Guns, Girls, And WoW

It's a tough situation no matter which way you approach it, really. If deputies had asked to come in and look around, he could've panicked and started shooting right then. Getting a warrant still takes time, and there's nothing to say he couldn't have stepped up his time table and done it as soon as they left. It's easy for us to sit back and go "Oh they could've done this." "They should've sensed something was wrong." but there's really nothing extra that could've been done short of giving police the power to break peoples' doors down on a whim, but that would be a tad overkill I think.

That being said, I'm willing to bet the deputies that visited him and found nothing wrong are beating themselves up over the fact that they didn't catch it.

Yea you want to be able to stop shooting rampages but I don't think anything would have stopped this kid.

I wouldn't go so far as to say nothing could've stopped him. The parents certainly could have snooped around while he was out. He apparently had a bunch of this in writing, and I can only think of so many places one can hide a notebook. I won't say they were negligent, as they did call police, but they could've taken that extra step and maybe found something concrete to give the police.

Edit: I'm basing this all on the assumption that he was still living at home. If that wasn't the case, then my argument is moot.

You grossly overestimate the capabilities and power of the police, Ariyon. In your defense, it is because the police deliberately mislead people into thinking they can do a lot more than is actually true (under the law, I mean -- there's nothing strictly stopping them from breaking the law themselves and doing whatever they want).

It's also sometimes very difficult to sort out what constitutes genuine threat. Some of the things I've written on internet forums, including this one, could be misconstrued as planning to go on a shooting spree. Does that mean the police should be talking to a judge to bust down my door, only to find that the most dangerous things I own are my kitchen knives?

People are blaming the wrong guy. Police can be good but they are not inflatable. They can minimize problems but they can never eliminate it. In a population of 1mil, you will get at least a few crazies in the bunch. If that 1mil population is armed to the teeth then you can be certain that one or more of those crazies will start shooting at random.

Replace the guns with swords and medieval weapons then you will still get those crazies trying to hack at people randomly. You can still cause a lot of destruction if you can get an actual weapon onto an airplane for example. However, there should be a lot less dying and screaming with the swords compare to guns.

The NRA has a good reason going for it. If every one of those crazies out there is armed then you better get yourself armed too so you can remove the thread before you're dead. However, if we keep following that logic... Well you can't arm yourself with a tiny gun when those crazies are slugging around rifles, shotguns and body armour. You need bigger guns, more guns, body armour and loads more ammo for those guns - just in case, throw in a combat vehicle, a few rockets and a couple machine guns for good measure. Of course, you will never know when you or your family members might turn crazy, start shooting randomly and wage WW3 on the world. Therefore, you should ask your neighbor and other family members to arm themselves with bigger guns too.

You should really stop talking. You make me ashamed to be Canadian.

Also, police are not infallible, since I am sure you could purchase some inflatable police blow up dolls.

The NRA, at one point, had it's merits. But now, every time there is a national tragedy involving guns and shootings, they ceremoniously gather where it happened, and spout dumb-*** like "From my cold dead hands", instead of preaching gun safety and regulation like it used to.

Since you're so adamant that the only solution to guns being present in society, is bigger, meaner, more effective guns, if not total warfare, I'd be happy to send you to the front lines of these events and explain that to the victims in person.

I really wish people would stop pretending like guns being in society is a/the problem.

I have to agree to a point.

Guns are necessary now as a means of defense, as well as attack.

Guns become problematic when they are:

Stored incorrectly
Used incorrectly
played around with like toys

used by people who have no business or training in using them, nor have any respect for the psychological weight that comes from using it.

Pretty much this.

Remember the good old days when kids with issues would just beat the crap out of the other kid while everyone else stood in a circle and cheered?

That typically only happened between the bully and the bullied.

Or two kids who had a problem with each other, then after it was all over, they'd share juice boxes, and play on the monkey bars.


Edit: *** you Ariyon! You have me remembering my childhood like I'm some old geezer in his 70's. It's fisticuffs time!

Pepperidge farm remembers !

The one time the idiots in my school tried this with me, they got scared when I started laughing and squared off. Granted, what I was actually doing was going into a stable stance I'd learned in ballet classes, but it doesn't matter where you learn how to fight and defend successfully.

Anyhow, as someone who despises guns, outlawing them wouldn't fundamentally change much. We'd all go back to carrying bladed weapons (which many of us still do, anyhow, but it'd be sword on hip instead of a belt-mounted utility knife). There'd be fewer deaths and more injuries, I suspect, but not by large percentages in either case.

I think the individuals who want to do nothing but harm would probably just switch to explosives, I mean they're pretty easy to make as it is.

Explosives were used at Columbine, but that was (mercifully) one of the most deliberately planned incidents, even as we rapidly approach 20 years since it happened.

Most of these rampages don't have the air of someone interested in doing extensive and randomized damage. That is the MO of terrorism, whereas these attacks are, as this kid emphasizes, about retribution. There's a more personal element involved, hence why so much of the killing tends to happen face-to-face. A sniper (e.g., the DC sniper a few years back) would be more effective in the long-term than randomly spraying rounds at a sorority, but it wouldn't serve the motives of most school shooters.

And even if explosives are "easy" to manufacture, they're also rather easy to screw up, they have to be set up or lugged around, and anyone who has actually studied them knows that they're nothing like as destructive, pound-for-pound, as Hollywood would have us believe. There's a reason why the Oklahoma City bomber used a truck.

If someone wanted to just cause randomized damage, all they'd need to do is get some minimal CDL training and hijack a garbage truck. Get that thing running up to 70 MPH and crash it into a Starbucks or something. Mercifully, we don't have many domestic terrorists interested in the message that sends. We here in the US do regularly forget, though, that not all countries are so lucky.

Let us meet in the playground after school, where you shall finally receive your comeuppance!

Given that he planned this for a year, I'd say it's incredibly fortunate that the casualties were so low. A pipe bomb through the window of the sorority probably would've done far more.

He may have thought about it for a year, but I'll withhold saying he planned it that far in advance. I thought about getting my ears pierced for the better part of 2 years before actually doing it, which was mostly a spur-of-the-moment thing based on opportunity (I was finally out of my dress-code-enforced school and also 18).

Fair enough.

Wow.

Although I'm only on page 52, I'm pretty thankful I can read this "manifesto" instead of the opinions of the media regarding the question "why?"

I flipped through to the very end of it. For anyone that hasn't or isn't going to read his manifesto, I'm interpreting it as he basically shot up the sorority because he couldn't get laid.

And because his behavior made him seem icky and creepy.

That's a gross oversimplification, but it's closer to true than not. This kid strikes me as the usual socially inept sort who seriously thinks he should be landing 10s in spite of having none of the necessary qualities to do it. He had a better childhood than pretty much everyone I know (excepting the divorce -- oddly enough, almost all of my friends come from stable households) and when it came time to get his end wet, he couldn't.

The narcissism is amazing, though, and typical of a rich kid whose parents' money ran out. I predict some "expert" will get around to attributing this to post-traumatic affluenza or some other *** term for being an entitled little ***.

I really dislike that simplification. The trivialization says more about you than about him.

Do tell. I'm curious what you think it says about me.

That you'd sooner:

A) take the time to offer up your ill-informed and oversimplified opinion on an online game forum

than

B) read a long-winded autobiography that might lead you to something insightful and worthy of contribution on the aforementioned forum.

I'll admit there's probably a bit more to it than that, but that's what I took from reading the last couple paragraphs without delving into the psychological aspect of it. As I'm not a psychologist, anything more specific than that would be me talking out my *** pretending I know what I'm saying, so I opted not to.

Edited for incorrect profession.