http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070416/ts_nm/..._shooting_dc_10

This is the horrific news of the day in the US. I assume it's probably made some of the international news as well. :(

Utterly ghastly - here are a few thoughts (some of them not too sentimentally expressed):

a. You may gain a sense of perspective when you recognise that this is pretty much an average day's 'harvest' for the ruthless killers in Iraq

b. When the dust settles, what gets me is the utter futility of these killings - how on earth will a family member/friend of one of the victims come to terms with the fact that a perfectly blameless life ended in a tragically pointless explosion of incontinent egotistical nihilism?

c. Speaking as a European it remains astonishing to me that these events are not likely to result in any restriction on the ability of US citizens to bear arms specifically designed for killing other people and which can easily be transported and concealed on the person (rather than weapons for hunting/shooting).

Horrific news :( What struck me about this shooting, is that the shooter seemed to have a very specific idea of where he (I'm assuming it's a he) wanted to go - the two places he started shooting are quite far apart.

And please, let's not blame Marilyn Manson or violent video games for this one, and start to look properly at why kids end up feeling the need to take such dramatic action!

But surely playing violent video games is not helping. I am not saying that is the reason but it part of the whole picture of our society which in turn can produce such dreadful events.

Do you think that banning violent video games would mean that this would never happen again?

Plenty of my friends - and myself - play violent video games and none of us feel the need to go out and kill people. It's an easy scapegoat as far as I'm concerned, and people blame the videogames (or Marilyn Manson or whatever) rather than looking any deeper. I believe that there must be something else that causes someone to do something like this.....

I don't know for how long shootings of this sort have been happening, and at the moment we are only speculating. For present purposes I assume it was a sort of pointless nihilistic rampage, perhaps fuelled by some carefully nurtured grievance.

I think that video games, even computers, may be playing a role in this, but not in the obvious knee-jerk fashion that DJ disagrees with.

My take is that in order to do something like that you have to be somehow distanced from the enormity of what you are doing and the suffering that you are causing. That is more difficult if you have normal interaction with other human beings - if you are involved in the complex lattice of relationships that (hopefully) most people are you are faced with the value of human life, the realities of joy and suffering of people that you like/love and how you manage to deal with those that irritate you but are nonetheless around.

Computers, by providing a virtual world, and sometimes a violent and pornographic one, whether by the internet or games etc. may (I stress may) assist someone in withdrawing from other people's reality into a self-obsessed nihilstic existence. In such an existence you may not be confronted with the reality of the depth and value of human existence, thus making it easier for you cold-bloodedly to line up other students against the wall and shoot them. Obviously, even if I am right there is something else at play here that I can't guess at.

Remember the story of the man who hanged himself whilst online in a chat room and some others were writing to the effect of 'get on with it'? I am not saying that computers cause us to become psycopaths, but they do help fill a void caused by lack of human interraction, not always constructively, and can have a de-humanising effect. That void may be a place where some killers grow.

I don't think banning violent games is a likely cure - although I abhor them and cannot see the point of them. Equally, I don't think it is enough for DJ to say simply that since there are those who use them who aren't murderers they are irrelevant - looking at the whole picture means not excluding ANY possibility.

Of course we need to look deeper into the causes. I think I was clear when I said violent video games are not the reason but it certainly does not help. In a society we have a spectrum of people more or less balanced. The less "balanced" will certainly be enjoying those games in a different way than you. Just designing a violent video game, marketing it and playing it can all look pretty normal but when looking deeper as you say, it is in my view also part of our society neurosis.

Why are we in the West so in demand of Hollywood's violence and why in the East they are more thrilled by Bollywood kitchy love stories?

What do you think are the deeper reasons?

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. I meant that people tend to say "oh, well, they played violent video games, that's why they did it" end of story. And I don't believe it is - but I do agree that violent video games can contribute to people's kind of descent in to madness. If you lock yourself up in an imaginary world for too long, it's bound to have bad effects - look at the girl who died whilst playing World of Warcraft 'cos she hadn't slept or eaten for 4 days or something.

