5th Girl Dies in Amish School Shooting

Police say a milk truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with wood planks, and then opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three people before committing suicide.

Early Tuesday, authorities confirmed reports that two more girls died, bringing the death toll to five plus the gunman.

Five other girls are in the hospital.

Police say notes and phone calls show the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was "angry at life, he was angry at God." While some who knew him saw no signs of trouble, others say his mood had darkened and he'd stopped chatting and joking with co-workers and customers.

This is America's third deadly school shooting in less than a week.

More here.

Nothing diminishes the sorrow and sadness of this sort of event, but arguably one of the things that makes it more difficult to deal with is the sheer random nature of it and what appears to be the individual pathology of the perpetrator.

Reason wrote about the Columbine school shooting--which did seem to be rooted in a larger psycho-social context, though one that was hard to pin down exactly--here and here.