My brother asked a question I have not seen in the media...

[SheilaT]

1. For what my opinion is worth,

I'm inclined to doubt that the recent shooters have been thinking that rationally.

Of course, if they don't leave behind a note of some kind saying something along the lines of, "Since the world is coming to an end anyway, I want to go out in a blaze of glory."

No. People who do these things have motives totally unrelated to end of the world nonsense, other than ending their personal world.

Here's something else to keep in mind. Every shooting that involves more than one victim is going to tend to be played up quite a bit in the next few days or weeks. It's like after some kind of airplane accident, all of a sudden you'll see stories about the emergency landings that pretty much happen every day of the week anyway, but just don't normally make the news.