World’s Deadliest rampage killers

Terror comes as varied as the devil inside people – ruthless dictators over the centuries, home invasions and vandalism, murders of varied kinds, such as through bombing, fire, poisoning, vehicular manslaughter and through melee weapons and firearms.

In a recent heartbreaking event in the United States of America, a rampaged 29-year-old Omar Mateen went on a spree of killings and shot 49 people to death injuring many others. Though statistics may show that spree killings are on the rise within recent years, spree killers are hardly a new phenomena.

Historically, spree killers have always existed, (remember Jallianwala Bagh incident?) but unlike their modern counterparts, their highly publicised trials and the 24-hour news cycle talking head speculations about the accused didn’t.

A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period.

These troubled people suddenly become a sign of our times, and everything from violent video games, music and films have been attributed as the culprits behind the increase in this alarming trend.

In the light of recent event, we bring a compilation of deadliest spree killers around the world from the past century; one from each continent, who used firearms as the weapon of destruction in an attempt to find out what drives people to cause mass panic in a matter of mere minutes.

Not included in this compilation are school massacres, workplace killings, hate crimes, mass murders in domestic environments and cases where the primary motive was to facilitate another felony.

USA
On June 12, 2016, a mass shooting terrorist attack and hate crime occurred inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. Fifty people died, including the gunman, who was killed by Orlando police after a three-hour standoff. An additional 53 people were injured. It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in US history.

Background information revealed that at a young age, Mateen displayed his sexuality and an interest in violence. At Mariposa Elementary, a third grade teacher described Mateen as "very active … constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive ... much talk about violence & sex ... hands all over the place – on other children, in his mouth".

United Kingdom
The Hungerford massacre was a series of random shootings in Hungerford, Berkshire, on 19 August 1987, when Michael Robert Ryan aged 27 fatally shot 16 people, including his own mother, before committing suicide.

Extensive press comment suggested that Ryan was "spoiled" by his mother. A Guardian headline described Ryan as a "mummy's boy". Ryan's true motives are unknown and it is unlikely that they will ever be known as Ryan killed himself and his mother, the only other person who knew him well.

Dr John Hamilton of Broadmoor Hospital and Dr Jim Higgins, a consultant forensic psychiatrist for Mersey Regional Health Authority, both thought he was schizophrenic and psychotic. Hamilton stated "Ryan was most likely to be suffering from acute schizophrenia. He might have had a reason for doing what he did, but it was likely to be bizarre and peculiar to him."

Africa
William Unek was an African police constable and mass murderer who killed a total of 57 people in two separate spree killings three years apart. His first murder spree occurred near Mahagi, Belgian Congo in 1954, where he killed 21 people with an axe, before escaping and finally ending up in British Tanganyika Territory.

Apparently because of social misunderstandings with his boss, Unek went on a second rampage which began in the early hours of February 11, 1957. Armed with a stolen police rifle, 50 rounds of ammunition, and an axe, he started killing people in the area of Malampaka.

Within twelve hours, Unek shot dead ten men, eight women, and eight children, murdered five more men with the axe, stabbed another one, burned two women and a child, and strangled a 15-year-old girl, thus killing a total of 36 people. He was killed in a manhunt following the incidents.

Norway
Anders Behring Breivik is a Norwegian far-right terrorist who committed the 2011 Norway attacks at the age of 32. On July 22, he killed eight people by detonating a van bomb amid the Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo, and then shot dead 69 participants of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp on the island of Utøya.

In August 2012, he was convicted of mass murder. Breivik mentions McVeigh in his diary, which was released a few days after the massacre and reveals that he first began planning his act at the beginning of 2010.

He also states in the diary that his intention was to form a templar order meant to become "the foremost conservative revolutionary movement in Western Europe of the nearest decades". The evaluation concluded that he was not psychotic during the attacks or during the evaluation. He was instead diagnosed as having narcissistic personality disorder.