But the point of saying that there's plenty of people who play violent video games or listen to music by Marilyn Manson and don't go on killing rampages, is simply that there must be something else. To get to a point in your life where you feel the need to go and kill a load of your classmates, and then - more to the point - kill yourself, there must have been a lot of influences. I sincerely doubt that these people just wake up one day and decide to go on a mass killing spree.

There's a brilliant fictional book called We Need to Talk about Kevin, which kind of looks at the reasonings behind a kid going and shooting a load of his classmates - was it his upbringing, was it 'cos his was bullied at school, was he just born that way? and also, how on earth did no one notice that he was going that way?

I have no idea on the deeper reasons for this one, 'cos - unlike what some people may believe - i'm not actually a psychopath :P The news mentioned something about the American schooling system, but i don't really know anything about it and wasn't paying enough attention to work out what they were trying to say - something about the pressures on American schoolchildren maybe?

:blink: Another exhibition of the human condition.... firstly... may the people who had their lives violently taken from them.. find a place of rest and peace wherever they are. And to all touched ..some comfort in your quiet place..

But Guns, video games , hollywood movies( frank millers' 300) are all a reflection of our societies. Once again I feel our so called civilised societies have left behind the human aspects of our cultures and is primarily geared more towards materialistic tangibles. I believe a person will kill with or without a gun...the weapon of choice is not the problem.. but the ediface that brings a person to the point of making the choice. :shrug:

Anything can and will be abused :angry: , be it a gun, a knife an axe drugs, the law..etc..whatever. In places like switzerland..where gun laws are relatively "lax" for lack of a better word...you don't have people running about trigger happy.So is there something that counterbalances that nature or simply people making choices not to turn to them as problem solvers. There are roughly as many handguns in the US as the whole british population.

I remember the six year old in the US... who put a gun in his lunch box...went to school and shot another student..I think it was girl who he thought was bugging him... Now would that child have taken a gun if it was inaccessible at home or would he have used another weapon(say a nail gun).. I actually doubt it ..cause he didnt even comprehend what he had done afterwards. :unsure: Seemingly a product of what he has observed in his environment .... Sure if there were no guns at home he wouldn't have access to one.... but then again the larger question... why do the people around him feel they need to use guns to resolve problems..

After 9-11, many came to realise the futility of ultimately stopping a determined individual who just decides to kill some people and and has no regard for his or her own life... it is near impossible. Yes ..you may learn a thing or two or three about guns,, cars and sadistic violence from games, hollywood movies, books and even cartoons.... but the individual ultimately makes the choice as to abuse whatever seeming power or tool or words or high office.... I shamelessly :giggle: still have a love for cartoons...but gosh....have you ever sat and seriously examined the amount of violence in those shows :wacko:
.
Wasn't it Einstein and the rest lamenting the discovery nuclear power and of the nuclear bomb....all good intentions no matter how noble can be 'corrupted'. After inventing dynamite Alfred Nobel felt the need to counter balance what he had created and therefore the Nobel peace prize.

I guess we should we refocus on humanity as a whole...maybe more love and social needs..but therein lies the human fallacy...greed anger hatred loneliness.. it is aspects of ourselves, nature fosters because it is innate to our survival as a species. Hell, :) ,, even apes crack skulls with stones...now I wonder if they knew how to use guns....would they or wouldn't ... I remember almost "peeing" :blink: on myself from astonishment when I saw a monkey, non chalantly, smoking a cigarette on discovery chanel tv. Apparently he was an overworked show monkey and was addicted to nicotine....

I can confidently say it is not going to be the last.....

I just keep :coffee: pondering the mind of the shooter.....between the first two shootings and the next 30.....those 2hours approx... what was he thinking........ ' too far gone to return' or just to go out in a blaze of glory... sometimes though for sanity sake, its best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Is it murphy's law that says whatever will go wrong would go wrong. :shrug: ......

don't bite me.........just thinking out loud....my two cents really....and at current exchange rates 1 pound = 1.9919 dollars or so... that makes it ...em.......... 1p :unsure: .

