[djmcmath]

Generally speaking, body armor appears to be moot in most of these cases: the killer panics and shoots himself when people with guns arrive. Outside of, say, Waco and the Branch Davidians, it's tough to think of a case where LEO actually ended up in anything like a real fight with one of these guys.

That wasn't the case on the Navy Yard, where the SWAT team from the National Park Service (yeah, I'm serious) got him, but then, he wasn't wearing body armor.

I'll chime in on the mental health side of things: It seems like in all the big cases, everybody who was close knew the guy was looney. Newtown, the kid's mother had warned babysitters to never take their eyes off him because he might kill them. Navy Yard, the guy was hearing voices that told him to do crazy things, and this was known by his employer and the people who ran his security clearance. In this latest case in Oregon, I read an article quoting a bunch of people who knew him saying he was absolutely nutty.

So I'll admit the statistical reality -- crazy people are hard to find, and harder to stop, but ... it sure seems like we ought to be able to find a slightly greater percentage of them than we're actually getting.