There are all sorts of Persians in Iran--there's Kurds (Hitler called them the original Aryans--very tall people, many have gray or blue eyes, and the kids are often quite blonde before they darken up as many do), assorted religions within the Islamic sphere, and there used to be many Jews and Christians too but most of them have left.

They are calling him "David S." -- I haven't heard a full name, to this point (It really would be 'Davoud' in the regional expression, but perhaps he or his parents Europeanized it?).

Maybe he thought he was an original Aryan. Maybe he was a minority faith and wanted to "take it out" on people. Maybe he just thought the whole Basketball Diaries thing was somehow cool. Maybe he stopped taking his meds, or maybe to this point his mental health issues were simply depression, and just now he began exhibiting the start of schizophrenia which often manifests itself for the first time in young men of his age into the twenties. If he had parents like the VA TECH shooter (they basically were in denial about that kid's illness, and took an "Out of sight, out of mind" POV towards him) then he never had a chance to get some real aggressive help.

Of course, all this is wild speculation, we know nothing to this point, perhaps more will come out in the days and weeks ahead. I do think a forensic examination of WHY???? is helpful--we can't prevent this in future if we don't take the time to figure out if there's a pattern.

SW Asian.

It's early, but be creative with what you know. Perhaps he was an Islamist. They can be crazy, too. Like my mentally ill but thoroughly Democratic BIL. The voices in his head may have told him that his neighbor was QEII in the service of the CIA to spy on him, but he voted (D).

And, yes, his (R) family tried to pass off his politics as mental illness. So it's best not to go there. You may see a rotten apple but still can't conclude all rotten fruit must be apples--pears, plums, tomatoes all rot.

And Islamists don't need to be Sunni. They can be Shi'ites.

Or perhaps he's just crazy.

It may be that he felt persecuted because he assimilated and others told him he was ultimate evil for daring to not worship his ancestors and let his life be guided by where his grandparents' genes sojourned, or he may have been a nice guy too often assumed to be an Islamist by peers and others and it was hurting his pursuit of happiness or girls.

Who knows. Some like to glom onto the "Islamic terrorist" because that's all the rage. A disproportionate number. Perhaps he was as one person put it a "blue-eyed Aryan" Persian--not that there are many of those, even though Iranians are ethnically diverse ("Persian" is an ethnicity). But far too many DUers are hypocrites. If it's a possible Muslim terrorist, "I know nothing", but if it looks like a RW Xian crazy, then "I'm omniscient and you are cretins for denying my omniscience." You see the same nonesense with domestic crimes--if a cop guns down a black guy, we want to know how what he had for breakfast on 5/3/08 indicates his utter evilness, but we're not like those dorks who want to know the gunned-down guy's criminal past. If a white guy kills a bunch of folks, we disparage attempts to say he was insane, but if a black guy does the same thing let the armchair psychiatrists punditize--and even try to show that his victims might have deserved it.

Jury's not even out yet, but sitting in the jury box.

People from middle east can often have less respect for each other than they do those from Europe or US. Shia see the Sunnis as dogs and not even human. Sounds more like sectarian type violence.

Some articles say the video people were telling him they hate Turks and he was saying he wasn't Turkish, but German.

They have been linked to mass killings. Throw in some possible religious radicalization, and you have a dangerous combination.

The Columbine killers are an example of this:

Harris wanted to join the United States Marine Corps, but his application was rejected shortly before the shootings because he was taking the drug fluvoxamine, an SSRI antidepressant, which he was required to take as part of court-ordered anger management therapy. According to the recruiting officer, Harris did not know about this rejection. Though some friends of Harris suggested that he had stopped taking the drug beforehand,[46] the autopsy reports showed low therapeutic or normal (not toxic or lethal) blood-levels of Luvox (fluvoxamine) in his system, which would be around 0.0031-0.0087 mg%,[47] at the time of death.[48] After the shootings, opponents of contemporary psychiatry like Peter Breggin[49] claimed that the psychiatric medications prescribed to Harris after his conviction (ostensibly for obsessive-compulsive disorder) may have exacerbated his aggressiveness.[50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold

It's one of the only constants at DU and the type of tragedy it is doesn't matter. Hurricane or earthquake? "How do they vote?" gets asked before the first mention of help is made.

Like in Orlando or Nice, the individual cocktail in this particular shooter's head is probably a complex mix. Just one twisted tree.

However, being of Iranian origin, he probably was of Shia background, and he shouted insults about Sunni Turks before being shot. Some Shia-Sunni rivalry.

So, again, there's an element of religious -Islamic- literalism in the mix. As in the Orlando, Nice, San Bernardino, Paris, Tunis, Cairo, Bamako attacks. Which are a forest of commonality.

It would be dangerous to let demagogues like Trump offer steps vs Islamic supremacism.
Hillary should review sharply downward her plans to welcome ME migrants.

Is what I'm calling it.

I got very sad reading the posts about this here with people trying to pointscore, coming with wild racist statements.

The world is a complex case, where cause and effect can be extremly difficult to entangle in the social sciences.

What we all can do though, is to make sure we take better care of each others.

Here, schools and teachers (and teachers need far better backing from both school administrators, politicans as well as the wider public) have a great responsibility.

Do they always need a solid reason? Maybe someone looked at him the wrong way last Friday. Who knows.

I'm a TV journalist in Munich, working for German National TV (ARD). I've been covering this story since it broke some 26 hours ago. Just got home.
Here's the thing: From all that my colleagues were able to verify, this really seems to be the case of a single shooter on a rampage.
The perpetrator was an 18 year old German of Iranian descent. He was born in Germany. He seems to have suffered from mental problems, he even referred to that himself in one of the videos made by people on the scene.
The investigation has turned up no connections to terror groups such as ISIS, but found books about students going on shooting sprees.
I've checked some of this myself, trusted colleagues have verified other parts of the story.

does not necessarily mean that he was motivated by ISIS or any other kind of Islamic extremism.

At this point, everything that is verified does not show a link to organized terror.