

 http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/26/politics/rick-perry-gun-free-zones-movie-theaters/index.html

 

 

 

 http://s1336.photobucket.com/user/Lumpy67/media/The%20Good%20the%20Bad%20the%20Ugly%20the%20kid_zps3rngjfxz.gif.html

[Swordfish]

well, while both access to firearms and shitty mental health systems are both partially responsible, there are plenty of other countries with those two problems and virtually zero indiscriminate mass murders (of course a lot of these countries have large criminal syndicates for the murderers among us to find employment).

but, it goes beyond guns and mental health in the usa, which is why it's such a complicated issue. there is a darkness in American culture that you are both overlooking.

 

 

I tend to agree,  but I have no idea how to even quantify it, much less what to do about it.

[TerraPrime]

Just to re-emphasize the point, even if a person is clinically depressed, or otherwise suffers from mental health issues, it does not follow that that mental health issue is the root cause in their decision to commit multiple murders. There are probably thousands of people with undiagnosed and/or untreated clinical depression, and they do not commit mass murders. And unless this particular murderer had been seen by a clinician, we have no way of knowing whether he fits the DSM crtieria for antisocial personality disorder or other forms of mental illness that will lead him to disregard other human sufferings. There is a larger area between "things normal people do" and "things that qualify you for mental illness in a clinical sense." Retroactively branding this killer as antisocial or sociopathic, without evidence, is both factually wrong and a disservice to those who do struggle with these problems. 

 

On a personal level, having seen the threats of physical violence made against various minority members and women, I have less than no difficulty in believing that someone can want to kill minority members without ever approaching the clinical definitions of mental illness. If nothing else, look at the number of intimate partner violence - are all those perpetrators mentally ill and sociopathic, fror physically hurting people they proclaim to love? No, I don't think so. Most of them are "normal" and just really bad people who do bad things.