Guns Don't Kill People, the Mentally Ill Do

[Geee]

Town Hall:

Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder as a child and placed under treatment.

But Virginia Tech was prohibited from being told about Cho's mental health problems because of federal privacy laws.

At college, Cho engaged in behavior even more bizarre than the average college student. He stalked three women and, at one point, went totally silent, refusing to speak even to his roommates. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for one night and then unaccountably unleashed on the public, whereupon he proceeded to engage in the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history.

The 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall shooter, Jared Loughner, was so obviously disturbed that if he'd stayed in Pima Community College long enough to make the yearbook, he would have been named "Most Likely to Commit Mass Murder."

After Loughner got a tattoo, the artist, Carl Grace, remarked: "That's a weird dude. That's a Columbine candidate."

One of Loughner's teachers, Ben McGahee, filed numerous complaints against him, hoping to have him removed from class. "When I turned my back to write on the board," McGahee said, "I would always turn back quickly -- to see if he had a gun."

[RandyM]

Good column. Well written.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

Let's Start by Asking the Right Questions

Jeff Brokaw1/17/13

 

(Snip)

 

How do we not see, as a nation, that we have got a serious social and cultural problem on our hands with young males driven to desperate acts of violence by ... what? Well, that is the $64,000 question isn't it?

 

Video games? Medication? Feminized schools and culture causing feelings of isolation and anxiety in young males? Some or all of the above?

 

Shouldn't we be talking about that, first and foremost, instead of (or in addition to) guns? Something is not right here.

 

(Snip)

[nickydog]

Good column. Well written.

 

Agree.

[Geee]

@Geee

 

Let's Start by Asking the Right Questions

Jeff Brokaw1/17/13

 

(Snip)

 

How do we not see, as a nation, that we have got a serious social and cultural problem on our hands with young males driven to desperate acts of violence by ... what? Well, that is the $64,000 question isn't it?

 

Video games? Medication? Feminized schools and culture causing feelings of isolation and anxiety in young males? Some or all of the above?

 

Shouldn't we be talking about that, first and foremost, instead of (or in addition to) guns? Something is not right here.

 

(Snip)

 

Agree.