I agree with all these points Barrystar.Such a sad and tragic waste of life.
Here in Switzerland there has been debate recently as to the wisdom of allowing our citizen soldiers to keep rifles and ammunition at home, following a number of tragedies where these weapons have been used against family members or,only a few days ago,in a random shooting in Baden.It seems obvious to me that there's a link between gun availability and these events.
However,I also think Dinky Jo is right that we have to try and find out why young people become so alienated that they become capable of such callous ruthless acts.
Sadly it seems that it's very hard,not to say impossible ,to prevent these murders and in these days of global media coverage such shootings have almost become a media-fed trend..
As a mother I can imagine the dreadful pain of losing a child in such a senseless way..

barrystar, an intelligent well conveyed post from you as usual, and i agree with the broad thrust of it.
Have you heard of the 'Milgram Experiment' where unwitting volunteers were asked to participate in an experiment. It measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. (just google 'Milgram experiment' for details) I've heard it suggested that society itself is like a giant version of Milgram experiment, which makes sense in terms of the nature/nurture debate, our moral nature is moulded in terms of the environment in which we find ourselves, and can be nullified to some extent given certain interactions with others and the world.
As you suggest video and computers play a part in that, and also I would add the break down of authority figures in terms of the family and society at large is a factor too.
Interestingly Japan and some other oriental societies have very violent and shocking cultures, but very low crime rates. That could be because unlike the west, they strong families, communities and a powerful sense of shame which reigns in some of the worst aspects of human nature.

The gun situation in America is absurd, it's a powerful condemnation of a rights culture, it will not change because it is in the constitution, and that is virtually impossible to change.

The worst and most heart wrenching truth about this whole catastrophe
is that it will almost certainly happen again and again.

I wonder if this sort of rampage is in part a product of the relative affluence of the West. If you are occupied with the important business of survival you have less time to become introspective and nihilistic. They do say that the devil finds work for idle hands. This young man seems to have been very anti those richer than him and those (a particular girl apparently) who achieved social success. Whilst it often looks as though such people have it all, wealth and/or social success usually require a bit of hard work - but the jealous with time on their hands would rather fulminate about it than get off their backsides.

What Big-Todger says about Japan etc. is interesting, and it sort of goes round in circles with the Milgram experiment (I once listened to a radio program about it). A strong sense of shame is often a very good way for figures in authority to persuade people to do terrible things to avoid shame. Japanese soldiers in WWII were ashamed of surrendering, so often gave up their lives in a futile fashion and also did not treat allied soldiers who surrendered to them with respect.

The instant seems to be more of an individual problem rather than the sort of response to authority revealed by the Milgram experiment. But Big-Todger also (probably rightly) points out that something of a collapse in conventional authority and a sense of shame may also be a contributor to such individual behaviour.

The killer's teachers apparently did spot that he was going off the rails and was a source for concern, which leads me to my final point. The NRA say that people kill, not guns, but that is an absolute kop-out. This young man, known to be disturbed, was able lawfully to buy a handgun no questions asked with which he killed 30 people within the month. If it had been more difficult or illegal for him to get one it is possible that he would not have gone to such lengths, or might have been caught in the process. Alternatively, he might have resorted to another slightly less deadly weapon with which he might have killed, but not as many as 30 people. Any murder is awful - but the NRA's killer is going to be a lot more effective with a semi-automatic 9mm pistol designed for killing people that he can conceal on his person than someone with, say, a knife, or even a shotgun or a hunting rifle. Killing 2-5 people is less devastating than 30.

This, I wholeheartedly agree with.

The point that ‘it’s people that kill, not guns,’ is a complete cop out by the NRA.
As mentioned guns are far more effective than other means of killing, hence the huge restrictions regarding ownership in this country make absolute sense.

