My wife has 25 plus years in the field of taking care of SMI people. She says that at the last estimate, there are about 3 million people on the streets that are SMI with homicidal tendencies. As long as they are on their meds, they are fine. One problem though, since the funding for organizations that deal with these people is at a all time low, these people are left to their own devices and they often get off their meds because, they think since they feel fine, they not longer need them. That is where they really go off.
My wife was a case worker who's job was to go to these peoples places of residencies and actually make sure they took their meds. She had one, who's parents were supposed to do this and they didnt. The result is that he went off and took his dads pickup truck, rammed three private cars, rammed a cop car and tried to run over the cop, got onto the freeway and there was a hell of a chase for a while. They shot him-he survived, and they took him to the state farm for a intense tune up-yes, they actually call it that.
Both the Gifford shooter and this guy were SMI, homicidal and many have grand delusional symptoms. That is why he and the Gifford's shooter both smiled. They got attention and are actually got their jollys out of it. These people are also susceptible to outside influence and will ‘do it’ instead of talk about it. Remember Hinckly-they guy who shot Reagan?
This is all so true. I do not know how he could have been detected or forced into treatment because as you say there are problems with funding, and how could his mother tell him what to do, I am sure he would not have listened anyway.
Yes, I do recall Hinkley and he definitely was proud of all the attention he got.
It seems also there was no way to prevent this. Who could have predicted this exact scenario, and we can’t have scanners and metal detectors at every movie theater. Really tragic and I do hope there will not be copycats (as was the case with Colombine).