[HiTech RedNeck]

Bad morals in school had nothing to do with this loon who devised a way to pay a ghastly visit to a school.

I view this as an unashamed neanderthal. There ought to have been somebody there, and preferably lots of somebodies there, who were able and willing to do the common sense thing when this loon began to attack, and make his first shot his last one. That public safety issue being taken care of, then it’s possible to worry after the fact about how a loon managed to get into the school. And nobody would be blaming the weapons.

[Fraxinus]

I would not call this a rampage shooting, it would be more accurately classed as an attack on authority.

I remember reading one book looking at what school shootings had in common. The three main things were age and gender of the gunmen (between 16-24), History of mental illness (generally schizophrenia and suicidal depression), focus on violence as proof of manhood.

These attacks have much in common with workplace violence in that they are attacks on the immediate symbol of authority in the shooters life.

[Alberta's Child]

You raise a very good point, but you miss another one completely. In a different day and age, a mutant like that would never have been allowed to walk freely in society in the first place. People like him were the reason prison colonies were created, and why freaks were banished from a society as soon as they gave the first obvious signs that they were simply unfit to live among decent, law-abiding people.

One of the things nobody in law enforcement likes to admit openly is that there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to deter a mutant who is hell-bent on mayhem and destruction and has every intention of dying in the process. The fear of hell used to deter some of these people who may have had a semblance of rational thought left in them, but we've legislated and medicated hell out of existence in this modern world. Incidents like this show that a fearful price is to be paid when we do this.