In many ways, I consider you just as bad as the media who dub every attack an attack by a 'loner'. I've seen this addressed several times online and you all shift it unto the lonely people--not the loners. Just shifting it to another even less defensible group. And the claim to that 'fact' is no more valid.

Recently, Jared Lee Loughner was described as a loner, this is despite him having at one time 'many friends'. This was because he decided at one point to cut off contacts with his friends. If my info is correct, this was about 1 year before the shooting. Yet, I was reading how he had contact with a friend right up to the shooting, and had been dating at most 3 months prior to the shooting. He was not a loner, he was still seeing people outside of his 'business' life. Nor was he a lonely person. This does not mean that he didn't suffer some form of rejection. But it also does not mean he was an introvert.

The Columbine killers were not lonely nor loners. They were paranoid joiners. They were in the game, but if my memory serves correct they felt their friends were cutting them out of the 'good stuff'. They had friends and girlfriends. They had more friends than you'd think possible given what they scribbled in their diaries. I believe they also bullied others.

According to the Secret Service report, the Safe School Initiative, just 12% of shooters were described as having no close friends. That certainly dispels the claims here and elsewhere that these are desperately lonely people and that's what causes them to snap. It dispels the notion the deflection by 'loners' that these are lonely introverts. Neither group magically spawns these killers.