Sociopaths are common and scary.
One in every thirteen houses has one living in it, maybe yours.
Sociopaths are portrayed in media, SLAUGHTER OF THE LAMBS movie for example as easily detectable madmen far outside normal behaviors. But the BTK killer held a steady job, raised a family, donated to his family church and led a cub scouts troop, while for decades he slipped out and killed victims in their homes. Ted Bundy was well liked, steady employed most of the time, a popular person with a steady girlfriend, a republican fundraiser volunteer, but he was known to murder 30, and near his execution promised to give details on "hundreds" of additional victims if they delayed the electric chair.
Officially known as ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, Sociopaths may be the most common killers, but Paranoid Schizophrenics constitute a sizable block, with Narcissistic Personality Disorders probably accounting to a great number of the murder-suicides, familicides and sudden rage killings when their world is shaken and they can't see themselves as the hero of their story any longer.
Of these, the sociopaths are the planners, like James Holmes the Aurora Colorado Theater Shooter. He kept his plans secret while having explosive fireworks bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition delivered to his home and workplace, even while seeing a psychological therapist.
Adam Lanza was a planner: he attempted to buy weapons that week, reported to have reconnoitered the school the day before, taped three spare 30-round clips to his gun plus the one loaded, and destroyed his computer and attacked his hard drive to destroy evidence.
We need to pressure media and our social circles to be more aware of the basic definitions and symptoms of these illnesses. It is our job as the first line of defense in society to know when somebody in the 13 houses closest to us is going off soon.
Hollywood celebs are making gun control PSAs to suggest making guns harder to get, but really we need a better plan for making them harder to get to specific groups of individuals who are hiding their mental illness well and passing by us on a regular basis.
We need TV and movies to better portray the actual symptoms rather than some caricature for a James Bond or Die hard plot, It may be a little harder on the writers, but society needs a better understanding of what the threat is and where it is coming from.
We also need to devise ways that people hitting the courtrooms time and again, which is one symptom of sociopathy, Anti-Social behaviors and contempt of society standards, gets databased for background checks. DMV has points for drivers -- too many points and your license is suspended. We need a points system that gets not only a background check black mark, but a warrant to check the known residence to take out all the guns when they get too many points as a lawbreaking anti-social.
We need to control the nuts before they become gun nuts, before they become killers.
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