Why so many serial killers ex-military?

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David Grossman, a former U.S. military psychologist who helped develop programs to train new recruits to become more effective killers, said that the key to military training lies in breaking down the natural human aversion to killing in a process he calls "disengagement." Once this aversion has been removed, it never comes back, and can make it easier for former soldiers to become murderers.

"The ability to watch a human being's head explode and to do it again and again -- that takes a kind of desensitization to human suffering that has to be learned," Mr. Grossman said yesterday.

In earlier wars, many soldiers were psychologically unable to shoot anyone. In order to increase the "trigger-pull ratio," the United States changed the basic training offered to all recruits and draftees so they would be aggressively desensitized to killing.

Some observers believe this may be why mass murders have become far more common in the past 50 years.

In the 1970s, some observers believed that the humiliation and social opprobrium caused by the Vietnam War, led many former soldiers to become mentally unstable, and potentially to become serial killers.
 
I find this entirely uncompelling. Do you have blunt statistical data showing that a disproportionate number of serial killers have a military background? Because otherwise I am going to chalk this up to crack-pot-ery. Indeed, my instinct tells me the opposite is more likely. The discipline of a military background probably does a great deal to restrain an individual from his baser instincts once he leaves the service. But ultimately, all people are individuals and should be judged accordingly.
 
Why are you so against the military? That's your choice if you don't want to join but leave those who join and serve this country do it. You can't have it both ways, no military and for us to be safe. When there is no military and we get attacked will you be the first to start crying?
 
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