Letters to the Editor
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First stories
Ptolemyx asks why the first stories are never about the victims.
I think the main reason is that the victims didn't do anything. We all know that their story was simply that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The immediate question becomes WHY did this man do this, and then HOW can we stop this happening again.
www.guardian.co.uk/ has some coverage of the victims, both of who they were and of their awful last moments. Also accounts of survivors who played dead and lived to tell their tale.
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Gotta wonder when and why a math whiz became an English major ....
still lots we don't know, may never know.
My condolences to his parents as well ... there seem to be a few indicators this was not a Jekell-Hyde thing ... the Chicago Sun article (linked within Salon story) indicates recent erratic (and probably "actionable") behavior
Plenty of guilt to go around ... but I, for one, refuse to live my life in "lock down" or in fear of "the next time" ... gotta wonder how much the stereotype of the "invisible Asian" was used as an excuse by most to consider most of his behavior just "normal variation."
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I'm curious
Is it me, or is this the new trend for repressed frustrated people to do. Go on a killing spree before the turning the gun on themselves. Between columbine, and the Amish school shooting, it just makes me wonder how frustrated people have become.
I mean things that have become very common, such as post pardum depression, psychosis ...
I guess I was just debating this with someone, how they feel that people are placing unrealistic expectations on life ... some of these people have busted their ass in life in the hopes of acheiving happiness? I mean isn't that the promise?
In all fairness the people that are going to forcibly do harm to others are obvously the minority and on the extreme. I guess it just burns my imagination how a person can get THAT frustrated with it all.
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It's something you don't want to believe
but a "confused kid" can be capable of so much devastation. I am hearing some blather about how if someone had had a gun they could have stopped him. The fact is that the majority of people in this country don't want to be armed in everyday life. I'll never forget the woman who was vacuuming her car when she was murdered by the DC sniper. Imagine if every time you decided to venture out into the world, you had to be carrying a gun just in case. And if you are armed while you're vacuuming your car, aren't you still defenseless because you're vacuuming your car? I know people who love guns. I've been to gun shows with my ex where there are people who haven't got money enough for matching shoes but they'll spend thousands on guns. Some people just love guns and they aren't murderers or even dangerous, but shouldn't we take into account that a few people have the potential to become both of these things? Guns are things and you shouldn't become so attached to things that you're willing to sacrifice innocent lives.
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Put Inside Locks on Classroom Doors!
I'm a high school teacher with 27+ years in the classroom. The door to my room swings outward to open and can only be locked with a key from the outside. The drill for responding to a "gunman-on-campus" alert is to lock the door. Guess what? Of all the people in my classroom, only I can do that and to accomplish this task, I must expose myself to whatever threat may be outside . If I were gunned down, all my students would be at the mercy of the weapons-wielding intruder. With the door swinging outward, attempts to barricade the door would be useless.
In the past year I have written my state legislator three times (and President Bush once) to advocate legislation to mandate inside locks on classroom doors. The legislative wheels turn extremely slowly, but I am hoping that a catastrophe of this magniture may spur the legislature into some kind of action. I wrote to my state senator this morning. Please join me in writing to your state representative to help safeguard our children and school employees by mandating inside locks on classroom doors.
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Perhaps colleges should start using a admissions essay questions
"If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it, and what do you imagine your legacy would be? (Please make your answer clear, concise, and specific.)" Anyone who answered something akin to "I'd go out in a demonstrative blaze of glory" could be denied admission.
If only it were that easy.
There's probably no way to keep deranged killers off campuses. On the other hand, tragedies such as this could be made less severe if people were trained to charge toward would-be killers en masse, certain in the knowledge that although many of them would likely be killed, greater casualties could be avoided. I wonder how the statistics would work out on that sort of self defense philosophy. If the usual thing that happened whenever someone threatened someone else with a gun was resistance, rather than avoidance, would more people be killed or fewer?
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What if?
What if this had been done by someone of Middle Eastern descent? Someone who left behind a grainy video with a jihadist group flag claiming to do this in the name of Islam? I worry what the knee-jerk reaction would have been.
For U.S. policy (both foreign and domestic) to place so much time, money, and human resources in efforts to ‘stop’ terrorism is appalling when you think about the terrorism the happens around us everyday. Violence in the home alone has claimed more lives than 'terrorists' could ever hope to achieve.
Why didn't the 'Global War on Terror' spring out of the aftermath of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing? That was certainly a spectacularly horrible event.
This incident is horrible. I've just lost a friend to gun violence and I cringe when I think about the wounds reopened when they see the same fate met by other innocent kids. But I'm glad it wasn't in the name of Islam. If it was, the state of fear in this country would give the current administration even more fodder to take away U.S. basic freedoms for the sake of, well, freedom.