# What percentage of people could have done a 'Virginia Tech massacre'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 17, 2007, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448 "2007-04-17T08:38:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/41 "2007-04-21T05:02:03Z")
Show me evidence that any other mass killer or mass murdered did it because of brain tumours. I was under the impression that mental health professionals said that those with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent or criminal than anyone else. Show me some evidence or I will continue to think it is drivel ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/42 "2007-04-21T05:11:25Z")
[QUOTE=xtisme] **\> The percent of people able to do such a thing is limited pretty much to the pool of gun owners .** :rolleyes: Does the word ‘horseshit’ mean anything to you? If not, take a wiff of your post some time… -XT [/QUOTE] Are you saying someone can do this without a gun? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/43 "2007-04-21T05:44:30Z")
[QUOTE=scr4] Are you saying someone can do this without a gun? [/QUOTE] Depends how you define “gun owner”, though. _Possession_ of a gun is useful for killing people in large numbers, but the guns used in such massacres are sometimes stolen from the people who legally bought them in the first place, i.e. the guns taken from the home of Andrew Golden’s grandfather and used by Andrew and friend Mitchell Johnson to kill students and a teacher at Jonesboro. In any event, there are so many gun owners in the U.S. and the correlation between legal ownership and homicidal behaviour is sufficiently tenuous that as a criterion, it’s practically useless. In fact, the whole process is kind of like trying to apply the [Drake equation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) - only the base value (the number of stars in the galaxy or the number of people in the U.S.) is known with any certainty; the parameters are at best speculative. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/44 "2007-04-21T06:09:54Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] All it takes is some perfect storm of personal misfortune, means, opportunity and that person’s in a clocktower with a .30-06 [/QUOTE] Nah. A .270 gives you a flatter trajectory and less recoil, increasing accuracy and kill ratio. I agree with **E-Sabbath** …this was one **mean** crazy-ass mofo. With that amount of planning there is really nothing that could have benn done to stop him, short of running him over with a taxi when he first left his dorm that morning. **scr4** - With several months to plan, I could take out one hell of a lot more people that this dude did, and never touch my guns. Easily. But the fact that I can think of such a thing squicks me out, so I think you’re safe from me. Far a while. Maybe. Better send me a present, just to make sure. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/45 "2007-04-21T06:10:15Z")
[QUOTE=scr4] Are you saying someone can do this without a gun? [/QUOTE] Sure. Bombs aren’t that hard to make, and are generally actually far more effective at killing people. But the point was that you were sort if implicating gun owners as some kind of dangerous class. Crazy people don’t need to be gun owners to aquire one in time to do crazy stuff. And they don’t need a gun anyway. You may not have had the intention, but it appears that you have an axe to grind and hold gun owners in general in some way responsible for stuff like this. I may be reading too much into what you say, though. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/46 "2007-04-21T06:42:46Z")
[QUOTE=scr4] Are you saying someone can do this without a gun? [/QUOTE] Nope. I’m saying a ‘gun owner’ is not required to do such a crime. Just someone who aquired a gun by other than legal means. Take this recent incident. I’m not sure if they ever got a definitive word (I stopped following the story days ago), but the initial reports I read seemed to indication this was a stolen gun…and the murderer certainly wasn’t the ‘owner’. BTW, your quote is mis-attributed. THIS part was from gonzomax: The percent of people able to do such a thing is limited pretty much to the pool of gun owners . Its pure bullshit because the pool of gun owners is merely a subset of the actual pool of folks who could do such a thing. People who have never owned or even fired a weapon can be in this pool simply by going out and buying a weapon for this one use…or stealing one (the most likely course). To my mind, simply buying a gun doesn’t make one a gun owner though I concede I’m doing the same thing I accused others of doing in a similar thread to this one (‘define easy’ 😛 ). Stealing a gun however certainly does NOT make one a gun owner…and IIRC most gun crimes are done by people who used either stolen or at least illegally registered weapons. (As an aside, I’m hoping the above makes sense. I’m on my 5th scotch and to be honest it hardly makes any sense to me, though I know what I wanted to write. Hopefully someone will be able to figure out where I was going with that…for my part, where I’m going now is to the fridge to get some ices and pour 4 fingers worth of a truely divine 18 year old single malt, then I’m going to light this cigar and kick back until I pass out. :)) -XT ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/47 "2007-04-21T11:10:42Z")
