Mass murder

Mass murder is the killing of four or more people in a single event. It differs from serial killing in two ways. First, serial killers have a "cooling off period" in between killings, where as a mass murderer kills in a single event (which can last up to several days) Second, serial killers revert to their normal life in between killings, while mass murderers do not. Also unlike serial killers, there is rarley a sexual motive in a mass murderers methodology

More specific terms for mass murder

The twentieth century has seen some of the greatest examples of mass murder, tragically. Instead of simply speaking of "mass murder", the word "genocide" is often used to refer to these incidents, especially in the case of killing all those of a particular ethnic group by their own government (see also democide, or ethnocide if the grouping is based on religion). According to Black's Law Dictionary, the term was popularized by the 1948 "Genocide Convention" of the United Nations, to deal with the special problems posed by the Holocaust, and international wishes to prevent a recurrence of the same.

Dinesh D'Souza wrote:

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

External links

• Killing done in the name of secular ideologies

See Also

• Young mass murderers