When you are talking about the NRA, do you mean National Restaurant Association? Cause food poisoning kills more than 30 people a year for sure!

Joke aside, the guys who design guns and sell them as well of those who buy them have all their responsibilty in the process. We cannot have this business going on without accepting the by-products. We should know by now that in our world nothing comes without a "side effect", blaming the killers or the gun manufacturers is irrelevant to me. This is OUR nature, OUR world and we shoudl accept it or do our best to change it. I do believe that as sad as those killing sprees are, their are there to help us acknowledge a problem. It is simply sad that we have to come to that kind of drama to realise them.

But in my case, I am much more concern by the problems in the Middle East - including Irak of course - as I feel much more responsible for it than this guns traffic in the US.

I agree with that Tenez.

The massacre tells us something about nihilistic youth in our own society which is worth pondering, but Gun control or not in the US is not my direct concern, merely interesting. If US citizens consider that an occasional massacre of this sort is a price worth paying for the right to bear arms (assuming that they are prepared to agree that there is a causal link at all - and many don't) that is for them.

It is interesting to discuss it, but non US citizens like myself have to go carefully as we need to watch the beam in our own eyes before worrying about the speck in american eyes.

Oh yeah. The beam is in my eye too (didn't I write that "I" feel responsible for what's going on in the ME?). I would even say that the worst problem of this world is that we all believe we are in the right and the others are in the wrong. And I don't think many realise the extent of responsibility we have regarding the problems of this world. We tend to blame everything on some despotic tyrans and our politicians but they would not be where they are if we were blameless.

he problem of nihilism is a difficult one to grapple with it's difficult to imagine that the growth of nihilism in western society will slow down, and we must remember more religious and ideologically based societies have very big problems too.
In situations like this we tend to try and imagine societies, circumstances where really bad things won't happen, but we all know what human nature is, all you can do is be on the look out, and don't allow too many deadly weapons for these people to get hold of.

Cho used a Glock G19 pistol and a Walther P22 - both are semi-automatic.

Glock's Website says this:

Way to go dude..

now where's that beam.....

Really? If he had known Cho would not have needed killing himself at the end! A good lawyer would have had no problem defending his case with a manual like that!

By the way ...some 140 and over people killed in Iraq today.......

Lets hope someone somewhere also holds a candlelight gathering for their spirits..... cause their deaths are also needless

Quite so 9mmSuzi

So sad.
RIP to those trying to pursue their goals.

It must be so difficult to be a relative of one of those killed.

I hope this doesn't make me sound ignorant but I had no idea THAT many were being killed everyday.

I really hate this war :angry:

:halo: RIP to the people that were killed! :halo:

I hope this dosen't sound disrespectful but i saw on the front of a paper "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?" well there is tens of millions of people in America that own a gun! So it is clear that this is where the problem lies! :wacko:

I didn't know how many are being killed everyday when I wrote my first post, only that it was something absolutley horrific and probably over 20.

This website suggests that during the 12 months prior to 17.3.07 it was 73 daily and that the daily rate has steadily increased.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr15.php

Here:

Year 1 May 03 - 19 Mar 04 20 Mar 04 -19 Mar 05 20 Mar 05 -19 Mar 06 20 Mar 06 -16 Mar 07
Number of Days 324 365 365 362
Civilians killed/day 20 31 41 73

Saying "How Could This Happen" has a lot more to do with the psychology of the event than anything else, so to answer that it is just because of the availability of guns is trite and naive. The UK has strict gun laws, but have they been immune from violent crimes?

They have less high profile gun crime, but stabbings etc...

:(

I'm not trying to say the easy availability of guns is not a factor, but that's not really the answer to how something like this could happen. The London subway bombings didn't happen because of the availability of bomb-making materials. A question like that is more about what leads a person to commit that kind of a crime. That was the point I was trying to make.

I think the headline might've actually been referring to the issue of prevention of the crime, in that apparently the gunman's mentality was suspected and that several people knew about this; also that the tech was not evacuated immediately after the first shooting. Not sure about the US but that's been in the news all day today....

