Spree killings in the US over the past 30 years have killed about 550 people. Regular gun murder has killed 15,000 people per year.
If we assume that every single spree killing was committed by someone with a mental illness (and that assumption is wrong) we still only have 550 murders by mad people and 450,000 murders by sane people.
But when you look at mass murders you rarely find people with a psychotic illness operating under a psychosis. You find people who have some or no mental illness who also happen to be violent. That shouldn't be surprising - mental ill-health is very common.
> “A consequence if not a driving force of the pendulum swing away from benevolence and toward the protection of others has been increased attention to an individual’s dangerousness, with the operative presumption that dangerousness is often the result of a mental illness. But dangerousness is not always the result of mental illness. Individuals who commit violent or aggressive acts often do so for reasons unrelated to mental illness…. Research, in fact, confirms the error in associating dangerousness with mental illness, showing that ‘the vast majority of people who are violent do not suffer from mental illnesses. The absolute risk of violence among the mentally ill as a group is still very small and … only a small proportion of the violence in our society can be attributed to persons who are mentally ill.’ Violence is not a diagnosis nor is it a disease. Potential to do harm is not a symptom or a sign of mental illness, rather it must be the central consideration when assessing future dangerousness.”
> because only completely sane people go on shooting rampages
You don't understand why they go on a shooting rampage, and so they must be mad? That's the only explanation?
If we assume that every single spree killing was committed by someone with a mental illness (and that assumption is wrong) we still only have 550 murders by mad people and 450,000 murders by sane people.
But when you look at mass murders you rarely find people with a psychotic illness operating under a psychosis. You find people who have some or no mental illness who also happen to be violent. That shouldn't be surprising - mental ill-health is very common.
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-j...
> “A consequence if not a driving force of the pendulum swing away from benevolence and toward the protection of others has been increased attention to an individual’s dangerousness, with the operative presumption that dangerousness is often the result of a mental illness. But dangerousness is not always the result of mental illness. Individuals who commit violent or aggressive acts often do so for reasons unrelated to mental illness…. Research, in fact, confirms the error in associating dangerousness with mental illness, showing that ‘the vast majority of people who are violent do not suffer from mental illnesses. The absolute risk of violence among the mentally ill as a group is still very small and … only a small proportion of the violence in our society can be attributed to persons who are mentally ill.’ Violence is not a diagnosis nor is it a disease. Potential to do harm is not a symptom or a sign of mental illness, rather it must be the central consideration when assessing future dangerousness.”
> because only completely sane people go on shooting rampages
You don't understand why they go on a shooting rampage, and so they must be mad? That's the only explanation?