CausesThe exact causes of David Gray’s rampage through the small, isolated seaside town of Aramoana on the 13th of November, 1990, remain mere speculations. It is highly possible that the combination of isolation and alienation caused David Gray to develop schizophrenia and paranoia, which when combined with an argument with his neighbour, Garry Holden, caused him to violently explode into an insatiable rampage of death and destruction. It is said that in the days and weeks leading up to the tragic massacre, David Gray’s appearance became more and more rugged and dishevelled. This could have been due to a gradual decline in his mental state, which is also further revealed by how it is claimed that in the days before the shooting, he alienated his few friends with inexplicable accusations, which sources state, and is also evident by his argument with Garry Holden minutes before the shooting.
At the time of the massacre, there were no laws in New Zealand that stopped a mentally ill person from possessing firearms, which allowed David Gray to not only form a large gun cache, but for his large gun cache to not only contain rifles and shotguns, but also semi-automatic assault rifles such as the Norinco AK47 look alike. By possessing such an arsenal, Gray would have had the temptation to not just own the weapons, but to use them and the argument with Garry Holden combined with his progressive mental decline in the previous days and weeks, allowed Gray to finally let loose and use his arsenal. Although, speculation is all that can be made, as Gray was never psychologically assessed before the massacre, and obviously not afterwards, so it is impossible to truthfully state whether or not Gray was mentally ill, but it was not just one element that lead to the massacre, it was a gradual build up of tension and probable mental decline that eventually lead to his violent rampage, the true and honest causes of this tragedy were possibly not even known by the man that committed them, if he was mentally ill, but if he did, the true causes followed him to the grave.
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