Hmm. I really like the follow-up comments that were made after my post. 

I had not considered many of the points that were brought up. Thank you.

Anyone who decides to kill 70+ innocent people is by definition insane.  The problem is what this means for society’s treatment of him in the future.  Was he under control of prescription drugs that caused his mania?  If not then he soon will be.  Seriously our system needs to get rid of guilt/innocence and sentencing.  It should start thinking in terms of most probable scenario and then preventative and mitigating actions for all stakeholders.  We should not have a trial for a person, but an inquest into events to establish what happened.  Once the events are established the judge should have the power to compel mitigating and compensating actions, punitive actions, and prevention actions. Best community outcome should be paramount, whereas rights of the individual is currently paramount. His insanity should be irrelevant to the inquest except in so far as determining the best approach to prevent him from recurring the murders once the trial/inquest is complete.

Once again, people seem to fall into the trap that mental illness equals raving psychosis. Once we begin to understand how widespread mental illness is—the inability to distinguish reality from the mess in our heads—we would not talk about faking it, etc. Yes, Michelle Bachmann is mentally ill, it’s just that by our society’s standards she’s “normal.” But our society’s standards say that stealing people’s money, stealing children’s futures, killing people en masse, are all normal acts. If this fellow in Norway had joined the military and killed the “right” people, he would be considered sane. Even better is to become a major politician and commit war crimes for which you never have to answer.

This is not a picture of the shooter is it???  Does
not look like the picture from other news reports.

[“My sincerest condolences to all his victims.”] I’d add ‘both direct and indirect.’
I concur with this much of D R Zing but nothing more.

My sincerest condolences to all his victims. The man is a beast. 

—

Very few psychotics commit premeditated violence. Most of the time their
violence is born of fear and paranoia and it happens on the spot.

He’s probably faking it.  A lot of good that will do him.  He’s gonna hate
the medicine and the clinical treatment.  It will make him miserable. 
He’ll be begging for jail after a few months. 

He’s gonna says he’s cured. The psychiatrists will then label him a sociopath
and go to even greater lengths to make him suffer. 

The miserable son-of-a-bitch will get what he deserves: a fate worse than
death.

Can we get some Norwegian mental health care for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann please?

We could give the cover story they are going on trade mission with NATO Partners. Fly them in a corporate jet and have it land at a small field near the Mental Hospital.