Letters to the Editor
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Its our problem
Several factors explain this horror. The "smart and quiet" and "fundamentally foreign" is a shared personality trait of past shooters and characteristic of psychopaths in general.
The deadly combination that explains this was mainly Chos mental illness, school pressures, and alienation from himself and others. But tragically, and mostly, it reflects the utter lack of substantive mental health prevention/intervention strategy at major schools and institutions across the U.S. The practice of neglecting mental health policy, and even shunning it in some cases like the Armed Forces, invites tragedies like this.
Rather than an "Asian thing", "smart but quiet" should be seen as a sign for at-risk students. Not to be treated differently, since their sense of being different is what drives their alienation, but to focus on helping them to not feel shunned, humiliated or forgotten which then turns their alienation into numbness and makes them more likely to kill (to get back at them and kill the pain).