Here is what causes gun massacres

No social safety net
Poverty
Mental Illness
Gun culture
Easy access to guns
Gun free zones

If you assign 100% responsibility to any one of those, (and there are many more, but I'm just attempting to make a point here), you are being intellectually dishonest.

RESPONSIBILITY PERCENTAGE
========================
Poverty - 10%
No social safety net - 30%
Mental Illness - 10%
Gun culture - 19%
Easy access to guns -30%
Gun free zones - 1%

Discuss.

Edited to say: My overall point here is that there are too many people (and DUers) who like to pick one reason or another, and assign 100% blame to it. Others like to assign percentages in a disproportionate way to fit their political agenda. Personally, if I were to give some serious thought to the list of causes and assign percentages, a good amount would go to the pathetic social safety net that exists in America today. No health care coverage, underfunded schools, etc. I vehemently disagree with the gun culture sympathizers who assign a large percentage to the number of unarmed citizens as a cause.

you take away the gun and no more gun massacres.

cars cause drunk driving...

Take away the car and no more drunk driving right?

We could all walk around with guns and if there was no impetus for us to shoot one another, we wouldn't. Any one of us could find a weapon and kill someone if we were so inclined.

That said, I'm for responsible gun laws, e.g. background tracks, waiting periods, etc. No automatic weapons.

person who has not had treatment and appears normal...the Gun laws are ineffective.....

I do believe we need to enforce our current Gun laws, making new laws won't make the situation any better.

Welcome to DU!:hi:

As bad as access to health care is in the country. Access to mental health care is even worse. I have insurance and I pay lots out of pocket for mine. I think so much mental illness goes undiagnosed b/c of a) stigma and b) lack of access to mental health care. Imagine if we lived in a country where we all had mental health check ups as we do physicals.

Anxiety is a desperate feeling -- when you are really anxious and angry at the same time, you feel like a trapped animal. This guy must have felt like he was caught in a burning building and didn't know his way to the exit. I can only imagine what it must be like -- a horrible panicked feeling mixed with anger at everyone but himself. I have felt extreme panic, but I haven't felt anger at the same time, so I don't really know what it must be like. I can only imagine it -- but I don't really want to.

Just think, the urge to survive is fundamental to being human. Somehow, this guy's natural urge to survive was superseded by his panic and hate. Apparently there wasn't anyone to whom he could talk. There wasn't anyone he trusted. How very sad. That says something horrible about the people around him. I'm not blaming anyone, but there must have been a total void of love in his life -- and possibly from very early on.

1. Mental Illness (Most if not all mass murderers in the last 30 years had some form of mental illness)
2. Lack of Medical treatment and resources
3. accesibility of guns....

I've see stats of the gun crimes in other civilized countries v/s and the US is AlWAYS extremely high in comparison. I think it's something embeded in our culture that makes people turn to a gun as their first solution to a problem. I think it's cowardice! It's much more anticeptic and hands off to shoot someone rather than punch them out, or stab them with a chef's knife! I can't think of any other reasonwhy we areso attracted to guns as a solution to almost everything!

I mean, what mass murderer has NOT been mentally ill?

As your your numbers and the percentages you assign, I think you are on the right track.

is that violence rises during extreme economic disparities. It's actually astounding that there not more violence considering how close to edge so much of this country is thank to Bush.

RESPONSIBILITY PERCENTAGE
========================
Poverty - 0% (these folks usually aren't poor)
No social safety net - 20%
Mental Illness AND a nearly useless mental health care system- 45%
Gun culture - 5%
Easy access to guns -10%
Gun free zones - 20%

...for his own protection at all times. How many Senators would he have shot by now? Any guesses as to who these senators would be?

:-)

RESPONSIBILITY PERCENTAGE
========================
Poverty - 0%
No social safety net - 27.5%
Mental Illness - 27.5%
Gun culture - 20%
Easy access to guns -25%
Gun free zones - 0%

I don't think these kind of massacres have much to do with poverty and I don't think the shooter really cares whether the place he's doing the massacring is a gun free zone...it's probably more to do with their age - younger ones are in school, older ones do it at work. The shooters at Columbine and Virginia Tech killed themselves, after all. I'd include TV programming, video games as part of the gun culture. I recall reading that a typical kid will see an incredibly large number of acts of gun violence on TV and video games before he's 20.....10's of thousands. Got to have some impact on his thinking, particularly if we assume mental illness is an a priori condition for a mass murderer.

When the shooting happens to take place in a "gun-free zone," it goes on longer because no one can confront the shooter with equal firepower. A recent shooting that took place in a mall was ended by a by-stander who had a concealed weapon. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/13/national/main2466711.shtml