crimes are almost ALWAYS about taking REVENGE out of feelings of being wronged in some way, and they are feelings that build up over time. Just to say that one guy was a psychopath and the other was easily led astray I think is a weak argument for doing something that drastic. It is very hard to "lead" someone to just do something like that and then kill themselves. Psychopaths may want to hurt others, but don't want to die themselves. OJ is your psychopath type. These are people who are deeply and profoundly angry and emotionally over the edge who want to take revenge out of feelings of being wronged, and so desperate to do it and so angry and emotionally burned up inside they are willing in many cases to take their own lives as well. It is different than simply being a "psychopath".

Now comes a book about the history of 'rage killing' in America that takes its title not from the school massacres that inspired it, but from an expression every American knows. 'Going postal' entered the language after a spate of shootings in the US Postal Service facilities that began in 1986 with a murderous spree by Patrick Sherrill in Edmond, Oklahoma. Ames explains how the shootings coincided with 'semi-privatisation' under Ronald Reagan that turned working for the USPS into a corporate experience like many others in postmodern, post-industrial America. But Ames goes further.

There followed many more workplace massacres, the histories of which he traces meticulously, and which he posits as acts of enraged rebellion against a new system of stress, layoffs and impossible expectations which are 'making the world a crueller place' in the new American factory - the office - and at places of supposed study. It is an apolitical insurgency by people who are, he insists, 'sane'.

In the education system, the stress endured by pupils' parents 'doesn't so much trickle down, it rains down from parent to child, like acid rain'. Ames draws a direct line between slave rebellions and rage killing, arguing that 'the modern American work culture derives from the same sources that defined slavery's official work culture'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2007/jan/21/society


this review doesn't mention the bullying angle, but the book goes into it extensively.

according to Mother Jones - 60 of the 61 mass murderers were male.

If females kill, it is often very targeted and born out of other motives. They will use less violent means or maybe they will hire someone to do it. There have been a few cases of females doing some mass poisonings which is more common to them. It is less "messy." Less violent. Crime in general is much more a male phenomenon, especially violent crime. Often women act on their loss, isolation, frustration, through self-destruction and not "mass-destruction." For them it is more often substance abuse, other risky behavior, maybe suicide, etc.

not always, but usually.

and since 78% of the population is white, it's unlikely that whites are disproportionately represented among mass murderers of this type.

United States of America 194,552,774 69.1% (2000) 196,817,552 63.7% (2010) +1.2%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Hispanic_Whites

least 30% of the mass murderers on the mother jones list are non-white or non-male. there may be more, i didn't look up pictures for everyone.

USUALLY, not ALWAYS.

may not be disproportionately white in terms of the general population.

When firearms are removed from the equation, mass murders will be practically eliminated.

A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured. Analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kind of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29

eliminate mass murder. mass murder has been increasing even as murder rates and household gun ownership decreased.

i'd look to other causes than an increased availability of guns.

If those attackers had access to guns, at the very least those numbers would be reversed - 90 dead and 20 injured. Knives and hammers are not the equivalent of firearms, and never have been.

It's interesting the one incident you left out (deliberately?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_School_stabbing

"On 14 December 2012 between 7 and 8 a.m. local time, a 36-year-old villager identified as Min Yingjun stabbed 23 people, including 22 children and an elderly woman, in a knife attack at Chenpeng Village Primary School. The school is situated in Wenshu Township of Guangshan County, which is administrated by the city of Xinyang, 800 km south of Beijing, in the Chinese province of Henan. The children targeted by the knifeman are thought likely to be between six and eleven years of age and the attack occurred as the children were arriving for classes."