--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > There have been a bunch of good points about many aspects of > this problem and lots of good counters. The fact is that this > kid had mental problems and "went off". Plenty of people > saw "warning signs" but there lots of kids showing "warning > signs" so perhaps greater awareness of risky kids might help, > and maybe not. We can't exactly just lock up all the risky > kids. This situation may not have a solution.
Total agreement on this. I might feel differently if I'd ever lost anybody in one of these horrors, but I'd rather take the risk of the exceedingly rare event than that of locking people up unnecessarily. It's not going to eliminate the problem; not all mass murderers give warning signs. And of people who do, it's exceedingly iffy to predict their future behavior. Seems to me that today's climate is not a good one for taking even tentative steps toward reducing anybody's civil liberties in any situation. We've got more than enough to do to keep Bush from extending his incursions, and then eventually rolling those back. We'd be better off without any guns, but that's not doable at present. And even tightening gun control laws, which we very badly need to do, isn't going to stop people like Cho, so gun control is really irrelevant to this situation. <snip> > So we may never find a fix for situations like this one. It > may just be something that happens occasionally that we have > to deal with and lose tears over. Yup. I do wish NBC hadn't released Cho's videos and photos. They've given him instant icon status; he's now larger than life, rather than just being a sicko punk. His motivations are irrelevant because they make no sense. And I really resent having such vivid images of him taking up space in my memory banks that should be devoted to the consequences of what he did. All we really need to recognize is that we don't have a good way of dealing with his kind of craziness. The only thing we can actually *do* about it is put more effort into research figuring out how the mind works, how it can get fouled up, and how to tell when something has gone wrong and fix it. But that's very long term.
