[Dion]

Killers who use knives more ‘spontaneous, impulsive, enraged,’ expert says

“It’s much more difficult to take the lives of a large number of people with a knife,” said Levine, “and not just for the obvious technical reasons.

“Stabbing is up close and personal. It’s intimate. There may even be an evolutionary prohibition against plunging a knife into someone’s body. By contrast, there is no such prohibition against pulling a trigger. So shooting a large number of people, aside from the mechanical reasons, is psychologically easier than using some other intimate method.”

“It seems to me that the big difference between someone who commits mass murder or kills five people all at once with a gun versus a knife, is that the person who stabs to death is, I guess, to use the vernacular, not in his right mind, meaning he’s been drinking heavily, he is drugged or he suffers from a profound mental illness,” said Levine.

“In the extreme, he may even think he is killing gophers or preventing earthquakes. Hallucinations may even be possible in someone using a knife to attack numerous people.”

“Someone who shoots five people to death, you just don’t typically see the same kind of psychopathology,” explained Levine.

“I’m not saying that (people who shoot numerous people) are normal people, they may suffer from depression, like millions of others. They may have suffered some catastrophic loss in proximity to their rampage. For example, they might have been humiliated by their classmates and lost face, they may have been fired by the boss, or suffered some terrible separation or divorce — there’s almost always a catastrophic loss — and I would look for some catastrophic loss in this house party killer, too,” said Levine.

“The person who kills large numbers with a knife tends to be more spontaneous, impulsive and enraged.”

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/cr...117/story.html