it appears that the kid who did the shooting was a native american neo nazi, and hated how black culture and other races mixed with his people.

I haev to say good job you idiot, what better way to fight for your people then to kill them, including your own grandparents.

Erm, hate to sound ignorant but what shooting? A link would be nice.

Don't look for logic in cases like this. All I can say is "Mental illness + Easy access to firearms = Tragedy"

Appearently, he was a smart guy. Yes it's possible mental illness, but this character was teh sort who planned this.

And mental illness doesn't mean more likely to kill people.

and dont necessarily blame easy access to weapons, a little research and he probably could have gotten all the students in one shot without even touching so much as a bullet, (content stricken due to inflamitory nature by poster)

you know sometimes i really hate having a concience when it comes to making my posts

Are you being serious or just nitpicking? He didn't mean down's syndrome by mental illness obviously. The kind of people who carve up other people and keep them in the refrigerator have a mental illness, and yes they are more likely to kill people.

Well at least their is no possible way that they can blame this on videogames, though no doubt investigators will find an x-box in the room and draw a conclusion that the Microsoft devil made the kid do it.

Yeah, my mistake.

Yes. By definition, if you do something that will bring you net harm, you are mentally ill. Killing other people counts. Killing yourself definately counts.

Problem is - we're all mentally ill, only the degree varies. And if you lock up all the people who may be dangerous, who would gaurd them?

I don't agree with that definition. I think being mentally ill has nothing to do with actions that will bring you net harm. If a man believes he's Napoleon, he'll probably enjoy the fantasy; no harm there, but he's definitely bonkers. (To use the technical term. :p) If a man smokes, does that make him mentally ill?

Killing yourself doesn't make you mentally ill, unless you're including depression under that term.

Killing others doesn't mean the killer is mentally ill; it means he has different hobbies from most people. Some collect stamps; some collect heads; who is to say which is more nuts?

EDIT: I'm not saying that all killers are as sane as you and I; I'm saying you can't automatically include "killer" in the definition of mentally ill.

I'm going to have to go against you there Malice. I'm in the belief that as soon as a person fully commits to the murder of another person or themselves, then they are mentally ill. They break away from society and are no longer seeing things through an empathic view.

Apathy has taken hold of them and they seek only death and self betterment. In order to have a society and civilization you need empathy, without it everything falls apart.

I beleive to be sane, at least in somewhat definable way, is that you activily help society in some way(such as through arts, revolution, new ideas, constructing buildings,etc) and that if you decided to kill anyone you immedeatly break away from it.

Of course their are the manslaughter cases but thats not what where talking about here. What we are discussing is wheither or not killing makes you insane and if that teenager was infact insane, which I beleive he was.

Dataran, that definition of sane is so far removed from the direct mechanical issues involved in sanity that I think it can't be right.

Anyway, consider the case of a man trapped on a desert island. There is no society for him to contribute to, and your definition doesn't even make sense, it becomes 0/0.

You know, drachefly, I came up with a definition of insanity somewhat similar to Datarn's while watching Castaway (the movie in which Tom Hanks spends a lot of time acting nutty alone on an island.)

Sanity is having a state of mind that allows you to function. Having intimate conversations with a volleyball sitting around a fire in a city park would make you insane, because no-one will hire you for any kind of job. But doing the same thing on an island with no-one to talk to is really quite a good idea. If you live away from society, you need to spend time getting the essentials of life (and maybe coming up with a way to get back into society). For most of us, being sane is being able to function in society.

If you like eating human flesh in a cannablistic society, you are sane (or, at least, this trait does not affect how sane people percieve you to be). If you like eating human flesh in a non-cannablistic society, you are insane. Many sci-fi movies have put time-travelling or otherwise unbelievably situated people into insane asylums because sanity is sharing the world-view of your society.

That's how you diagnose sanity, not what it is. If you imagine someone is a robot from the future trying to kill you, you're insane. If you have good reason to suspect they are, you're not. It might look the same to the NPCs, but the difference is there.

A person is sane when all the parts of their mind are working properly. When you're incapable of reason, you're mentally ill. When you're incapable of empathy, for instance if you can look at killing as a nice hobby, you're mentally ill. I think sociopathic is what it's called.