While I don't agree with all your conclusions, and come from a different starting point as well, I'm grateful that you show a real attempt to wrestle with the proper response to this. I'd encourage you to avoid folding into the hopeless sentiments of your last sentence. This will go somewhere if you, I and others move past hopelessness into action, calling, writing, and organizing others to insist that our elected representatives pass laws to reduce the frequency and deadliness of these incidents. We will never elminate them, but just since Columbine we have now had more than 40 gun attacks at schools alone, with hundreds murdered. We can't accept this.
I actually welcome your response. My feeling is in no manner hopeless. At present the attitude on the part of many is to be penny wise and pound foolish as to where we allocate our tax dollars.
The "shooter" back in Connecticut it appears had a long history and presented evidence for some time of mental problems. His Mother, and sadly one of his victims covered up for her Son's problems walking behind his issues with a mop erasing his tracks. This is now known.
The Mother in this case pursued a hobby of shooting and target practice and was it appears a gun collector. The combination of a gun collector and a mentally unstable Son one would think would have been if nothing else a red flag to "Mom" that she should at least keep her personal gun collection under lock and key.
Something was done that set this young man off and created the circumstance that sent him over the edge.
Right now again the question to me is the knowledge and skill level he had to have to accomplish what he did. Going in and killing a total of 20 elementary school aged children is a horrific act. Did the shooter go into a classroom and just spray bullets at everything or did he then stalk those children that were living to finish them off. The adults in this scenario had some time to react before they too were gunned down. Were the particular adults "targeted" because the shooter had animosity towards them in particular as opposed to others, or did he just pick people at random to kill before removing himself.
Because it is relevant to trial the "training" he had may not be disclosed. The fact is that he will not be on trial, but the case still has to be closed with accurate information.
In Columbine HS in Colorado the trigger was a "geeks vs jocks" situation which has been played out nationwide over and over again. Schools in some cases derive money from athletic programs. As a result of this sadly there are schools where student athletes are favored and in fact some of these individuals literally get away with murder at both HS and sometimes collegiate levels if they are good enough.
What stood out at Columbine was the disclosure of the "how". The shooter in that case had used the training he had learned from various war oriented video games with regards to shooting targets as a sniper and the training he received in this area was effective.
The United States Military and a few law enforcement agencies use exactly the same methods to train "sharp shooters". The personal computer in essence becomes a "simulator" for the mentally unbalanced individual teaching that individual the procedures and techniques necessary to sight in, stalk and "take out" his assigned target.
We have been a Country that has unfortunately in the name of profits without due consideration and probably without intent glorified violence towards others. Video games abound where this kind of thinking and training is a part of the game.
There is also a propensity in the movie industry to take certain subjects and stress one aspect while totally ignoring others. Some years ago, a movie set I believe in a Florida H.S. depicted a kid that was an underdog going up against the "rich kid" in a form of fighting. This movie went into the "fighting" underground and did that in many aspects. During this film, this kid the underdog was in "training" and nobody questioned the battered and bruised kid in the school system. The "bully" in this case, was the rich kid and the attitudes displayed portrayed the school system as stupid and out and out incompetent at any form of detection to this kind of activity.
It is from this particular form of violence portrayed without any grasp of reality of the potential legal consequences of these actions that literally had me up in arms over this particular film. This film was nothing more or less than "human dog fighting" and for a time it was a very popular film with the teens and early 20 somethings.
What must be changed is to begin to place detection systems within the school environments in the form of Psychotherapists, Psychologists, and others to begin to address the problems that these disturbed youth are facing.
Detect the problem and get these kids help before they become a danger to themselves and or others.
I will absolutely defend the rights to bear arms as laid down by the United States Constitution. I do believe that there are certain weapons designed for the military should not be in private hands simply because even responsible collectors with the best of security and the best of intentions are targeted by their polar opposites to get those weapons because those weapons equal power in a big way. The issue is not the ownership of the AK-47 it is the danger that the legal owner of that AK-47 is placed in if some other less than honest individual finds out that the figurative "he" has it.
I also feel that we need to take another look at the way we disburse material that serves as instructional when it comes to how to kill our fellow man. We can teach our youth to hunt for food or survival as has been the way for many generations and is a tradition, or we can without intending it teach those with extreme mental issues how to effectively wipe out school rooms, teachers and commit mass killings with great skill because something intended for entertainment has been used as a learning tool based on it's realism. If we get rid of the "teaching material" and eliminate these kinds of "teaching aids" we are going to at least eliminate the nut cases that slip through the cracks. I absolutely despise censorship and I feel that there is a way to deal with this issue effectively without placing horrific restrictions on good honest and above all "sane" individuals.
Where I become apathetic is the wrangling over this that has been going on as these shootings happen. The first major red flag on this issue should have been Columbine and it was ignored. How many are going to have to die before we deal with those individuals are mentally ill and need to be placed in facilities where their illness can be treated. In the eyes of a politician we have to take the concept of "dollars and cents" out and in it's place we substitute "dollars and sense" which is sadly lacking and has been for some time.
In every case there are individuals who exhibit symptoms of extreme mental illness for a period of time and they then because their plight is ignored go on to commit heinous acts. The Holmes idiot that sprayed a movie theater is but one example of this. His Mother knew he was a ticking time bomb and from what has been released so far, it appears that she absolutely positively failed to even attempt to do anything about it. There is also some question of Holmes Mother having a position in the mental health industry which in some cases makes that woman what is called a "mandated reporter". The shooter in Connecticut and the shooter that sprayed a theater with bullets seemed to have at least one thing in common and that was a Mother who ignored facts and allowed disaster to strike.
Schools from Elementary to Collegiate level have a responsibility to the communities they serve. Problem students exhibiting symptoms that have potential to represent mental illness need to be examined carefully. Up until now this has not been the case and "thick 12" my friend, you are right, it is you and I who are ultimately responsible by not writing to our leadership about the severity of this issue and the need to increase funding for mental health in the nations school systems. The problem is that increasing funding on anything places life above money and extremist conservatives are going to squeal like stuck pigs at the barest mention of the allocation or spending of the funds required to prevent this kind of thing in the future via mental health intervention.
