I'd like to ask exactly HOW someone ISN'T mentally ill if they decide to shoot up a school??

I’d like to know how an entire country has regular school shoot ups. It’s sick af

Do you think all murderers should be classified as "mentally ill"?
Maybe you should try to read: "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil", by Hannah Arendt. Where she talks about Eichmans' days during the trial in Jerusalem for being one of the lead architects of the Holocaust.

She writes:


This idea of the banality of evil, that the most mundane people might have a set of morals that aren't in touch with those that judge them and are able to do attrocities, is also played with in pop culture. In "The Peacemaker" (1997) a political terrorist tries to explode a nuclear weapon in New York. And he leaves a message that should be released after the attack saying:


People can just be really messed up sometimes, but still have their empathy for others and not be sociopaths or have other conditions that we might label to be "mentally ill". Other examples can be found in the Milgram experiments on authority. And look at how prison wardens behaved in certain prisons (Abu Ghraib). Look at what people do when they fall into certain terrorist groups. It's not mental illness, it's a complex number of things dependin on the case. Some people are just really angry.

These multiple murders are appalling enough but knee-jerk reactions, mere vengeance or sterotyping people who might be mentally ill, or are single, cannot help anyone understand the crimes hence perhaps try to head off future such attacks.

Clearly too, if the shooter is killed or kills himself at the scene, obviously attempting to establish his motive may only become mere speculation. That is no good to the bereaved, and no good to trying to prevent any similar incidents.

'
Excepting terrorism and insurgency, although school and work-place massacres have occurred outside of the USA they are extremely rare.

There was a somewhat similar massacre of a youth camp in Norway about 10 or 12 years ago - but the lone gun-man survived and his motive was viciously political.

My own country, the UK, has suffered more than its fair share of politically-motivated terrorist attacks but purely random, apparently motiveless shootings by individuals number about 4 over the last 40 or 50 years.

Of them, one, and only one, was in a school - Dunblane Primary School, in 1996. Sixteen children and a teacher died, fifteen others were injured; in an attack lasting less than four minutes. This remains Britain's deadliest mass-shooting.

Motive? Not clear because the perpetrator, Thomas Hamilton, who lived a few miles from the village, shot himself at the end of his attack.

We now know he had a murky past, with complaints about his behaviour with boys leading to losing his leadership posts with a youth club and the Scouts. So it's possible he was driven, not by warped sexuality, but by growing self-pitying bitterness - but neither is an automatic route to being a murderer. The sad truth is, we will never know his motive.

Hamilton had armed himself with multiple-shot hand-guns legal at the time, and several hundred rounds. He had also tried, fortunately unsuccessfully, to cut the school's telephone line.

In the wake of it, the gun laws were tightened, restricting hand-gun ownership to licenced single-shot weapons and antiques

[Source - Wikipedia]

Nor will we ever know any motive of a random murderer who dies with his victims, by his own gun or that of someone else - unless he has left a "confession" of intent, or at least sufficient clear background information for a reasonably intelligent, professional assessment.

[i]We all want an end to such crimes[/], but...

Blindly calling such people "mentally ill" or "terrorist incels" serves only vengeance, and worse, may even risk stereotyping any mental-illness or bachelordom as a potential danger to society.

[i]Do we really want that?[/]

I think the separation between mentally ill and violence is an important distinction.

Yes, it's sick to shoot up a school. But oftentimes people do sick things with complete mental acuity. Ascribing metal health issues as the sole reason behind violence also absolves society of any responsibility for the action. Which in some cases is good, but in other cases may not be a healthy diagnosis of the problem. School shootings are a reoccurring event in America, and exclusively in America.

Thank GOD I live in a decent country, that is not gun crazy

So much in this topic. For instance, the fact that we continue to moralize crime rather than handle it practically. Words like "heinous" and "evil" are lazy throw-away words that prevent us from thoroughly investigating the issue. Then there are the various definitions of "ill."

Yes, anyone who perpetrates a mass shooting is suffering from either a chronic mental condition, an acute crisis or both. But no, that's not enough to present in court. It might be entered to mitigate his penalty, but it won't stand alone unless the offender took no measure to cover up his crime nor seemed to acknowledge or understand his actions were wrong (definitions vary across land).

We call for mental health background checks as if that'll prevent shootings while out of the other side of our mouth we stigmatize and mock mental health. We have a full month for autism awareness and half a dozen TikTok channels dedicated to filming the addicted and mentally unwell.

An the good 'ol US of A, we're interested in vengeance and lip service. Nothing more.

Newsflash: the vast majority of us are mentally ill to varying degrees because the way we live is so very far removed from the way humans evolved to live.

I think it should be more of a classification of
evil
detached from reality
just don't don't give a fuc*

you have to be mentally disturbed to do something like that

but is it ted bundy evil? just doing it because it feels good?

are you crazy as a bed bug and killing the martians that have invaded?

or just want to shoot a man just to watch him bleed?

the only difference is where you end up.

In jail or a mental facility

That is the real issue. People try and blame the guns but it isn't the gun's fault. Millions of people own millions of guns and do no harm. The harm comes from the fact that there are so many loonies on the loose. We pretend abnormal things are normal. A man puts on a dress and starts calling himself Sally and instead of getting him mental help we all start calling him Sally. Society is sick. Not only have standards been abandoned but so have logic and sense.

The lunatics are running the asylum indeed.

It's very rational, you're ignoring personality issues that can go along with shooting up a school. Not all murderers are mentally insane and some people really do kill simply because they want to. Saying they are always mentally unhealthy would create leniency for their crimes, sometimes people just are.

It’s easy. If the shooter is white, it’s society’s fault for failing him. If it’s a POC, they’re a terrorist.

I think you are pointing at a real flaw in adversarial legal systems. We want to hold these killers responsible. But if they are mentally ill they aren't responsible. So in order to see justice done we have to rule out mental illness.

They seem to be making a different approach this time and are going to prosecute the parents as accessory/accountable..
Time will tell if any kids in the future will stop and consider that they are condemning their parents if they go shoot shit up..
Interesting to see how this goes

Probably because the killer doesn't fit the profiles that we currently have on recognising mental illnesses.

Looking at this from a different angle, it's probably a good thing because people aren't able to claim "My responsibility was diminished because of my mental illness".

"there's no evidence for psychological or mental health issues affecting the shootings....I am truly dumbfounded. Who on earth would write that ?

Mind you in a world when a 5 year old can decide to be a boy one day, a girl the next, a boy again 3 days later.....and deemed NOT confused..😕

To one degree or another, we are all mentally ill. The legal requirement is simply does the accused know right from wrong and can they reliably contribute to their legal defense?

Shooting up a school is crazy but the shooter probably knows it’s wrong.

Aww, you're used to delete comments that don't validate your bias? Are you one of those who were whining about 1A and "cancel culture" until yesterday, I bet?

Probably because it would force people, local, state and federal Government to have a serious debate on the gun culture if mentally ill people can easily access these weapons.

How could it make sense to say it's 'not fair' to mention 38.000 gun deaths in your country, on the grounds that there are other places where there are more?

I believe the LEGAL definition of mental illness lies in the person's inability to know what they're doing is wrong.

There's degrees of mentally ill.

I think there Mentally Ill

People also claim that JFK Jr will rise from the dead to help Donald Trump get re-elected. Facts remain the same, however, regardless of whether you want to believe in them.

The people who dismiss psychological causes for these actions are the same people who get tension headaches every time a certain person walks into the room, and never think about that fact beyond taking an aspirin.