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• Wednesday, April 18, 2007 07:54 AM

  The way it might have been preventable

  I do believe that law-abiding citizens have a right to own and bear arms, if they're sane. This murderer had been reported to campus police on multiple occasions, one instructor had refused to teach him after he lowered her class enrollment from 70 to 7, creeping out the other students with his graphic, violent writing and taking inappropriate photos of other students. The instructor who was giving him private instruction had worked out a special signal with an assistant so the assistant would know when to call the police.

  I noted earlier that the only time I've ever lived in any house with a gun was when my older brother brought several back from Vietnam. He was clearly suffering from PTSD, and slept with a loaded gun under his pistol. If we went past his bedroom in the night, to get to our bedroom or to go to the bathroom, he'd lurch up with the gun, pointed at us. If he'd killed one of us, it would have been accidental--he was asleep half the time, and the rest of the time was so traumatized that it really wouldn't have been his fault. It would have been a case of the gun, not him, being the killer. Those mentally ill people who are prone to violence, suicidal or directed outward, should simply not be allowed to own guns. If someone is seeing a psychiatrist or licensed counselor who has reason to believe that patient could commit a violent act, that should go on whatever records system is used for background checks for gun dealers.

  —chickadee Read chickadee's other letters
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