Gun crime, in the sense of use of guns for nefarious means by criminals, will not be prevented by gun legislation.

These murders were not gun crime in that sense - they were entirely different. They were the pathetic egotistical cry for attention of a sad introspective person, possibly someone who was mentally ill. The only way in which someone like Cho could make an impact was by brandishing a gun against unarmed people - he made his impact.

In the UK we have a huge problem with gun crime - in fact it has escalated since the most draconian laws were brought in.

However, we had two killers like Cho and on a similar scale that I remember. Michael Ryan killed about 16 people in Hungerford with various legally owned assault weapons. Such weapons were made illegal and a similar crime with similar weapons has not been repeated. Then we had Dunblane, where 18 schoolchildren were murdered by a sad lonely old git who used legally owned handgunds. They were made illegal and a similar crime with similar weapons has not been repeated.

If you do not try to restrict ownership of weapons designed specifically to kill people it is inevitable and a known fact that such sad nihilstic people will easily get hold of them and may disappear in a flurry of pointless murders. For goodness sake, Cho was known by his college to be a source of concern yet he was able to buy two guns over the counter.

In my opinion, a, if not the, major contributor to this sort of person committing this sort of crime is the relatively easy availability to them of firearms. If you make it necessary to be a criminal to own firearms without a licence the evidence of the UK is that these pathetic loners don't go and buy them anything like as often as they do when guns are legal.

I was actually watching Sky News today, and their psychologist was saying that this wasn't actually a cry for help, apparently Cho was as you say very intospective and didn't want attention. It was more about revenge :yikes:

But I do agree with what you are saying though.

I agree, in a sense, barrystar. I don't think restricting guns would do away with this kind of behaviour. If Cho had a harder time getting his hands on guns and ammunition, I don't think that would have prevented him from committing a horrible act of violence, but it might have limited the scope of killing he was able to inflict.

Yes exactly but we do not create a thread and discuss about these loonies everytime they kill an individual or 2. The fact we did so here was the sheer number victims.

True, but Tim McVeigh killed a few hundred people with a truck-load of fertilizer. Anyway, I think my point is being lost, because I'm actually in favour of tight gun restrictions in this country. But I still think "because it's easy to get guns" is not the right answer to "how could something like this have happened."

There is a danger of much psychobabble being talked from so called experts in the terrible aftermath of events like these, i'm not saying one cannot in any sense profile the types who commit these crimes, but psychology isn't a science as is sometimes claimed, and assumptions are jumped with little incite or examination of the person in question.
Profound introspection itself is not uncommon, and is no indicator of mental pathology-we must also remember that.

I guess faced with tremendous tragedy human beings look for explanation and meaning where there may not be none. It's hard for human beings to face the ineffable truth that underlies the human condition,

Exactly. Trying to understand what drives people to murder innocent people is one matter . Restricting their ability to do it is another much more practical one.

Yes I see what you're getting at , but the fact that he had semiautomatic weapons and enough ammunition to kill 30 people meant that not a lot of premeditation or planning was needed.

Yes but the first person he killed I believe was an ex girl friend who had rejected him or something to that effect. So I don't think it's really beyond to us comprehend the motivation or at least the beginning of it.

He had the same basic feelings and emotions as all of us, he was a human afterall, revenge motivated him. What is difficult to comprehend is how the mental barriers between the morally correct and the morally wrong break down to such an extent that someone can bring themself to mass murder. That is what is really beyong comprehension. And I feel the only way we could comprehend is by first hand experience. So in that sense Im quite happy in my ignorance.

Exactly, we cannot comprehend it, and as you say thank goodness.
what i'm also saying is there's a danger that some think they can and give simplistic psychological explanations.
I guess most of us have or will face rejection and know how painful and i'm sure most of us may have contemplated some sort of revenge if jilted by a lover or partner-but on an much, much milder level of course

Nope when I was jilted I hired a hit man. No-one dumps me and gets away with it :angry: