I think it is very easy to have 20-20 hindsight and to second guess how events occured on the way to "now". Humans take great pleasure in engaging in such activity.
The problem with the notion of "getting him more couseling", IMO, runs us down the road of the nanny state just a bit much for my taste. We need to guard very carefully against the authorities becoming just a bit too paternalistic.
The issue in all of that is, well, who's model do we use to define "normal"? And do we really want sameness? Besides being a bit dull, it's also dangerous--what if the unity points us down the wrong path?
No. I'd rather try and take a step back and put this into perspective, as hard and as extremely difficult as it might be at this stage of the game. Such an exercise is made more difficult by the very load rhetoric being voiced by a lot of agencies pursuing this or that agenda.
At the end of the day, however, as tragic as this event is, it is also, most thankfully, something that is very very rare. Look carefully at the media reports--comparisons have to be drawn with events of over 40 years ago to draw parallels. Years span between even other mass murder events on campuses in America, and yet we have had tens upon tens of millions of students roll through these institutions otherwise unharmed.
It is an extremely tragic event, but it is also a singular event.
Let's keep that in mind as folks try to use this to curtail our rights.
I still think there was something that could have been done to steer him in another direction, although I am hard pressed to say what. I don't think a person gets to this stage in life without someone noticing there are problems. That is, someone close enough to him to do something.
Let's keep that in mind as folks try to use this to curtail our rights.
I want to just scream in French (oh, the irony): IDIOTS!
The problem wasn't less guns in school, the problem was there WASN'T MORE guns in school. Otherwise, someone may have been able to stop this madman. And in VA no less, that's a "shall issue CCW," state. Sheesh.
GRRRR.
5.56mm