Murderers are not crazy people

Great Debates
1

In general a murderer is not a crazy person.

When encountering the scandalous, the barbaric, the offensive and preposterous, people often react by naming such acts ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’. They don’t attempt to diagnose the perpetrator. It’s just a manner of speaking, a way of condemning irrational or uncivilized behavior. Or so it should. Popular culture seems to support this view on killers and to promote the idea that murderers are abnormal human beings, whose abnormality most likely stems in their DNA.

There is also the attitude of politicians like Trump, who would rather dismiss the issue of easy access to weapons that can enable people to commit mass shootings by putting the blame on the mental health of the slaughterer in an attempt to circumlocute the real issue.

Human beings’ evolution and history shows that people are capable of murder and they can do it in order to ensure the survival or prosperity of their group, family or themselves. Our murderous susceptibility does ground in our DNA, but it’s something that we all share, not an anomaly. What prevents the number of murders from skyrocketing is social norms and government restrictions.

It is true that certain human beings are more likely to become murderers than others, but that’s not because they’re less sane or human. Human beings show a wide range of types, temperaments, characters, and traits. Some of us may be more aggressive or less empathetic, but that doesn’t mean these people crazy. A sociopath may feel nothing when killing men, women or children, or he may even enjoy himself while doing it, but he can still tell right from wrong.

Most murderers are not crazy people. They have roughly the same DNA as ours, and can tell right from wrong.
(Here’s an expert’s typology of violent offenders.)

2

There are multiple definitions of insane. Legally insane is a very high bar but there’s no reason everyone must restrict themselves to only calling “crazy” people who cannot tell right from wrong.

I’m comfortable saying that on average those who commit mass murders have a crazier mindset than those who do not. I’ll also admit that some who commit mass murder might have a relatively normal inner life otherwise, and are thus not sufficiently crazier than the rest of the population to have that label apply. But pretty much everyone who plans on and executes mass murder against total strangers is crazy IMO because they do so for crazy reasons. Some who commit mass murder against co-workers and relatives are also sociopathic enough to warrant that label but some are probably not.

3

If you’re looking strictly as whether mass killers are “crazy people”, then no, most are not overtly psychotic or delusional.

On the other hand, they arguably have mental problems.

*"Looking at both studies, and using data from his own work, J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who consults with the F.B.I., has identified what he believes is a common thread: a “paranoid spectrum,” he calls it.

At the extreme end is full-on psychosis of the Loughner variety. But the majority of people on this spectrum are not deeply ill; rather, they are injustice collectors. They are prone to perceive insults and failures as cumulative, and often to blame them on one person or one group.

“If you have this paranoid streak, this vigilance, this sense that others have been persecuting you for years, there’s an accumulation of maltreatment and an intense urge to stop that persecution,” Dr. Meloy said."*

Contrast these killers with people who murder for personal gain, dominance (as in gang killings) or momentary rage, and there seem to be considerable differences in thought and coping patterns.

It shouldn’t be that hard to keep guns away from paranoid schizophrenics, but tougher to detect those with paranoid streaks who are gradually building up to a violent explosion.

4

All I can say is that they all seem to lack empathy, and tend to be extremely self centred.

There is always something about them, something different and not what you would necessarily call a mental illness. - more of a social dysfunction.

Now you could argue that they could have become the person they are well after the event, you might argue that the act of killing has changed the murderer in some way. It is likely possible that their crime has caused them a measure of PTSD which is unlikely to be treated.

Certainly the murderers I’ve come across committed their crimes years ago, and that time has changed them - but then being incarcerated changes every person because we are made up partly of our total experiences, however, when you compare them to other offenders they still tend to be different on some way.

I notice in the link provided by the OP that there is no direct mention of the effects of hard drugs - I have seen any number of killers whose empathy has been stripped away completely by drugs, these people come pretty close to being true psychopaths but once they are drug free their own personality begins to assert itself over their ‘drug character’. It does not matter who you are, once drugs get hold of you, then your humanity simply disappears completely, even humanity to yourself and also the effects of drugs will generally exacerbate any mental health issues you have already.

've also seen enough to know that drugs generally are in and of themselves a source of mental health issues, and its not predictable how quickly they will have this effect, or in what time scale, and to what extent mental health damage will be caused.

A great many of the points raised in the link provided by the OP are also true for other types of criminal too, concrete thinking, inflexible, poor decision making etc

The real challenge is that there are plenty of folks who have many of these aforementioned characteristics but do not carry out the anti-social aspects, and its trying to find some way to separate the likely killer from the sad lonely, depressed etc

5

I agree with UY Scuti. There is a correlation between violence and substance abuse—other sorts of mental illness, not really. Just off the top of my head, I suspect murderers are sane, but very angry. Oh, and they tend to be men. Maybe we should forget about crazy people, disarm men, and give guns to women. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

I too agree with the OP. I think society’s labeling of murderers as “crazy” is an attempt to distance itself from such people, as in, “That sort of thing couldn’t be done by people like us,” or “We’re far from their level.” It also speaks to an assumption that the default condition of humankind is good, that people are naturally good, and that evil is an aberration or anomaly.

The book* Ordinary Men *describes in detail how normal, average, ordinary German people were able to participate in the Holocaust.

7

There is also the false positives problem. Even if 90% of mass killers are insane by some definition (way too high, clearly) only a tiny fraction of people with the same symptoms ever become mass killers.
If those pushing the solve the mental health issue, not the gun issue, were honest they would recommend keeping guns from this bigger group. And you can hear the screams from the NRA about that already.

