I'm so sorry...

[pigslo]

When I was a boy....Most 5th graders would meet at the park, you know the one a block from the school. After all their freinds gathered around, one would throw a punch and be declared the winner. Then the two were freinds for life. That was the relief valve. Maybe it's just not there anymore.
pigslo

[T34C]

Beagle- I think you are spot on. The biggest contributing factor IMHO, and I'm sorry if I offend anyone, is that parents aren't around to disipline their kids. US workers are the most effecient in the world. They also work long hours with little time off. If you add in both parents working this kind of schedule (when there are 2 parents around) and you get kids that spend more time with their day care provider than they do waking hours with their parents. I'm sorry, but it's hard to expect a day care to teach moral and ethical values to OUR kids.

Again, I hope I didn't offend anyone as that's not my intention.

[sailingdog]

T34C-

The other part of that is the parents who are around, are often very limited in what they can do to discipline their children. Television, the "electronic babysitter" generally has content that I would not let my dog watch... the level of morals on current television, is rather a low bar to pass... and the amount of violence seen on it is rather unreal.

Also, how is it that we have trouble with nudity in the movies and on television in this country, yet very little problem allowing massive and irrational amounts of violence on the same screens... Nudity and the human body are part of the natural order of things... massive violence, where someone guns down a dozen human beings or takes a chain saw to them is not.

I think part of the problem is the religious conservatives see sexuality and nudity as a problem, but don't have the same issues with violence. Go figure.

[ReverendMike]

Good points all, I hate to see this happen and hate the way these deaths will be 'used'.

I hope i'm just overly cynical, but if past tragedys are any 'go-by': the politicians will 'Harumph', the reporters will 'milk' this for every tear, and nothing (or very little) will actually change. Tragedy compounded IMHO.

[sailortjk1]

That's what history has shown us.

[TrueBlue]

Historically, profiles taken of the shooters responsible for massacres of this sort, have followed a consistent pattern. They are all loners as a result of being deprived of parental love and attention during their most critical years. As twisted as the idea is, they did this to be noticed and for the attention they craved.

Unfortunately, these acts will heighten the desire for others matching this profile - as long as the media portrays these terrorists with such wide recognition.

[SailorMitch]

Actually, while most of these killers are depicted as "loners", I don't think that is what they want to be. They want to be accepted, they want people to like them, they want friends, but for whatever reason, none of that happens. Thus, they act out their rage against those who "rejected" them.

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

I think part of the problem is the religious conservatives see sexuality and nudity as a problem, but don't have the same issues with violence. Go figure.

That viewpoint comes straight from their deity (I'm not religious, as some may have noticed, and consider it a mild to severe form of mental disability). It was Yahweh who introduced the concept of shame and figleaves over the crotch, and yet shows psychopathic tendencies throughout the rest of the bible, smiting people who don't defer to him and performing various sick mind games on his most loyal followers (Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, and Job come to mind). Lastly, of course, he engenders a half-human son in order to use him as a sacrificial proxy for a fictional notion called "sin".

So the old-school retribution style of violence is well-ingrained, whereas the doctrine of original sin (how could a human body, allegedly formed in the image of its celestial maker, possibly be shameful?) means large swaths of the culture are either sex-phobic or pruient (lots of barely covered young people used to shill products; little girl beauty pageants that strike outsiders as pedo-thons).

This leads to the freedom to carry weapons in Virginia, and to purchase one handgun per month in perpetuity without sending up red flags, but if a woman tans her breasts on a Virginia beach, she'll be arrested for obscenity. In some places, breast feeding itself is considered offensive...I guess it queers the aim or something. Homeland Security make-work projects aside, I understand that 1,000 people a month are killed in handgun crimes in the U.S., most of them "domestics". That's four "9/11s" per year, or about the same death toll as in Iraq, a country in the middle of a civil war. There's a war on terror for you.

Americans seem to tolerate a great deal of internal violence for the sake of freedom, but I think the guy who drew a long-dead comic strip years back had it right: "We have seen the enemy, and he is us!" It strikes me that for all the talk of personal liberty, the U.S. is on a societal road where you'll lose most of the freedoms and keep all of the violence.

I really like and appreciate Americans, but living beside your country means I can't help but see how wide the gap between your stated ideals and the reality is getting. I wish it were otherwise, but your political class is dishonest when not criminal, and your media are craven, shallow and essentially public relations firms with a focus on bread and circuses.

None of this, of course, explains or forgives the mental case who went ballistic, figuratively or literally, but it comprises the medium in the petri dish in which this particular bacterium mutated into a killer.

[T34C]

SD- "I think part of the problem is the religious conservatives see sexuality and nudity as a problem, but don't have the same issues with violence. Go figure." I think they do have the same issue with the violence, but we are becoming numb to it and they don't always pick their battles wells.

Mitch- It seems alot of these people are loners, though I agree with your point that they don't want to be, but they just don't know how be anything else and thus FEEL rejected.

[camaraderie]

It is sad and tragic that so many lives could be taken by one deranged person. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a parent have have the life of a child snuffed out by such a senseless act.
I read all the comments above and listen to the news and am amazed that people try to compartmentalize the act of a madman and use it foster their own world view. My own view is that this act is not a symptom of anything other than that one nut can do a lot of damage and cause a lot of grief to innocent people. A few billion people can serve up more than a few nuts.
If you believe some things need to change in America...fine...but using this case before the kids are even in the ground to promote a point of view strikes me as ghoulish and innappropriate. I will simply pray that the families involved find the strength to cope with this tragedy and carry on.