Like other mass shootings, Friday night's deadly mayhem near a University of California campus in Santa Barbara seems sure to provoke another debate about guns and the disturbed individuals who use them to wreak havoc, says the Christian Science Monitor. The attorney for Peter Rodger, an assistant director on “The Hunger Games,” said the man who killed six people and wounded seven more, firing a semi-automatic handgun as he drove a black BMW through an Isla Vista beach neighborhood, is Rodger’s son, Elliot.
In addition to those killed in the rampage, the shooter was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. It's unclear whether he took his own life or was shot during two exchanges of gunfire with police before his car crashed into a parked vehicle. The picture that's emerging is of a disturbed, lonely young man who had vowed revenge on humanity, especially college sorority girls who refused his attention. “It’s obviously the work of a madman,” said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown. UC President Janet Napolitano said, “This is almost the kind of event that's impossible to prevent and almost impossible to predict.”