Nah, you're right. Generally I agree that if someone commits a mass murder, they are by definition insane (any extreme examples, and war to the side because that's not what you're talking about).
What I was getting at before was just that the law is supposed to act as a deterrent. So, if people know they can easily plead insanity by default for a particular crime, then the law isn't really acting as a deterrent. So, there's a good argument that more people would commit that crime because they know the punishment won't be severe.
But on the other hand, realistically for crimes like mass murder - I mean, there's pretty much no way any sane person would do that, even if they *knew* there'd be no punishment.
But that's all, I was just replying to the part about why the law doesn't treat those people as insane by default. And I think that's one of the reasons. It's not my opinion on insane people, just why I think the law is like that.
All evil people are mentally ill
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Nah, you're right. Generally I agree that if someone commits a mass murder, they are by definition insane (any extreme examples, and war to the side because that's not what you're talking about).
What I was getting at before was just that the law is supposed to act as a deterrent. So, if people know they can easily plead insanity by default for a particular crime, then the law isn't really acting as a deterrent. So, there's a good argument that more people would commit that crime because they know the punishment won't be severe.
But on the other hand, realistically for crimes like mass murder - I mean, there's pretty much no way any sane person would do that, even if they *knew* there'd be no punishment.
But that's all, I was just replying to the part about why the law doesn't treat those people as insane by default. And I think that's one of the reasons. It's not my opinion on insane people, just why I think the law is like that.