Why are people buying the line that this was driven primarily mental illness

[laundry_queen]

88. I personally think

that people are fighting against the fact that mass killers or serial killers can be sane because it scares the everliving FUCK out of them that someone sane could do this. After all, that insinuates, if YOU are sane too, that means you could, potentially, be capable of the same thing. It's much, much easier to label it 'insane' or 'mental illness' so they can create some distance in their own heads about it (to be able to emotionally deal with it - understandable) and declare that it will never happen to them, or it will never be them or their family. They believe that labeling it means there are warning signs, and that gives them comfort that if this was THEIR son or daughter or neighbor, they would 'see signs' and they may be able to prevent horrible things from happening. If we call a mass killer 'sane' it means it's ALL unpredictable and they have NO control over any of it and they just can't deal with that possibility.