Evil vs. crazy: What’s in the mind of mass murderers?
While revising five editions of my textbook on abnormal psychology, I have found that drugs and therapy offer disappointingly little additional help for the mentally ill than they did 25 years ago — despite billions of dollars in funding. And there is zero promise that any developments I am aware of will help curb the violence that mentally ill persons commit.
As for progress on restraining or rehabilitating evil people, the past record and future promise are even more dismal. I know of no development that has much reduced recidivism or violence or done more to identify violent offenders in advance than was in place a generation ago.
I conclude from all this that progress in reducing violence through either helping the mentally ill or curbing the impulses of violent, non-crazy people will be very slow in coming, perhaps even fruitless. That is not where the leverage is.
Crazy people and evil people can commit mass murder, and they always do it with guns. Our society’s only real leverage, at least in the near term, lies in reducing access to guns.
Blowback
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Gee, we already have laws restricting crazy people from guns. So what, exactly, is the point of this article?
John the Libertarian on January 4, 2013 at 11:49 AM
How about we ask the ones in prison? It takes one to know one, and that’s better than pages of pure speculation.
Seven Seas on January 4, 2013 at 11:50 AM
Well two things we always know for sure…
They are Republicans/conservative and are enamored with guns.
Everything else is irrelevant…Eliminate guns and conservatives and their would be no more killing.
right2bright on January 4, 2013 at 11:50 AM
Better put a /s at the end, after reading it, it sounds something logical to a liberal.
right2bright on January 4, 2013 at 11:52 AM
“Crazy people and evil people can commit mass murder, and they always do it with guns. Our society’s only real leverage, at least in the near term, lies in reducing access to guns.”
They can also do it with gasoline, fertilizer, propane, kitchen knives and dozens of other prodcuts found in virtually every home. Are we going to ban those too?
tommyboy on January 4, 2013 at 11:55 AM
over-bearing single mothers?
Jeddite on January 4, 2013 at 11:55 AM
Anders Behring Breivik.
Kataklysmic on January 4, 2013 at 12:01 PM
so disarming a populace somehow makes them more safe from ‘evil’ and ‘crazy’ people with guns?
That is some messed up logic you’ve got there.
How about instead we have trained and competent people with guns and the ability to keep themselves safe from ‘evil’ and ‘crazy’ folks who don’t really bother to learn all the laws or much less care.
gatorboy on January 4, 2013 at 12:04 PM
If we can’t treat them, how about giving us the legal tools to keep them off the street once identified?
Sekhmet on January 4, 2013 at 12:20 PM
Simply ban the sale of ammo to the general public.
Let the gun nuts make their own ammo in their bunkers like a biker in a meth lab. That would make bullets very, very expensive. And ironically, would result in the shooting deaths of many of the dealers. lol. Also, suing the US gun manufacturers in class action lawsuits would make the liability so great, they wouldn’t sell to the public because it wouldn’t be economically viable to do so. That is how this will go in the end. Simple economics will dictate that selling guns to the general public will be unprofitable. Just as other defense contractors don’t sell their products to the general public, handgun manufacturers will follow suit.
Issue resolved.
The ultimate irony is that gun nuts, who claim to be conservative, say that the real reason why they need their semi-automatic weapons is to protect themselves from the US military and US law enforcement, the tentacles of the evil US government who might one day come for them! Yet, these same people are the ones who are always telling us that conservatives view US soldiers and law enforcement as American heroes! lol. Again, they want to have it both ways. Either the US military and law enforcement is your boogeyman – the evildoers against whom you need your puny handgun with which to fight – or the US military and law enforcement are the good guys, in which case you have no fear necessitating that you arm yourselves against an evil US government.
Gun nuts are basically paranoid schizophrenics. Support Our Troops bumper stickers on one side, and NRA bumper stickers on the other – you know, just in case our troops come for our guns!
keep the change on January 4, 2013 at 12:32 PM
I’m gonna stick with, “The only way to stop a bad guy (or crazy guy or gal) with a gun is with a good guy (or gal) with a gun.”
Fallon on January 4, 2013 at 12:33 PM
Seeing as we’re all born with a sin nature (or, put another way, the nature to do evil), any that the only way to cure that is for God to change one’s heart, then the only thing you can do is to protect society against evil. Since the police are not omnipresent (nor would we want them to be), we must at times rely upon ourselves for protection and defense. This includes not only the evil individual, but also the evil government.
