Mass Shootings

In class we talked a lot about mass shootings.  All of the ones we talked about were very disturbing, but I think the fact that Adam Lanza decided to kill first graders was the worst for me.  One of the mass shootings we really did not talk about was the one at Virginia Tech.  The attack ended up being the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history.  The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was born in South Korea and moved to the United States when he was a kid.  In middle school he was diagnosed with selective mutism as well as major depressive disorder.  Cho enrolled in writing classes at Virginia Tech where he wrote absurdly violent writings and teachers were scared of him.  Other students were also scared of him because he would talk to girls on instant messenger, saying creepy things forcing campus police make sure he did not go and try to talk to the girls.  He was clearly not a stable person and everyone around him felt very uncomfortable.  Then he killed 32 people and wounded 17.  It seems clear that he showed signs that he was capable of doing this looking back on it.  When you look back at Colombine you can also say that somebody should have known it was going to happen and stopped it.  I think with all of these cases the people who commit these terrible crimes are obviously not stable and showed signs that they were capable of doing serious harm.  Although all of these three examples, are the people who fit the stereotype of what the typical mass shooter is like, what if somebody that also fits this stereotype gets labeled a "mass murder" who is not?  I think to make a judgement and say that somebody is going to be a mass murderer is a very extreme judgement and you do not want to be wrong.