It is the few who wish to control the many who do this to us.

 
We will have to agree to agree !!!
 
Well said.
 
Julien

Crg, there seems to be an answer to one of your questions.  The locked security system at the school only goes into operation at 9:30 A.M.  The shooter got in just before it went into operation.

They're saying he broke through the front door somehow now. One set of trained eyes could have stopped the incident.

The problem is there are a certain kind of men with a certain kind of will and a certain kind of madness who will always conceive of a way to break through any barrier you put up. Fortunately they are, in the grand scheme of things, rare.

The trick is to detect those type of men well before they approach the threshold of committing these types of atrocities. When we focus solely on putting up larger and more elaborate barriers we end up trapped inside and the very lives we are attempting to protect become more and more joyless and meaningless.

That type of existence then produces more disillusioned and desperate people who are exactly the type to lash out in these ways.

Vicious cycle.

I find truth in practically every single issue that has been raised in this thread.  How can that be?  Every single one of us is a product of 2 things: Heredity and Environment.

Yes, every one of us has been exposed to media, things we've seen, things we've heard, things we've felt.  Every one of us has had some sort of upbringing, be it bad or good, happy or sad, attended to or ignored.  Every one of us has had events of various sorts take place in our lives.  Every one of us has had people touch our lives in various ways, especially parental figures.  The list goes on and on, and this is our ENVIRONMENT.  Much of our "learned behaviors" arise from the continued exposure to our environment.

And of course we were all born of our predecessor's genes, and the predisposition toward certain inherited behaviors is well documented. (our HEREDITY)

Unfortunately, how certain individuals REACT to their circumstances varies widely from person to person, and there are those who do not handle or cope with the realities of their plight as well as others.  In fact, there are those who do not even PERCEIVE REALITY the same as "normal" people, and to the degree that they distort reality determines their Neurosis or Psychosis.  I guess this is where we should ask the question "Why?".

All of have our own little neuroses... little quirks we have picked up as we have adapted to some combination of the inherited and environmental circumstances in our lives.  Thank God, most of us "normal people" don't have such distorted perceptions of reality that we can go on with daily life without serious consequences, even though we're not "perfect".

And then there are those whose lives have been shaped in such a way, that in their psychosis, they just do not have the same reality as us "normal people".  What exists for you and I may exist in a totally different way for these people.  And the way they react to "their reality" may produce what most people would consider to be unacceptable, inappropriate behaviors... such as what we saw this morning in Conn.  Thus terms like "psycho", "psychopath", schitzo, etc. for the MENTAL DISORDERS which these terms represent.

No, media doesn't kill people.  Guns don't kill people.  Knives and bombs don't kill people.  Rap music doesn't kill people.  .............. People's behavior kills people.

Just sayin'....

If he was mentally unwell then it is a classic example of how your country and mine and many others are failing those who are mentally ill. We have to start improving how we look after our mentally ill. They are not decreasing they are increasing. We have to be able to keep an eye on these people, look after them and not let them slip through the cracks. That is what is wrong here. 

tbosco



No, media doesn't kill people.  Guns don't kill people.  Knives and bombs don't kill people.  Rap music doesn't kill people.  .............. People's behavior kills people.

Just sayin'....

But what determines (or facilitates) peoples behaviour?
 

Jeff Evans


If he was mentally unwell then it is a classic example of how your country and mine and many others are failing those who are mentally ill. We have to start improving how we look after our mentally ill. They are not decreasing they are increasing. We have to be able to keep an eye on these people, look after them and not let them slip through the cracks. That is what is wrong here. 

The problem is that not every mentally ill person wants to be helped, same as not every homeless person wants to be homed (or given a shelter bed). There's a huge problem with mentally ill people committing violent crimes after they stop taking their medication. What do you do? Tie them down and force them to take their pills? Arrest them and institutionalize them forcibly like they used to 100 years ago? 


I guess there's a principle of civil liberty here. And I know, the argument will always be "screw civil liberty when lives are at stake." But does that argument stand up to scrutiny, i.e. does pragmatism trump principle? 


As an example, consider this. A large proportion of murders are carried out after dark on the streets. Theoretically, if you imposed a curfew after sundown, you would prevent thousands of murders. But is it worth losing a civil liberty in order to save those lives, even though they run into the thousands? Yet that's the argument we hear after these shootings: "screw civil liberty, people are dying here." Same goes for drink driving: thousands die at the hands of drink drivers every year, yet nobody's talking about banning cars or booze. 

Simply put, crazy is crazy. And this is crazy turned evil, an awful turn of events. There are no larger points to be made about society, culture, gun rights, etc. 

Tragic.