I don't seem to understand the purpose of this post. A guy killed his family and the concern is with skill or luck? I feel like I'm missing something
Bad, very bad. You're missing out on more if you read superficially. The post opens with the question: skill or luck? This is the point, but also a third and fourth aspect and perhaps more than 4. This post is full of enigmas and implications that concern suicide very closely. There are many massacres where family members remain alive and injured. Why? And why couldn't there be a psychological component that also involves the partner in the "extreme" decision to commit filicide?
A "double" death, in which two events, murder and suicide, intertwine a complex relationship that gives a meaning that transcends the specificity of the two (or more) taken individually and which, even if phenomenologically opposite behaviors, for Freud share the same matrix, to be found in aggression or in the desire to eliminate the tension underlying it. The phenomenon of murder-suicide has been subjected to various attempts at classification, among which that of Marzuk (1992) is considered the most exhaustive and most widely used. Applying Dollard's (1939) explanatory matrix of aggression-aggression, it can be argued that those who deprive themselves of a primary source of gratification through murder may decide to commit suicide because of this loss. Suicide following the murder, therefore, would be an indicator of the importance of the bond with the victim.Some authors have given rise to the thesis by finding that a strong attachment between the murderer and the victim increases the possibility of suicide. Among the most widespread forms is murder-suicide "out of jealousy", which was the motive for 24% of all murder-suicide cases that occurred in Italy between 1985 and 2008 (Roma et al., 2012) . The most common picture sees a true delirium of jealousy, within a fusional and symbiotic relationship, often defined by abuse and mistreatment, by the fear of betrayal and loss towards an object that escapes any attempt to possess it; in many cases, the destruction of the object through crime is followed by self-annihilation. Together with the form just described, the news is often involved in the narration of murder-suicide events "between spouses", in which a cauldron of feelings, between a sense of impotence in the face of a serious illness, a sense of failure following economic problems or social, a depressive state, can cause the couple to premeditate the joint end of their lives or trigger the homicidal impulse followed by the suicide of the partner who committed it. Even in this case the relationship very often has symbiotic qualities or a strong sense of responsibility towards the more fragile partner.In the case of crimes committed by the spouse, they are mostly elderly people, unable to sustain, psychologically and emotionally, the burden of care and assistance, especially in the absence of prospects of recovery or healing of the loved one . The high incidence of those who, following the crime, commit or attempt suicide, denotes the inability to survive the act itself and confirms the high degree of suffering entailed by the choice to kill a loved one, for whom there was certainly a strong emotional bond, but often shared social isolation and little propensity for extra-family activities.A salvific meaning, therefore, which seems to be in common with filicide-suicide, in which, typically, a depressive personality structure, often characterized by psychotic cues and the idea of one's child as an extension of the self, hinder the idea that the child can have a happy and adapted life, different from that of the parent. But the phenomenon of murder-suicide is not always and not necessarily an epiphenomenon of mental illness. Even if it seems that all forms of murder-suicide are often associated with depression, motivated by different life contexts, rather than "depression" as a pathology, it could be defined as desperation or hopelessness, a psychological construct that refers to those cognitive schemes in which the common denominator is negative expectations towards the future; individuals believe that nothing will turn out in their favor, that they will never succeed in life, that their important goals will not be achieved, and that their problems will not be solved. The sense of hopelessness is often accompanied by the sense of helplessness, the belief of not being able to be helped and above all of not being able to help oneself, of not having control over events, which contributes to the difficulty in grasping the alarm signals to family members, to the forces of order and health experts. The most recognized psycho-dynamic explanation of the phenomenon of murder-suicide starts from a Kleinian assumption that arises from the profound pre-Oedipal dynamics that occurred in the first months of the child's life which remained unresolved and stimulated, probably by an emotional trauma.Although there has been a notable increase in the phenomenon in recent decades, cases of murder-suicide are fortunately rare, compared to less extreme forms of domestic violence and abuse. However, prevention strategies for the phenomenon are rare or not contemplated, as well as complex. Research, however, is unanimous in identifying risk factors.First, in a recent seminar entitled "Men Who Murder Their Families: What the Research Tells Us," 408 cases of family murder-suicide were discussed, of which, in 70% of them, relationships between members were characterized by violence; domestic violence, therefore, can be considered the first risk factor, followed by easy access to firearms, used in 88% of the cases described above. In recent times, in conjunction with the global economic crisis, financial difficulties or job loss are considered by journalists and commentators as the scapegoat; in reality, experts say that these are not risk factors in themselves, but only if associated with pre-existing domestic violence. Durkheim's vision is slightly different, according to which "anomic suicide", characteristic of modern society, would tend to increase its frequency in periods of economic crisis or, on the contrary, in particularly prosperous periods, with the disappointments and frustrations generated by social relationships and by a society that denies the individual references, norms and shared values, which fails to fulfill its disciplining role. In this case the murder-suicide would not occur due to economic losses, but due to the change in the "rules of the game", because life is no longer what one had prepared for and society no longer deserves trust.
But what does that have to do with suicide? Shooting yourself in the head is different from killing another person who's a potentially moving target.
Exactly, moving targets? Or not? We remain stuck to the interpretation of those who did not attend. Even so it becomes extremely complex. However, it could have gone differently.