http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11683/pub_detail.asp
After the lone gunman, Mohammed Merah, was shot and killed by a French sharpshooter, the details of who and what he was have started to come out, and the commentaries to pour forth to explain why he did what he did. One word stands out that makes me stop to think: rampage.
A rampage is an uncontrollable act, a rage of fury starting out almost from nowhere and concluding in an explosion of violence. But everything I have seen and heard about more than three weeks of murders—first a single soldier, then a group of paratroopers, and then the killing of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish high school—indicates something quite other than an outburst of murderous rage. In each case, the young Frenchman of Algerian background rode his stolen motor scooter to the target area, dismounted, walked up to his victims, and shot them at close range, leaving burn marks on their skin. There were many days between each of these attacks. Mohammed also told police by phone as they encircled his flat in Toulouse that he had been planning at least one further shooting and he regretted not having more victims. This is not a rampage. If not, what is it?
Does it matter? No, not to the victims or their family and friends. For them, it is cold-blooded murder, another example of racist hate, and an unbearable tragedy. But it does matter to the security forces, police, and commentators who try to prevent similar events and to protect themselves when they hunt down and try to capture the perpetrators. If these killings were the result of a murderous rage, then it would be hard to predict who among the thousands, if not millions, of disaffected, angry young men, members of minority groups disadvantaged by this society or that, will finally have had enough and race out in a fury to maim or kill individuals designated by hate speech and cultural norms as worthy of being so attacked.