Colorado (USA) and Norway (Europe) are known as two western ,modern, democratic, rich states.
The horrible shootings - recently in Colorado, Aurora, and last year in Norway, Utoya island - pose at least two questions besides the one about the easiness of gun acquisition .
Both gunmen had no previous violence record. How does a mainstream guy suddenly turn into a mass killer?
Well, we get some answers from Anders Behring Breivik's testimony in court. The norwegian killer who left 77 dead at a youth camp in the little island of Utoya (including the eight dead in the preceding explosion at a government building in Oslo) - declared, that he was actually a nice, caring, sane person, not a psychiatric case at all.
To be able to attain his goal - which was to alert his country Norway and the whole of Europe to what he saw as the dangers of immigration (loss of culture and identity), he realized that he would have to undergo a process of de-humanization and de-emotionalizing. It took him five years to train himself before the bombing and shooting attacks.
(We don't know yet about James Holmes's motives for killing 12 people and injuring 58 at a premiere of the latest Batman movie in Aurora theater. It appears that like the norwegian, he has also thoroughly planned his rampage if not for years, probably for weeks ).
Both gunmen were shooting freely and uninterrupted until the police arrival at the scene of crime. Nobody in the crowd had made any attempt to immobilize the shooter. How come?
That kind of attitude is sad, and throws a certain light on education in western countries. Apparently, modern, liberal education fails to instill in youngsters values such as courage , bravery, inventiveness in a life emergency ; the consequences are often tragic.