Othniel on January 4, 2013 at 12:34 PM
Oh good lord. And he waited until the last paragraph.
Shorter version: “Some people are crazy, some people are evil. We can’t really tell for sure, so let’s ban guns.”
jr.ewing.78 on January 4, 2013 at 12:35 PM
Timothy McVeigh was unavailable for comment.
RadClown on January 4, 2013 at 12:40 PM
Unfortunately for at least half of us, the bleeding hearts have the Romantics’ understanding of the nature of human beings; ie., that they are innately good, and that Society corrupts them. They do not accept the concept of Man’s fallen nature.
onlineanalyst on January 4, 2013 at 12:41 PM
Assuming that you are serious, and not merely being sarcastic, this is silly.
Despite what a court may say (and I don’t recall if it has been adjudicated), the right to keep and bear arms extends to ammunition. I am a conservative, but not a “gun nut” in that I don’t own a closet full of guns, although I did inherit a few handguns and one or two long guns (which I intend to learn how to use and handle safely this year) when my uncle passed away in 2010.
The truth is -right now- that the folks in the military are heroes, but that can change, which is why the citizenry as the militia must remain ever vigilant. The Founding Fathers were wary of standing armies for very good reason. The concern is also there for law enforcement, from which we actually have seen abuses of power over the years.
Othniel on January 4, 2013 at 12:43 PM
He says this
to avoid thinking about this
The real problem?
The efficacy of psychology is about the same as phrenology.
LincolntheHun on January 4, 2013 at 12:45 PM
Except, of course, when they don’t. The greatest school massacre in the history of the US was committed by a man who killed his wife with a hammer, blew up his home, blew up the school he worked at, and then blew up a car bomb when would-be rescuers showed up at the school.
Though they didn’t get as much media attention as the guns, the Columbine massacre involved the use of a fire bomb to distract first responders from the school, two 20 lb. propane bombs in the cafeteria set to go off at lunch time, and assorted other explosive devices scattered around the school grounds.
The gunman who took hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters had three explosive devices with him.
Then, of course, there’s Timothy McVeigh.
A gun is just a tool. Just because you can’t find your preferred tool doesn’t mean you give up on a project. It just means you find a different tool that will still get the job done. If you want to stop something from happening, you go after the underlying causes of the event. Not the tools used in it’s execution.
Rip Ford on January 4, 2013 at 12:54 PM
It’s a gun grabber disguised as some sort of reasonable person. There will always be crazy people. We cannot do anything about it. They always mass kill with guns. Therefore we must ban guns to save ourselves from crazy people. Liberal logic.
Dr. Frank Enstine on January 4, 2013 at 12:54 PM
That’s right and as soon as guns are banned you will have crazy people willing to kill themselves using explosives instead of guns. How about a crazy person a car/bus into a crowd? There are easily made chemical weapons. What about those? People are delusional to think banning guns will stop mass killings.
Dr. Frank Enstine on January 4, 2013 at 1:02 PM
How about we ban the sale of food to keep the change.
agmartin on January 4, 2013 at 1:06 PM
Guns protect people from criminals. Should more people be killed by criminals in order to prevent the rare crazy mass murderer?
Blake on January 4, 2013 at 1:14 PM
I think this guy wrote this lame article to get publicity.
Blake on January 4, 2013 at 1:14 PM
.
Does that level of stupid make you evil or crazy?
LincolntheHun on January 4, 2013 at 1:56 PM
I knew this sounded familiar and then remembered he is the author of numerous ridiculous (but commercially successful) self-help books, other books on behavioral psychology, and sundry article.
He’s about as worthy of respect as Deepak Chopra after he set up camp in Beverly Hills and started coining it in.
It is not a gratuitous ad hominem to accuse this man of moral cowardice and lack of intellectual rigor.
Moral cowardice: Crazy and evil are two entirely separate things that are sometimes seen in conjunction. Fails to attempt to explore this issue taking psychology back to the dark ages and entirely negating psychiatry (not surprising, he is not a medical doctor).
Lack of intellectual rigor: Crazy people and evil people can commit mass murder (so can most people) and they always use guns (easily falsifiable).
I could go on but at this point I feel like I’m being a bit hard on Deepak Chopra. He’s more of a cross between Mika and Dr. Phil.
CorporatePiggy on January 4, 2013 at 2:19 PM