[nsxwolf]

Yes, per my comment above. They will go places where they won't face interference with their plans - they will choose a restaurant with a "No Guns" sign rather than a police station.

You assume there is no rationality behind the suicidal, but there is. Consider the Kamikaze.

[sentenza]

I'd say that is wishful thinking. The number of college shooting perpetrators that expected to get away without being killed is most likely zero.

Here in Germany there are very few guns. Nonetheless, one of the typical places to go on a rampage is the court house, where you have a 100% likelyhood of armed guards.

Also: Didn't the Kamikaze try to crash into heavily armed ships?

[hga]

"Here in Germany there are very few guns"

Not even close. Official, legally registered guns? Perhaps. But memories are long. Per the Small Arms Survey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c... you're in 15th place, tied with Iceland, in a cluster of countries at around 30 per 100 residents also including Uruguay, Sweden, Norway, France, Canada, and Austria.

For that matter, as of late Western Europe has been suffering more and worse such incidents than the US, and that includes German school shootings in Winnenden in 2009, Emsdetten in 2006, Rötz in 2005, Coburg in 2003 and Erfurt in 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Europe). 3 of these incidents were small scale, but 2 resulted in 16 and 17 dead respectively, and another miraculously ended with only the shooter killing himself, but 37 injured, 4 students shot, etc.

I always find it ... amusing when Germans try to lecture Americans on this topic.

Ah, have you stopped institutionizing your seriously mentally ill like the US did starting in the early-mid '60s?

[sentenza]

Uh huh. Do you know when I last time have seen a gun here in Germany, not carried by a police officer?

Never.

I have never seen a non-official handle a weapon, except on Television. In my life.

Oh by the way. Memories are long, sure. I recently read of a big weapons find, in the village next go mine. They found a lot of handguns and military rifles that somebody stashed in a hidden room of an official building at the end of the war. Do you know where those weapons went?

Straight to the trash. I don't even know if you can still use a weapon that has just been lying around for seventy years.

And what has the mentally ill thing to do with anything? I've been to America. Your mentally ill live in the street. How is that better?

[hga]

Your first point reinforces the point of the Small Arms Survey as I recall, that most German guns are not in legal circulation. But the numerous shootings I listed, which you completely ignored, show they all aren't stashed away.

"I don't even know if you can still use a weapon that has just been lying around for seventy years."

If it was cleaned properly before putting it away, and in a moderately dry place, yes. Back then corrosive primers were common, so that was an essential and inescapable part of owning a gun (counter-examples are the round the Swiss adopted in 1911 (!) and the US M1 Carbine, a short rifle for officers and others who weren't front line infantry). For that matter WWII ammo is still generally just fine, modulo your having to much more thoroughly clean your gun afterwords.

ADDED: I have used/owned two military rifles manufactured in WWII, a Springfield 03A3 and a Garand. Basically, I'd consider myself well equipped if I had most any originally military rifle starting with the Mauser 1898. Yes, more than a century old....

And the fact that you haven't deinstitutionalized your mentally ill like we insanely (so to speak) have puts a different complexion on your crime, including "gun crime" statistics and incidents.

[nsxwolf]

I'm not sure what you're arguing. I never said mass shooters expect to get away without being killed. I said they want to be successful - kill as many as they can before they're either killed or shoot themselves when they hear the sirens.

My Kamikaze example was merely demonstrating that suicidal people can be rational. In this case, their mission was to attack the battleships, not to attack an unarmed populace.