Well, despite everything, he is still a human being.
He is a human being who has no value for other human beings. Why should his humanity be valued? I'm not on board with some others on this thread about public hangings or whatever, but you're the other extreme.
Moreover, he is white, middle class, intelligent, and university educated. On paper he is, I imagine, quite similar to many of us on this board.
Go back and re-read what you just wrote, and let me know if you're still 100% serious. So would you be with the people who can careless about him if he was a minority hobo?
There's a tweet going around Twitter that says "If he was Middle Eastern he'd be a terrorist, if he was black he'd be a thug, but he's white so he's mentally ill". It upsets me that you just proved this true. His class, intelligence, and sure as hell not his race has no effect on his mental stability or compassion for human beings. If you gave every one the access to the weapons he had you'd be surprised how many of them would be white, middle class, and university educated.
Oh, and in no way do I find him similar to myself. Disgusting.
Yes, this fellow's crime was horrendous, and I do not advocate that we grant him clemency, but I think one of the things that we ought to think and discuss more about is what would lead a guy to a point where he would do something like this.
Insanity? I don't really care, honestly. See, the difference between what he did and things like abuse, murder b/w people who somehow know each other, even rape is that there is a reason. A terrible reason, but it adds up. Someone with an upperhand got mad. Here we have a man who killed a bunch of strangers--of all ages!!!--in a place where he KNEW they'd be for NO logical reason. The only 'reason' someone could come up with would be the psychiatrists. But I don't even believe that he is completely not all there. As you said, he was intelligent. Intelligent enough to know where/how to get all the weapons, how to use them, where to best use them so as to cause such a devastation, booby-trap his apartment and join all the infamous killers.
He thought he was the Joker. If he was just a bit mental, he'd just dress up and write fanfiction like all the other people living in an imaginary world. He crossed the line by killing real people. I don't care what pushed him.
I mean, just imagine, who in their right minds would willfully choose to be in the position to essentially find joy and motivation in staging such a killing spree? His family is not insane or dysfunction, as far as we know. So he probably wasn't always this way. I feel that this attitude of "Oh, he's a psycho, let's gut him" is a dehumanizing and cheap write-off. It doesn't explain anything. These victims and families weren't hit by a natural disaster. There is a human element here.
You seem to REALLY want an explanation. What would it change? Let's say his father beat him. Is he the only one? Does it now give the right to everyone with a rough childhood to cause mass murders? He said he was the Joke, should we now be afraid of every kid who was raised by a superhero/villain plot? I feel like you believe everyone is good until something pushes them. This is sometimes true, but if it were the case, he would have gone back and gutted his family or professors or killed himself. Not innocents. Shooting a 3-month-old is dehumanizing.
Personally, I think that people who are able to execute something that requires this level of planning and premeditation must be incredibly motivated, and my bet is that the motivation derives from a lot of personal pain and suffering--whatever the source of that may be.
Go visit him in jail and give him a medal for being able to execute a better murder than that thug in the hood somewhere who just wanted some money, if that'll make you happy.
