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

[Posteritatis]

137. Except that, yes, most of the discussions *do* open it up to "all forms of mental illness."

Or deny that there are forms of mental illness and there's merely generic craziness.

Or use the discussion as an excuse to define mental illness in terms of their social and political foes, rather than any medical criteria.

DU has this conversation every time a high profile criminal act occurs. It usually does so in staggeringly stupid and offensive ways, but even those are a big step above the population as a whole.

Of course there's a possibility that some violent crimes have mental illnesses as a factor, by which I mean there's a certainy because, y'know, duh. The problem is that a lot of people don't want that kind of nuance and choose instead to see twenty-five percent of the population as the next Klebold or Brievik or whoever else based on nothing but the broadest possible correlations.