What motivates mass murderers?

Even leaving aside the almost daily attacks by Islamic jihadis, mass murders have been much in the news lately.

A couple of days ago, a Canadian aviation "expert" said he was "100% certain" that the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 -- still undiscovered somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean -- was an extreme case of murder-suicide, perpetrated by the plane's pilot. Last month, 10 people were killed and 16 wounded by a young Toronto man who for some reason decided to drive a rented man down the sidewalk of a busy main street.

And in the USA, there are "school shootings", not in the ghettos of Los Angeles, Chicago, or Detroit, but in white(ish) locales in states like Florida (Parkland) and Texas (Santa Fe). The massacre at Columbine happened just over 19 years ago. Since then, there have been hundreds, hundreds of similar "incidents".

Why do people kill dozens, scores or even hundreds of innocent people? What is their motivation for mass murder? These are questions I ask myself every time something like this happens. It seems to me that only two reasons are possible. Someone who would commit such an atrocity must either be:

A - a fanatical follower of the Religion of Peace (read: Islam) or some other extremist religious and/or political group; or

B - someone whose cheese has slipped off his cracker (read: a psychotic individual).

In "Toronto killer of 10 'seemed a little off'... that's all", the perpetrator of the recent massacre in Canada's Proudly Diverse City is described as "kind of a loner, kept to himself, and 'seemed a little off'." Later it emerged that he identified himself as an "incel" -- "involuntarily celibate" -- someone who couldn't score with women and so decided to take his frustration out on the world.

The Santa Fe TX high school student who allegedly opened fire on his classmates on yesterday has been described as "a quiet and unassuming teenager who enjoys sports and showed few if any warning signs of violent behaviour." He was a member of a dance group at a local Greek Orthodox church and an avid videogame player, known among his classmates mostly for playing on the school's junior varsity football team. A teammate told a Houston TV station, "He stuck to himself. He had a few friends but never really talked to many people. For him to do something like this, it's crazy."

Exactly! But how did those young men -- they are always young men -- become "crazy"? And how are we supposed to protect ourselves and our communities against the crazy behaviour that kills?

To guard against Islamic terrorists, the authorities tell us "If you see something, say something!" But that doesn't work in the case of people like Deimitrios Pagourtzis, the Sante Fe High School killer. The only odd thing that people noticed about him was that he liked to wear a trench coat, even in the Texas heat. What are you gonna do, call 9-1-1 and tell them "my classmate keeps coming to school in a trenchcoat!"?

For that very reason, stricter gun controls won't work, unless America can be turned into some kind of liberal Utopia in which no-one, absolutely no-one has a gun, which seems highly unlikely, to put it mildly. And if that were so, what is to stop a crazy man [or woman! Ed.] from finding another weapon... like a rental van. If you have a good answer to my question, something that doesn't involve locking up every oddball and eccentric in the land, please tell the world... quick!!!