::No, mass murder and rampage killing are not the same. I wouldn't even bother to cite the mass murder article we have here on Wikipedia, because it is incomplete, misleading, and overall in piss poor shape. Someone shooting up a school, killing less than three people may not be a mass murderer according to the common definition, but would still be a rampage killer. On the other hand, someone setting fire to a hotel in an insurance fraud, killing twenty people would be a mass murderer, but not a rampage killer. I suggest you read A Circle of Distortion by Grant Duwe where this is discussed in detail. Also, we've had this dicussion already, and as I have stated previously there is no widely used scientific term in the English language that is reserved for only that kind of crime, and the best alternative may be to describe them as a rampage type of crime. What we have here is an tremendious gap in the English vocabulary, and it is quite baffling that even after dozens of mass shootings in the United States in the last 30 years it still has not been satisfactorily closed. Desperado, amok, berserk, rampage killer, spree killer, mass murderer, gunman, these and others are all terms that have been used by the US press within the last 100 years to describe this type of criminal, and there are more that have only been used in a handful of scientific papers. This is a concept that is subject to scientific scrutiny all over the world, but in the one country where it is actually a major problem they don't even agree how to call it. What an irony. And btw, the list was called List of mass murderers and spree killers previously, and that has caused even more trouble than the current name. (  )