General Discussion

"Psychopath" is a forensic term. It describes one who has behaved insanely-- PAST TENSE, often with many innocents dea! Usually insane behavior will be disregarded on basis of: "mind my own business." But when 20 First Graders and 6 adults are killed, it is a forensic term that makes us all weep and enraged.

The real issue is who is capable of such an act? The key term is "anomie." It means total lack of human feeling generated for con-specifics due to disorders in the social circuits of the brain. We assume that sometime before the act that got one labeled as a "psychotic," the individual slipped into the world of insanity. Why? Because-- WE ASSUME-- only someone "deranged psychotic" could do such a thing....such a SENSELESS thing!

But think about it; if we itch, we scratch. If we scratch without an itch, then there's something wrong with us? Really?

Chronic pain is pain felt long after the original pain may be gone. So one still feels pain but the PAINFUL stimulus is gone. Does that mean that the sufferer is insane, or does it mean that the brain is rarely a proper conscious decision making computer because it rarely simulates reality?

Autistics get easily frustrated for exactly that reason: their brains fail to adequately simulate reality to their satisfaction. But, as a rule, they are said to turn their frustration on themselves. Self-injuries make that point vividly enough. Yet, we also see them taking it out on objects. However, we rarely see them taking it out on others. But we can't forget that they do take it out on THINGS. Rage, afterall, is rage!

The critical point is that Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, like Lanza, the shooter of of Sandy Point, was diagnosed as suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. Now, one can say, people are not things so the propensity to damage things in a state of utter frustration, not so abnormal. Well enough, except that research has shown that autistics tend so see people as THINGS because they lack animational empathy and suffer from anomie.

http://autism.yale.edu/initial-topics/4

There is no "scientific" proof that autistics, in their things-state attribution to people are prone to take out their unusually high states of frustration on others. So, it has been proposed that Cho and Lanza were psychotics suffering from "anti-social disorder syndrome," a later-in-life PSYCHOTIC disorder which distinguishes from Hepsberger's, a DEVELOPMENTAL disorder. However, the latter is a forensic diagnosis as it is identified by behavior that had been engaged in and not by a pre-existing neural disorder. Yet, BOTH begin with a total lack of HUMANE FEELING towards con-specifics (of your own kind) and so someone with Hepsberger's, like Cho or Lanza, may well have manifested their young male high hormonal state of aggression towards THINGS, remembering that to autistics people and things are BOTH: THINGS! It is then, when their rage of frustration is directed at other humans as things, that we label them as psychotics rather than autistics. However, could their autistic perspective of others as things have been PERMISSIVE enough to move them to the state of MASS KILLERS...in THEIR minds, just breaking "THINGS"?

We may never know the answer. But, should the answer turn out to be "YES," it should be kept in mind that 1 in 10 births are assumed to be AUTISTIC, that meaning that in their anomie they see PEOPLE as THINGS. That's a lot of potential shooters! But we can't prejudge autistics as was done with "witch trials" several centuries ago. Rather, with so many POTENTIAL mass murders-- potentially (presumably??) able to cross from "autistic" to "psychotic" because of their lack of humane compassion, seeing PEOPLE as THINGS-- we would do well to stop the easy access to assault-type military weapons so indiscriminately on grounds that to forbid their sale would abrogate the Constitutional "freedom" of gun-lovers and gun dealers.

On one hand, as President Obama so well said, we've allowed too long for the inhumane destruction of human lives in mass massacres as if they were THINGS for the sake of the "rights" of extremely lethal weapons to be sold freely. As a result, too many Americans were denied their basic right to "LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."

On the other hand, we can't pre-judge Hapsberger's autistics or any others. But we can't diagnose mass killers as psychotics only after they mass-kill. Better to deny our society warfare weapons, all USELESS in a civilized community. ff we don't go after the guns, Americans maddened with rage will go after the autistics-- 10% of Americans-- only because we can't control the guns that potentially take them from the category of autistic to psychotic through mass murder. THAT WOULD BE INSANE for autistic PEOPLE are worth more and owed freedom than THINGS like guns are owed freedom of traffic.