Ion Cannon!, on 24 Jul 2011, 22:25, said:
AJ, on 24 Jul 2011, 20:11, said:
General, on 24 Jul 2011, 20:01, said:
AJ, on 24 Jul 2011, 20:56, said:
he may well have been, but that does not mean he was 'wired up' correctly in his head. There is just no way anyone in their right mind could bring themselves to do this?
So you think evey killer is mentally ill and people with stable mental condition cannot kill others ? just look at everyday military examples.
I didn't say that at all
What I said was that somebody capable of slaughtering 100 civilian teenagers begging for mercy wasn't quite in his right mind.
Where do you draw the line though? The point is serial killers do things we cannot comprehend. We can't just say theres something wrong with them (IE not their fault). Even if he did have some sort of mental disability that doesn't change the fact he murdered 90+ people in cold blood.
There's a distinction I'm trying to show here, and perhaps I've not got it across quite right yet. I am not, for a second, suggesting that this psychopath did not know full well what he was doing. I am also not suggesting that he had a mental 'disability'. All I am saying is that somewhere, in his brain, the 'right' and 'wrong' wires got a bit muddled up, probably by himself. This is not a disability, in my books. Everyday people know right and wrong, and we are able to discern between the two. A disability is being unable to discern between the two of them at all, I'd say. I just think that he was fully aware of what he was doing, period. He might have not carried the same values as everyday civilised humans, but he knew damn well what he was doing.
I suppose a good comparison would be a child soldier in an African country indoctrinated into murdering civilians (note I am not for a second blaming them, rather comparing mindsets). In both cases, they are aware of what is right and wrong, but this has been twisted enough so that the boundaries are blurred. In the case of child soldiers, this is by drugs, beatings, etc. In the case of this right wing extremist, it was probably his own damn fault. He may be a bit addled, but he brought it on himself, and has nobody to blame, and is still subjectively capable of realising the consequences of his actions.