While we may know much more today about depression, domestic abuse, and bi-polar disorder, we know little more today about mass murder than we did 25 years ago.

Why?

Shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech leave us all wondering why. Why did this happen? Why didn't someone stop this? We want answers and we want it to stop.

The bottom line is -- we don't know how to stop it. Michael Weiner, professor of psychiatry at New York University says, "There has never been a neuro-anatomical localization of mass shooting behavior." Experts in the field are dumbfounded. They don't know how to predict who will murder en masse.

Technology

We have at our disposal

• MRIs
• C-T Scans
• anti-depressants
• brain research
• serotonin research
• dopamine research
• books on serial killers

and none of these can predict a mass murder.

Jack Levin

Levin has authored more than two dozen books on murder and criminology. He is the director of the Brudnick Center on Violence. He co-authored "Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace" in 1985. Until that date, little to nothing was written about what makes someone kill large groups of people.

Neil S. Kaye

Kaye, assistant professor of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University says, "The problem with that is that mass killers do this for multiple reasons, and even when you develop a profile of people at risk, 99 percent of them never go out and do anything bad." [Nealy Tucker, The Washington Post, msnbc.msn.com, April 16, 2007]

What Do We Know?

The little we know about mass murderers is

• they look normal
• angry inside
• 95 percent are male
• feel alienated
• loners

That is not much to go on if you want to prevent a mass murder. Everyone around us tends to look and act fairly normal. Anger on the inside is often unnoticed. Half the population is male. Many people feel alienated at one time or another and never commit any murders. Large portions of our society are introverts and tend to keep to themselves. The data is just too general.

Mass Murder is Not Serial Murder

Serial killers derive sexual gratification from their killings. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer did not want to be caught. It was about pleasure and they wanted it to continue. They played a cat and mouse game with police. Each murder must be more exciting than the last. They get high when they succeed in killing another. Mass murder does not.

Mass murder comes from depression, anger and humiliation. It occurs after months of planning and stockpiling weapons. Then, one day, something insignificant occurs and the door of anger opens. It is not done on impulse--it is planned. They spend months planning everything except the very end--how to get away. They are usually NOT psychotic, don't hear voices, and are not taking orders from outer space or God.

What Can We Do?

Since these acts usually end in suicide for the shooter, we have little to use for research and prevention. The writings they leave behind are our only clues. We must report disturbing, angry writings and watch for extreme behaviors. But, a simple thing like steel classroom doors that lock from the inside could have saved lives at Virginia Tech.

Related articles: Librescu: Virginia Tech Hero, Cyber-Bullying, How To Prevent School Shootings, Suicides Are Up.

Read previous articles on Educational Issues.

Copyright article 2007 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.