No Magic Bullet

These things do tend to occur in streaks, don't they. Before the mass murder era there was the assassination era, which overlapped the airplane hijacking era. Prior to 9-11 it seemed like the hijacking string had petered out, but then it came back like a bad dream. I believe that was the first time  hijacking was used as a method of mass murder, before that it was mostly about threatening to kill a bunch of people if certain demands were not met. With 9-11, they skipped the demands and went right into the killing phase. There were a few airplane incidents after that, but they were not successful, and we don't hear about things like that anymore. Now it's all about mass shootings, with the occasional bombing thrown in for variety. If you think about it, there has always been things like that going on in one form or another.

Sometimes these guys have an agenda, and sometimes not. The assassinations were mostly political, except for the guy who shot John Lennon. That time the guy said that he did it to impress Jodie Foster, a movie star who he had been obsessing about for some time. I don't think that Jodie was impressed, at least not favorably. I seem to remember that the guy who shot George Wallace said that he didn't have a political axe to grind, he just wanted to shoot somebody famous so that he would become famous himself. I guess Uncle Ken is right, it's hard to profile potential killers because there are so many variables in play.

The suicide component is kind of new, though. The anarchists used to blow themselves up on occasion, but I don't think that was on purpose. The Islamic terrorists frequently blow themselves up on purpose, but I think that's just because it's an effective way to deliver a bomb to a target without getting caught. These mass shooters seem to be a different breed of cat. Their whole operation is elaborately planned, and the suicide at the end seems to be an integral part of the plan. It's like they want to die and take a whole lot of people with them.

One thing for sure, there is no magic bullet that will cure this. Wouldn't it be nice, though, if we could round up all the homicidal and suicidal people once a year, put them together, give them guns, and let them kill each other off?