Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Craig, Melbourne Australia on April 17, 2007:

I can't believe these things still happen. Ten years ago we had a similar mass shooting, but more killed. The government bought back all powerful guns, and banned their further sale (except if it was justified - farmers). Result, we haven't had any more mass shootings. Sure, people still get angry and will do crazy things, but the lack of available and powerful weapons can minimise the potential damage.

Why does the average US citizen need such powerful handguns, and with such large clips?

And don't give me the standard 'defense' response. Remove the guns from the street, and you don't need the same for defense.

Posted by Carter Clearwater, FL on April 17, 2007:

It will be interesting to see what, if any, medications the shooter was taking. About 90% of the school shootings are done by a patient taking anti-depressants, which are known to have various anti-social side effects. The question is, WILL the news media report the shooter's psychiatric history, or will it remain hidden (as the Columbine murderers' did) until some non-media group DOES reveal the cover-up? In the first well-known school shooting - the University of Texas tower shootings about 30 or so years ago, the shooter was on prescription amphetamines I believe.

Posted by Brian, Aurora, Ohio on April 17, 2007:

This sort of thing really saddens me but ZT would not have prevented this or any other gun crime. I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon and believe that if there were more of "us" (people who have been thoroughly investigated), the public might be safer.

My prayers go out to the families of the slain.

Posted by Don, Nevada on April 17, 2007:

School shootings will never be stopped by ZT! They may, however, be curtailed by the limitation of the use of drugs that make people crazy and want to kill, like Prozac, Zoloft, etc...

Check out this article on the subject from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a watchdog group trying to monitor/deal with the problem, "Another School Shooter, Another Psychiatric Drug?"

Posted by Jan, California on April 17, 2007:

Randy, thanks for the reminder about the real problem with ZT. I am a member of the school board at our church and plan to address this issue tonight. Hopefully with my own research and your valuable input I can convince the other members that we need to be very careful about ZT and the impact it has on our students.

Posted by Paul - Queens, New York on April 17, 2007:

RC: "As for me, I've already said "I have no idea if that's part of what went on in Virginia.""

No. That was a COMMA, part of a larger context which you're conveniently avoiding:

"Columbine, after all, was really about powerless little boys raging against bullies at school. I have no idea if that's part of what went on in Virginia, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that turns out to be a factor."

I said I had been there in the 60's and I had listened to Mondays interviews and that this was not a bullying culture.

In contrast you used "I have no idea if... but..." as a disclaimer for what was coming, followed by a second attempt to cover yourself from what you knew was an unjust hatchet job "it wouldn't surprise me".... Shades of "Some people have been saying...". So which is it? Do you take responsibility for implying the victims brought it on themselves because they were bullies? Or was this just _tasteful_ speculation about a community in shock?

RC: "Too bad you're not as honest, preferring to use this tragedy to make your own pro-this and anti-that points".

What point? What did you discover about my opinions on ZT or Gun Control or Jimmy Hoffa from my posting? Nothing, that's what, because I didn't make many. This is just an out of the blue attempt to try to blame your own tactics on someone else, and is a major indicator that, on some level, you understand you goofed here and need to fix it, not make it worse.

RC: "Mr. Pot, your attempts to call the kettle black ring a bit hollow. -rc"

And you're what? 9 years old here? I mention that you might not be infallible in prejudging this wounded community as a nest of bullies and your scathing retort is a variation of "I know you are but what am I"? You need to step back and mull things over for a few days. At the least, don't bother replying before Thursday. At most, never.

---

Everything is here, in print, in context. Nothing is hidden, so your protestations that I didn't reprint everything that I already said, that's already there, is silly. I wrote about what I saw from Columbine. You wrote about what you saw in the 1960s. Yet you reject my observations in favor of your own. *shrug* I'm guessing things have changed more in the past 40 years than they have in the past eight.

Your assumption that I'm blaming the victims is ludicrous. Even if 100% of the shooter's motives are from bullying rather than simply "a factor" (which is 100% doubtful), the shooter is still 100% to blame. To suggest that anyone could think the victims are responsible for their own deaths is obscene, and says a lot about your thought processes.

Last, it's no surprise that you would demand I take days to think about my response after you've immediately pounded out yours. You demand that others conform to your rules, but guess whose site this is? The only thing I need to do to win this debate is publish your words. -rc

Posted by Ian, England on April 17, 2007:

There are lots of questions about gun laws, and whether they result in more or less massacres.

My concern is that people on both sides of the argument will say "ah, but he was Korean, so it doesn't count" and if that happens, it will be another sorry day.

