The news is that the Fort Hood shooter is conscious and speaking. Who cares what he has to say? It’s just another angry man who had access to guns buying himself instant fame with other people’s lives.
I once saw a man in the IMH–he was lying on the floor and wetting his finger. He picked up little bits of dirt and ate them. He was insane.
Mass shooters aren’t crazy like that. They have a script, they have the props, they know the outcome. Yes, they are ill, but this is a particular cultural expression of illness.
I don’t care what any one of them has to say. I want to know why we watch this pattern play out over and over, and what we can do to unravel it.
Kmareka.com 
Nancy, I care.
This man was not always a “mass shooter”.
I care more about the people killed and wounded and their loved ones…
There is an unfortunate tendency to wish problems away with the easy answers. Unfortunately not all that happens is straight forward and without complexity. That the Ft. Hood murders were the act of a determined individual believing he was carrying out the will of a “God” and dictated by beliefs he held the religion he practiced seems clear by his own statements and hos murder of innocents. That others will say his religion does not or no longer demands the death of those who do not practice that same religion is also clear and they do not murder innocents. But his actions were exactly the same as those that shoot and maim and bomb and commit suicide all over the world and also as a demand of their interpretation of that same religion.
It may well be that all are “insane” within our construction of what sane and insane means, what rational and irrational means. However, there is no difference between the supposed insanity of the Ft. Hood incident, or any of the terrorist attacks anywhere in the world, virtually all by persons certain that their religion demands murder.
There’s a pattern in American life of the angry, alienated gunman. It’s been played out many times, from the Texas tower sniper, to ‘going postal’ to 2 incidents this week of men shooting up their former workplace.
Sometimes religion or politics are part of the mix, sometimes there is clear evidence of mental illness.
When this happens over and over I have to wonder what enables this kind of crime, why now, and what are the signs that could be recognized to prevent more of the same?
The Fort Hood shootings were especially terrible, in the scope and the betrayal of people in the service by one they regarded as their own.
I am no longer sure what “pattern” means, especially after taking a longer look, at times up close, at other societies or places where there is nothing remaining like a “society.” The Ft. Hood incident directly parallels behavior of terrorists elsewhere, virtually all claiming divine right of their brand of Islam. I suspect that the term “pattern” fits the action.
Bad behavior and violence is frequenbtly an extension of political corruption in many parts of the world, and is rarely reported. Violence, organized and unorganized, group and one-on-one, is rarely reported in China, for example, or most any of the African nations. I suspect the number of incidents increases in absolute numbers,but not as a percentage of total population, simply because of population increase. Remember, the U.S. had more than doubled in population since JFK was President; we are something like 330,000,000 now, not 165,000,000.
In comparison, a much more deadly “pattern” of violence is seen on our highways every year with about 43,000 deaths each year resulting from vehicular acidents. That comes out to be more than 100 each day, but little notice is taken of these violent deaths. But, it is a “pattern.”
I don’t think traffic deaths and murder are comparable. It’s a disgrace that so many are injured or killed on our roads, and there’s a pattern, and traffic engineers try to minimize the risks but you can certainly argue that we should do much better. That’s a whole debate in itself.
However, people hurt on the road are almost always just trying to get from one place to another.
The angry shooter, most always a man, takes his sense of grievance and acts it out on people around him. Often, like the Columbine shooters, they dress up in costumes and ideologies. I think the attention they get is part of the motive.