South Korea
Woo Bum-kon (or Wou Bom-kon) was a South Korean policeman who killed 56 people and wounded 35 others in several villages in Uiryeong County, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, during the night from April 26 to April 27, 1982, before committing suicide at the age of 27.

Woo had an argument with his live-in girlfriend's mother, Chun Mal-soon, on the afternoon of April 26, after she had woken him by swatting a fly on his chest. Enraged, he left the house. At about 7:30 pm, Woo returned home, punched and kicked his girlfriend and smashed the furniture, before making his way to the reservists' armory and gathered several weapons.

Some reports stated that the other officers were at a meeting, and he therefore managed to grab the weapons unnoticed, though others mentioned that he had intimidated the guards to gain access.

India
The Pashupatinath Temple shooting was a mass murder that occurred at the Pashupatinath Temple and its surrounding area in Mandsaur, India on July 23, 1983 when 28-year-old police constable Ramesh Sharma killed 14 people and wounded nine others, before he was shot and killed by police. The United News of India, who identified the assailant, said that he went berserk and began shooting in all directions.

Australia
Martin John Bryant is an Australian mass murderer who pleaded guilty to murdering 35 people and injuring 23 others in the Port Arthur massacre, a shooting spree in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia, in 1996. He was 28 at the time of his spree killing.

Following the incident, it emerged in the media that Bryant had significant intellectual disabilities. In an interview, his mother recalls that she would often find his toys broken at a very young age, branding him an "annoying" and "different" child. A psychologist's view was that he would never hold down a job as he would aggravate people to such an extent that he would always be in trouble.

Bryant has provided conflicting and confused accounts of what led him to kill. It appears that it could be his desire for attention, as he allegedly told a next door neighbour, "I'll do something that will make everyone remember me," as well as mounting frustration as his social isolation had made him unbearably angry. He is currently serving 35 life sentences plus 1,035 years without parole in Risdon Prison.

Why Orlando shooting was most gruesome in US history
An average of about 33,000 people was killed by guns each year in the US in the past five years, according to the data released by the US Central of Disease Control. Reports said that during Obama's seven and half years in office, he has come out to address a major shooting tragedy for a total of 15 times. Xinhua news agency compiled the major shooting incidents in the US in descending order of vicitim count that caused deadly casualties in the past decades.

August 20 1986 - A part-time mail carrier armed with three handguns killed 14 postal workers in Edmond, Oklahoma in 10 minutes before killing himself.

November 5 2009 - Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 at Fort Hood, Texas in a shooting rampage. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

April 3 2009 - Jiverly Wong killed 13 people and injured four during a shooting at an immigrant community centre in Binghamton, New York and then took his own life.

April 20 1999 - Two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before committing suicide in the school library in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

February 18 1983 - Three men entered the Wah Mee gambling and social club in Seattle, Washington, robbed the 14 occupants and shot 13 of them dead.

September 16 2013 - Thirty four-year-old Aaron Alexis fired inside the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12. He was also killed in the shooting.

July 20 2012 - A heavily-armed 24-year-old gunman killed 12 people and 58 wounded in a shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.

March 10 2009 - Michael McLendon of Kinston killed 10 people including his mother, grandparents, aunt and uncle, and then committed suicide.

April 16 2007 - A 23-year-old student from the Republic of Korea went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg of Virginia, killing 32 people and wounding 15 others before killing himself. It was the worst school shooting in the US history.

December 14 2012 - A 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 28 people including 20 children and eight adults in Sandy Hook Elementary School in the US state of Connecticut. Lanza first killed his mother at their shared home before taking her guns and driving to the school.

July 18 1984 - A 41-year-old gunman killed 21 adults and children at a local McDonalds in San Ysidro, California before he was killed by a SWAT team sniper.

December 2 2015 - A married couple shot 14 people dead and wounded 17 in a conference hall at a service centre for disabled people where county employees gathered for a celebration in San Bernardino, California.