I just saw a movie less than a week ago when a preview showed gangsters shooting up people in a cinema and my first thought was, "Don't give people ideas!" One small blessing is the vast majority of mass murderers have no imagination, but they know how to pick up an idea and run with it (many are actually copycats of another, and given the toll on this one I'm expecting more cinema shootings in the future). My thought was giving the darkness and that movies tend to have a lot of gunfire on screen in them that it could be confusing as hell if someone shot one up (especially as in most cases people know to run or hide when they hear a gun, but that might not happen at the cinema). So unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised.
What I'm wondering about is how did he enter the emergency exit? At least when I snuck into R-rated movies that way as a kid someone else had to open it up from the inside to let us in.
But how could he do it? Perhaps it's a type of sociopathy. Maybe it's clinical mental illness (that is, he failed to process the reality of what he was doing), or maybe he just really wanted his 15 minutes of infamy.
One thing you have to understand about Americans: generally speaking, we love our violence. To us, might makes right. If you don't believe me show "contempt of cop" here in America and see where that gets you, and see how many back the cops torturing and/or killing you. Politicians actually get ahead by people killed (from military strikes to executions of people on death row). Politicians cheered when Ann Coulter said liberals needed to be executed or they'd turn out to be outright traitors. Obama deploys special forces against near everyone, from Somali pirates to Osama, to drones to about everywhere else (which leave a lot more innocent dead than guilty), and even has Americans put on secret kill lists without oversight or due process and yet conservatives say he's TOO SOFT!
And that attitude trickles down so you can usually tell an American on an internet debate by their casually making death threats against those who disagree with them (save when someone "blasphemes Islam" in which case death threats can come from people in other countries). Americans tend to be the loudest supporters of using violence to control people (even children, and I'm not talking a mere reasonable spanking). And the bulk of our education budget seems to be diverted to athletics and jocks given special rights in school because Americans take seriously the ability to dominate another school (via winning a game) through physical aggression (whereas America's poor lack of mental development barely seems to register to our country). Heck, even the idea of shutting down the Penn State athletics until they could get what happened (and how many knew of the little boys being molested) sorted out had people howling in righteous indignation.
So when someone decides to carry out a little violence on his own initiative it just doesn't really surprise me. I'd say the word that describes how it can be done as "karma." (Keeping in mind that karma is a blind machine, not some force for justice against evil doers overseen by an omniscient and omnipotent divine force.) Violence is just too worshiped in this nation, and like a disease it infects and spread. When people worship it (especially at the state level) it's bound to inspire others to adopt those same methods.