US shootings: A predictable outcome

There is a sickening inevitability to mass shootings in the US, but politicians who benefit from millions of gun lobby dollars are unlikely to restrict gun usage any time soon

People stand at a prayer vigil for famlies of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 people were killed in a mass shooting last week Picture: Getty

Stephen Paddock, Devin Kelley and most recently Nikolas Cruz: the perpetrators of three mass shootings in the past five months take their places alongside Dylann Roof and Adam Lanza and countless others in the macabre pantheon of American men whose sole legacy is the number of innocent lives they destroyed.

As the horrific slaughter at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, confirmed, the pathology of a mass shooter seems to vary as little ...