The Major Factor underlying the Increase in Rampage Killings

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If someone robs a bank or any other type of robbery there is the potential that multiple people will be killed if it is an armed robbery, however the robbery is most often considered the motive, not one of killing people. Robberies have been reported on a steady decline since the early 90's; it would only stand to reason that if rampage killings that were increasing were averaged into these other classified crimes that are decreasing there would not likely be as much of an overall increase or decrease over time since the early 90's. Gang violence was at it's peak during the 80's in the crack wars, however the crime of drug trafficking was often associated with that gang violence.

The lull in rampage killings of all types in the US in the 50's and early 60s, is an enigma in the last hundred years. Wiki uses a broad definition where as few as 1 can be killed with sufficient numbers injured. Even with that broad definition that lull is extremely evident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ra ... :_Americas

I have not seen a definition of rampage killings/spree killings that include gang violence or robberies, anywhere but what Mr. Fox has constructed and describes. The much longer time span studied by the New York Times, in the year 2000, also did not include gang violence or robberies in that research and result.

Crazy people being crazy and doing crazy things.

Oh, and I'm going to point the finger at the way the media loves to sensationalize these events, lending instant fame and notoriety to the killer in question.

Many of these screwballs have narcissistic traits that only become inflamed by all of the coverage given to the perpetrators of these violent acts. My prediction is the next nutcase is going to shoot-up a daycare center and waste a bunch of infants in order to out-do" Lanza and get even more attention.

American media and tv shows are shown across the world and yet it's only America that has this problem...

Just look at other Western countries where gun fatalities are the lowest. What is different there ? Why do they not feel the need to have guns, specially semi automatic assault weapons, around the house ?

This doesn't make sense to me. Many of these killers kill themselves. Others avoid being caught or recognized, or at least plead not guilty when caught. None of these, especially suicide, leads me to think they just want attention.

Most of the answers I see, here and in other media, just seem too superficial and simplistic to me. The human psyche is complex. There are as many reasons for killing as there are killers. For many of these crimes we will never know all the answers. Having lost a family member to violence many years ago, I can honestly say that I'm not even sure I want to know the answers. I like being inside my mind. I don't want to be inside the mind of the person who would kill my loved one, and that is the only way to really understand it. I will never understand it, won't pretend to, or imagine that I ever can.

I think that when we look at these incidents, a modicum of humility is called for, to admit to ourselves we don't know everything about human behavior - rather than to act as if we have all the answers and that it's as simple as passing a law, eradicating one type of weapon, or marginalizing yet another group of people. Most of the so-called solutions seem to me to come with their own multitude of problems.

if this was a dominant feature more blacks, islamists and hispanics would present as spree shooters
it appears to be those from the top of the s**tpile doing the shooting

How do you guys classify the murder and mayhem done by Bashir Assad on people in Syria?

Is what he does rampage killing?

See http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2 ... 38840.html

ruveyn

I think Assad should be put into a separate class of megalomaniacal killers who have armies and secret police forces to kill and maim vast numbers for them, which would also include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I would echo Mike1's list, coupled with the growth in social media. My fear/ hatred of Facebook may be unreasonable in depth, but I would smite it.

From watching Bowling For Columbine yesterday, it looks like the media is also partially to blame for the number of gun murders in the United States. The American news stations spread propaganda and fuel hysteria, whereas the Canadian news stations seem more honest and intelligible. Canada's gun murder rate is far lower than America's. A lot of Canadians don't even lock their doors.

i dont believe it is so much and issue of why rampage killings are on the rise.rampage crimes are on the rise because the world is becoming more chaotic.
so the question is then,why is the world becoming more chaotic?because human civilization is getting older.chaos is a natural and mathmatical side affect of time itself.its like when you buy a deck of cards the cards are all in a row from the king of spades to the ace of clubs.if you shuffle the deck the cards disorganize and the more and more you continue to shuffle the deck,the more chaotic the layout of the cards progessively becomes.

thats why eccentric human behavior is on the rise because human culture ages and matures like anything else and sometimes like wine if it ages to much it turns to vinager.people inherit the genes and DNA of there parent yet people are not clones of there parents either because every child's DNA mutates slightly from there parents otherwise we would be clones of our parents.so as more and more people procreate and breed the more varied the breeding paterns.and of coarse like a learning curve when there are fewer people it takes longer for the population to grow,if you have more people people breed like wildfire and the human population increases progressively even if people have fewer kids per family just the sheer numbers of people on earth increases population growth.

rates of death do offset numerical population growth and many countries are at 0% population growth but death has no affect on time and the effect time has on culture.im not talking about gross population growth but the affect the age of a culture has on human behavior.as the human race and its culture ages culture becomes more and more random.

im am not very good at putting concepts into words but i think i have unelequentley explained why human behavior will become more and more random and chaotic

This is something I think about too, and part of that is the population explosion. Someone a long time ago described it to me as the rats in a cage syndrome. Too many rats in the cage and they start gnawing on each other. I'm not sure if that's true, but the idea makes some sense to me. I think we live in a world in which life is cheap, portrayed as such in fiction, acted on as such by corporate bottom-line mindsets and corrupt governments, cheapened still more by our immense numbers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... es-history

Here is a longer view from 1949 that uses the same definition of rampage killings that the New York Times did, and similar to the one that Wiki uses. The bar graphs if 2011, and 2012 the deadliest year of rampage killings were included would be almost identical to the time line that "Mother Jones" provided, except pictures and details about the killers were not included. If the Bar graph had gone back to 1950 there would have been only one bar of killings in 1958, as that was the only year in that decade that a rampage killing was recorded, per the Wiki Link.

From looking at the bar graphs and what would have been an almost identical explosion of killings in years leading up to 1/1/2000, and 12/21/2012, if the bars for 2011 and 2012 had been included, I'll add in another potential variable that someone had mentioned specific to "Mayan Madness" for 12/21/2012, for the "Millennium Madness" in the years leading up to 2000.

There was a mass hysteria among some that it was going to be "the end of the world as we know it", for both calendar events. It will be another interesting correlation if there is a similar dramatic drop-off in rampage killings in the year 2013 and after, as there was in the early years of the 2000's decade. It's hard to say exactly what the straw was that broke the camel's back in the final decision to do these things is, if the straw was outside a person's mind.

Saddam Husein was also in that class. He had his cousin "Chemical Ali" gas a village to kill thousands of men, women and children.

See: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ML-Ira ... /id/347906

ruveyn

Absolutely.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

thats a good example.even though death offsets technical population growth nothing ever offsets what a person learns in there life and how the elders give that knowledge to there offspring and there offspring gives that knowledge and thee own knowledge to there offspring and etc..etc for centuries.so we dont just have 7 billion rats in a cage but the rats of there ancesters genectic codes as well

the authorities are a major cause of the increase
as they sweep real issues under the rug to fester

then carry on blindly with their insane $agenda's

money before people
as in Autism Speaks
and corporate America