In 2007, a writer of The Washington Post tried to find out an answer to why mass murders occur like as in the case of the horrific slayings that occured at Virginia Tech. Do peole choose to kill because of reasons Sigmund Freud would side with, or is it because of a cognitive disfunction? Throughout history many studies have been done and scientists have found that people with mental disorders may suffer from neurological issues. For example, someone may have a very low amount of serotonin in their brain and could even suffer from high levels of dopamine. But, what exactly is the cause that creates people to become a mass murderer? This article can shed some light and give motivation to scientists informing them that some issues like this need to be looked at in greater depth. Also, a small comparison is made in this article to how mass murderers differ from other types of murderers like serial killers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601831_2.html
As disturbing as this subject is i find it very interesting and important to find out what motivates these mass murderers to do the things they do. As the article above states it is hard to figure out and prevent these types of events from happening because most of the time the murderer kills themselves. We have all felt depressed or stressed out in our lives but im sure none of us have had the motivation to even think about killing a person let alone multiple people. That is why i think this is so interesting. These people that commit these crimes must have some kind of psychological issue that they cannot control. But is it possible to predict when a person is at their "breaking point?" It is a very hard question to answer because if someone is labeled as being close to committing this type of offense and is not it would be very harmful on their well being, and on the other hand if they are at that point and are not stopped then it can be very harmful for the society that they live in. I think this topic is very hard to explain but also needs a great amount of attention because of the amount of pain it inflicts when it occurs. I found this link to wikipedia that has a pretty good size list of mass murders, killing sprees, school shootings and other related killings that have happened throughout history and across the world. It is a very extensive list that is surprising in the sense that it has happened a lot more than i had imagined!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_murderers_and_spree_killers_by_number_of_victims