Posted by Richard, Louisiana on April 17, 2007:

God knows I'm never accused of hypersensitivity, and I can find something to laugh at in almost any set of circumstances. I nevertheless find it necessary to tell you that I wish you had not included the opening story about the suicide in this week's edition.

Do I think he was wrong to lie about his degrees? Of course. Do I think he should have shut down his career? Arguable, but probably. Do I think he over-reacted? Yes.

But speaking as an individual with a lifelong history of clinical depression, I can understand his response. And, frankly, anyone who cared about him as a person (wife, child, parent, sibling or friend) would be rightly appalled to see him as the subject of a "This Is True" story.

---

I would think about half the subjects of my articles (or their families) would be a bit appalled to see themselves featured. What's the point? To get people to think. So let's be specific about suicide: I find it constructive to ridicule suicide, since it is, in fact, a ridiculous way to escape problems, rather than facing up to them and helping to clean up the mess they caused. The subject of this week's lead story is a good example: he created a huge mess, but he would have survived the scandal. But he took an "easy" way out and left the mess for others to deal with without his help. That's not a reasonable solution -- and I don't think anyone would disagree, even if you can understand his impulse. -rc

Posted by James, Illinois on April 19, 2007:

Before the blood of the students had even begun to dry, the politicos came out of the woodwork to start using this to forward their agendas. Predictably, the ones who would blindly push 100% prohibition of private gun ownership saw this as an affirmation of their stance and renewed their push for trying to remove this right from the American citizenry.

It was an even more chaotic climate in Germany with a crumbling economy, rivaling groups fighting each other to take over the streets, and an ambitious politician who saw that as an opportunity for him to seize power from the democracy that had existed there. The amazing part is that Adolf Hitler was elected to his position of power and the people willingly gave up their right to protect themselves.

I'm not saying that this would definitely happen here in the United States, but I am saying that we should never give up the right to defend ourselves.

Should students have been allowed to carry firearms at school? Maybe not, I don't know. It would make sense though for the teachers to be allowed to carry weapons.

As in the days when teachers were allowed to paddle students, it wasn't the paddling itself that prevented students misbehaving but the fact that it could happen.

Posted by Mike from Dallas on April 19, 2007:

How could it happen? How can we keep it from ever happening again? The answer to both questions is that you will NEVER know. Oh, yes, many of you have ALL the answers; you always do. It doesn't matter which side of the political agenda you're on, you always know how to solve the problems of the world. Yet those problems continue. It's private ownership of guns. No, it's the overly restrictive gun control laws. Wait, it's the Hollywood movies. No, it's the violent video games, the comic books, the pre-sweetened cereals.... There have been guilty culprits going all the way back for more than 100 years.

Last year there were 16,000 murders in the U.S. Where is the concerted outrage? Well, that's because it's spread out over a whole year. Ifthey were all done in one day and we had 364 murder-free days, everybody would still be outraged that there were 16,000 murders.

Last year there were over 40,000 traffic deaths, around half of them attributable to alcohol. We've got some pretty tough drunk driving laws these days. Outside of shutting down all the bars and maybe outlawing booze, there's not much more we can do. But wait, if all those alcohol related deaths happened in one night, there'd be outrage and demands to do exactly that.

What made this particular tragedy into SUCH a tragedy is that 32 murders occurred in one afternoon by the same person. Spread it out over a couple weeks, by various people, and it wouldn't even make the news.

Restricting access to anything doesn't solve the problem. Nobody is allowed to keep the own personal bombs. That didn't stop McVeigh from killing all those people in Oklohoma City. In Europe, where gun ownership and especially bomb ownership is even more restricted, there are more incidents of railway, bus, and subway bombings than in the U.S. There is more murder daily in Africa, especially per capita, where the word "GENOCIDE" becomes spoken, yet there is not the concerted outrage as in America where such massacres occur every several years.

Lastly, guns, bombs, video games, movies, breakfast cereal, and comic books are only the symptoms. If someone contracts malaria and he dies from the fever, it's ridiculous to try outlawing fevers in the hope that the disease will be stopped. It is the disease of the mind that is the ultimate culprit when murder is committed. And nobody has figured out how to prevent that, even going all the way back to Cain & Abel.

Even certain anti-depressants, suspected to heighten paranoia, still are not to be blamed. Those drugs don't create paranoia, they heighten them. Again, a symptom, not a cause. Outlaw the drug and murders, along with mass murders, will still occur.

No, I suspect the biggest outrage is the realization that, in a world of 6 billion people, and a land mass of some 60 million square miles, that some people have been reminded that they are NOT in total control of their environment and that realization scares them silly.