I disagree that stealing a gun is the most likely course of action. It seems like people going on these types of sprees aren’t career criminal types, so they’re usually just non-criminals and came unhinged, so they could either have owned a gun, or could go out and buy one. It’s still obnoxious and vaguely accusatory to say, though, that the pool of people able to do this only extends as far as us crazy, murdering gun owners. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/48 "2007-04-21T13:17:01Z")
[QUOTE=blinkingblinking] Pure drivel [/QUOTE] Sez you. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/49 "2007-04-21T13:25:39Z")
> **[Mechanism of Disinhibition After Brain Lesions : The Journal of Nervous and...](https://journals.lww.com/jonmd/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=1997&issue=02000&article=00007&type=abstract)** > > een disinhibition syndromes and dysfunction of orbitofrontal and basotemporal cortices of the right hemisphere. Based on the phylogenetic origin of these cortical areas and their main connections with dorsal regions related to visuospatial functions,... There is a doctor who has been doing studies on violent criminals through autopsies and has found that a large percentage of them have problems with the portion of their brain that controls impulse. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/50 "2007-04-21T13:38:10Z")
Sorry about that link. I don’t know how to fix it. ---
**Author:** ![burundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/51 "2007-04-21T15:10:07Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Annie X-Mas** > \*Everything I’ve read suggests that there is no way to predict who will commit mass murder. \* > [@](#): > > Originally posted **msmith357** > _Being an angry socially isolated loner seems to be a common denominator._ From what I can tell, being an angry, socially isolated loner **male** seems to be the common denominator. Women don’t do this. I don’t know why. I certainly don’t think that women are morally superior. The only case I can think of is the school shooting in Williamsport, PA in 1991. She only shot one person, though. It strikes me as the elephant in the room that no one talks about when they discuss the subject. What makes men overwhelmingly more likely to do this than women? ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/52 "2007-04-21T15:20:37Z")
[QUOTE=burundi] From what I can tell, being an angry, socially isolated loner **male** seems to be the common denominator. Women don’t do this. I don’t know why. I certainly don’t think that women are morally superior. The only case I can think of is the school shooting in Williamsport, PA in 1991. She only shot one person, though. It strikes me as the elephant in the room that no one talks about when they discuss the subject. What makes men overwhelmingly more likely to do this than women? [/QUOTE] > **[Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer)** > > The Cleveland Elementary School shooting took place on January 29, 1979, at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, United States. This is considered the first mass shooting at an elementary school in United States history. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and a police officer were wounded. Brenda Spencer, a 16-year-old girl who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. Charged as an adult, she pleaded guil... Brenda Ann Spencer inspired the song “I Don’t Like Mondays”. ---
**Author:** ![burundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/53 "2007-04-21T17:42:17Z")
Thanks for pointing that out, **Kalhoun**. I’m still curious about why these kind of killers are so much more likely to be men, and I’m also curious about why talking heads rarely seem to point this out when covering these stories. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448/54 "2007-04-21T17:50:43Z")
[QUOTE=burundi] From what I can tell, being an angry, socially isolated loner **male** seems to be the common denominator. Women don’t do this. I don’t know why. I certainly don’t think that women are morally superior. The only case I can think of is the school shooting in Williamsport, PA in 1991. She only shot one person, though. It strikes me as the elephant in the room that no one talks about when they discuss the subject. What makes men overwhelmingly more likely to do this than women? [/QUOTE] It’s called testosterone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-could-have-done-a-virginia-tech-massacre/400448.md?page=2)