8

Well clearly most murderers are not “crazy people” most murders are not mass killings or random acts of violence. They crimes carried out against someone the murder knows for some “rational” (by some definition of rational, from the point of view of the murderer) reasons (e.g. person X stole money from me, cheated on me, knows that I did Y, spilled my drink, cut me off in traffic, etc. etc.)

If what you mean most mass-shooters are not crazy, that is also true, although a significant minority are (e.g. Adam Lanza the Sandy Hook the shooter).

The bar for an insanity defense is incredibly high in the US (and not even allowed in some jurisdiction). If the OPer is implying people are getting away with murder by falsely claiming insanity that is a hollywood fantasy that is very untrue.

9

If we define a crazy person as someone who’s non-normal mental state leads them to take actions that negatively impact their life, then I think it’s fair to say that basically all murderers are crazy people. Going to prison, I think it’s safe to say, is going to negatively impact your life.

And, I’ll note, that definition is pretty well as good a definition of mental illness as we have. I didn’t manufacture it for the thread.

I suspect that if you looked at a group of murderers, you’d be able to break them down into one of these groups:

  1. Addict
  2. Poor impulse control
  3. Aggressive behavior
  4. Extreme emotions

These are all things that fall within the realm of mental illness.

10

Three of those(2-4) are completely normal parts of the human condition, that everyone, mentally healthy or not, will experience at some time in their life. And 1 is something a huge number of otherwise mentally healthy people will experience, possibly most in the days when smoking was extremely common.

11

Yes, as is anxiety, hyperactivity, sadness, etc.

Ergo the qualifier that the person’s mental state negatively impact their life.

12

My poor impulse control over the thanksgiving dinner yesterday will absolutely negatively impact my life (when I weight myself). That doesn’t make me mentally ill.

13

Are you morbidly obese? If not, then the statement that it’s going to negatively impact your life is likely poppy-cock. It’s a rational decision that you made, favoring social norms over a minor and temporary setback on one metric that doesn’t appreciably affect your life.

14

I disagree. It is not normal, by any stretch of the imagination, for one human being to kill another (excepting self-defense or imposition of the death penalty). It is, therefore, the act of a crazy person.

15

Why can’t it just be evil?

I mean, yes, I can imagine someone who kills a guy as “the act of a crazy person.” But imagine someone who kills a guy for, y’know, money – and, for the sake of argument, let’s say that it’s someone who gets away with it – why call that crazy?

Why not just call that “evil”?

16

Because evil is a word without definition. It’s the equivalent of declaring it magic.

17

What’s the difference between calling someone evil or calling them crazy? As Velocity says it’s just a way to separate “us” from “them” and completely ignores the fact that one of “us” can become one of “them” fairly easily with the right justification.

Once you start down the justification road - that some killing is not murder - it’s not hard to justify any killing. It doesn’t take a crazy or evil person to think “my family has been oppressed and kept in poverty by society for generations, therefore they are my enemy and don’t deserve to have their life valued” or “society is going to hell in a handbasket, all these people going against the will of god and human decency. It’s time for a reckoning”

Human beings have a nasty and violent streak in us. And society tells us that we are supposed to keep that urge at bay. . .except sometimes.

mc

18

I don’t think you can talk about “murderers” any more than you can talk about any fairly diversified group of people. Even if you are limiting the people you speak of strictly to people who fall into the legal definition of “murderer,” which is to say, someone who has committed first or second degree murder, and NOT anyone who has committed any form of manslaughter, accidental homicide, a self-defense killing, or killing in a war, I’m still not sure we can make generalizations.

At any rate, a lot of killings by people who have mental health issues that are mitigating, but not completely exculpatory, are actually manslaughter. If someone with documented poor impulse control kills someone in a bar fight, that is going to be a manslaughter (and might even be plea bargained to something like felony assault).

Murderers are mostly people who plan murders and kill for gain. They are almost axiomatically not “crazy,” or they wouldn’t be able to carry out a plan.

Anyway, TL;DR, people who kill people are too diverse a group to generalize.

19

Well, that’s why I answered the way I did, because some killing isn’t murder. A lot more people who execute someone or fight in a war or kill someone in self-defense are not crazy compared to mass murderers. My answer would be different had the op said “killers are not crazy people.”

20

Most murderers do not have “roughly” the same DNA as you or I…they have the exact same DNA. Hell, a monkey has 99% the same. A banana, over half! Rather, it is “the wiring of the brain” where the scant difference–if there is any–takes place.

As far as murderers all being clinically insane, of course this is not the case. It must be taken on a case by case basis. And the elephant in the room is: define “crazy.” This in and of itself can constitute an entire thread, to be sure.

I do not, for example, consider somebody who kills an enemy soldier in combat to be insane. I do not consider that “murder” to be honest. Not in the same sense of the word that we usually use, anyway. But, yeah…case by case is the only accurate method. For example: Jeff Dahmer, Ted Bundy? Crazy as shit-house rats, both of them. But the guy who drunkenly bashes his brother-in-law’s head in with a sledgehammer because he was beating his sister? Not so much. Nor the cop who guns down a 16 y.o. inner city kid brandishing a toy Uzi.

As such…the way this thread is worded…the title question that is, renders it all but meaningless as well as impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy. We must first break down the components: like the aforementioned definition of 'crazy." And then probably need to classify the different manners in which said murders were carried out.