Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages PL
I haven't heard this reason being advanced anywhere and would like to try it out here to see what you think.
Everyone always says that the shooter shoots himself at the end because he doesn't want to be captured by the police. I think that's true but only part of the truth.
I think the main motivation from the very beginning is suicide and the shooter wants to create a situation conducive to that end.
His plan is to not die alone; his plan is to take others with him. At the end, as the police are arriving, he only has a small window of opportunity to complete his plan. He doesn't have much time to think and the pressure is just what he needs to take that final step to do what he has been wanting to do all along. And that is to take his own life.
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Hard to generalize about this. They all have had different motives IMHO. Some are very mentally ill and work without much of a motive except maybe as you say a very ugly way of making many others suffer along with them which sounds like the Newtown shooter. The Aurora, CO movie theater murderer planned his rampage very carefully from what it sounds like and did not want to end up killed by law enforcement. The Austin Texas tower shooter at the U of TX had a very serious tumor of some kind in his head.