jvs: You may be correct in that some people will simply 'have had enough' of the random and violent acts of the deranged few, yet I sincerely do not believe that this entire country will lay down and roll over on any of our Constitutional rights due to the violent actions of a 'deranged few'. While we may have come close to this in the past we have not gone 'Canadian', yet.
We have always punished our criminals - we would have punished this one too if he hadn't turned his weapon on himself. We have not denied all others their 'rights' based on the actions of a crazed few - many have tried but it doesn't work out that way and I would hope it would not.
I find it interesting that liberal campuses are one of those places where people speak to anything they want - they have the right to free speech - but nobody ever tells them to look closely at what people write or how they act - some consider it a student's natural creativity. This killer had apparently, written and made all the wrong types of statements that should have alerted someone (except students or teachers) but apparently either none were interested or aware of which way it might go.
The interesting thing about psychological autopsies is that you can usually plainly see where someone started veering off the beaten track and the question has always come up of 'why didn't someone do something at the time - because nobody 'thought' (that is, nobody on a college campus thought) that it meant anything.
The headlines in today's paper - 'Gunman's Chilling Portrait Emerges' - what, nobody ever looked at his behavior before and said 'we have to deal with this kid before he goes off the track - not on a college campus. The photo shows a bunch of college kids looking sadly into their candle cups and I know everyone will decry guns as a result of this but nobody will ever turn around and say - every college kid should have a psyciatric profile completed within the first 6 months of school and every 6 months thereafter and any sign of detachment or other symptomotology merits treatment. Colleges would fee that horribly intrusive, but no more so than gun owners feel about gun bans.
Most of our gun owning citizens are held to pretty high standards before they can get ccws - we face background checks and, if there have been any concerns from the past such as DWIs they may even have to obtain a determination that they don't do that anymore before they can get a pistol permit (in NYS). Nobody looks at the background of college students to periodically evaluate their mental capacity for continuing at school as they propose to continue to evaluate our capacity to carry firearms.
These 'loners' and 'strange ones' are sooo easy to spot, even on a college campus yet nobody takes notice or says anything about it and I think it is time we began advocating for some measure of responsibility for this on colleges and in our high schools.
We can spot those people on the gun ranges - they're the ones who empty their firearms at a target while yelling 'die witch' or something else like that and appear very 'uptight' in their other behaviors. We can resort them to the police or the DAs office and something may be done about it. I once came to the range as one fellow was 'peeling out' of the range road. When I went to post my targets I saw a photograph of a woman and child that had been used as a target. I got the name from the sign in sheet for the range and called the locals, who sent an officer up. I showed him the picture and the sign in sheet and his comment was 'this doesn't look good' and thanks for notifying us. I never heard another thing about it, but never saw that club member again, either.
I guess what I am saying is that we all have responsibilities, whether on the campus, in the shool halls, on the street or at the range and one of those responsibilities is to take appropriate action when we feel something is wrong. Colleges fail to do this; schools fail to do this, yet they will blame all of us and attempt to deny us our rights while refusing to take responsibility themselves. JMTCW. Mikey.
