Causes are proximate causes of the crime.
·
Robbery
is a mass murder performed as part of a robbery or to eliminate witnesses to
the robbery.
·
Mental
illness includes all crimes where either contemporary accounts describe the
murderer as insane, or where the nature of the crime makes other explanations
implausible (this is necessarily a judgment call, on which my experience with
mentally ill relatives and friends informs my opinion). Remember also, the legal definition of mental
illness is much narrower than the medical definition. Through most of U.S. history, the McNaughton
Rule (sometimes spelled M’Naughten) defined legal insanity as: "at the
time of committing the act, the accused was laboring under such a defect of
reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the
act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing
was wrong."[1] A person who did not know he was doing wrong,
was insane. Persons who are medically
mentally ill sometimes know that they are doing wrong and try to escape arrest
and conviction (perhaps because the “aliens,” or the CIA or KGB “agents” that
they have just murdered are still after them).
Such persons are legally sane, while in any conventional sense, they are
as “mad as hatters.”
·
Resist
is a criminal resisting arrest.
·
Unknown
describes a very large number of crimes where either the motivation is unclear
or the newspaper coverage is silent; this also includes some mass murders where
the inability to identify the murderer makes cause impossible to
determine.
·
Religion
is mass murders committed as part of religious persecution. (And yes, in America!)
·
Racism
is its frequent cousin. In some cases,
these include revenge or retribution against Indians for crimes not, or at
least not necessarily, committed by the victims.
·
Politics
are terrorist acts committed to advance a political cause.
·
Revenge
are mass murders committed to take revenge for real or perceived injuries by
the murderer, his family, or acquaintances.
·
Indian
are crimes between Indians and settlers that are not official acts of war, but
that might have been seen that way by the murderers. I have classified all attacks against
peaceful travelers and settlers in this cause.
·
Poverty is
a strange subclass of family murders committed, usually by a parent concerned
their family is about to become impoverished, who then “protect” them from that
suffering by mass murder. In some cases,
this seems to be a form of mental illness: at least one example below involved
a mass murderer who was in no way in such danger of impoverishment.
·
Labor are
crimes committed during labor disputes, sometimes against strikebreakers,
sometimes against labor unionists. (One
lesson to be learned: do not upset miners!)
·
Quarrel
are incidents that start out as some relatively minor dispute before escalating
into disproportionate response.
·
Cult
refers to mass murders committed by oddball religious cults, of which I was
surprised were widespread in the early 20th century.
·
Rape
are mass murders committed to eliminate witnesses to a rape.
·
Greed are
mass murders carried out to obtain wealth other than by robbery, often by
inheritance from the deceased.
·
Divorce is
a subclass of Revenge; someone is
being divorced or has been and is seeking retribution. My understanding is that those who have been
through such an event will immediately understand the rage.
·
Adultery:
a subclass of Revenge.
·
Jealousy:
should be obvious.
·
Intoxication
are crimes attributed to alcohol or drug-induced stupidity. As mentioned above, the strong overlap
between mental illness and substance abuse makes some of these
hard to distinguish, especially 150 years after the crime.
·
Bullying
is a recent category, and one that I suspect reflects some deeper mental illness; I was bullied as a
child, had access to low-grade explosives and never even thought of mass
murder.
[1]
“The insanity defense’ and Diminished Capacity,” https://www.law.cornell.edu/background/insane/insanity.html
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