What in tarnation is going on in this country?
10 months to the day that a wacko shot up Virginia Tech, another apparent wacko shoots up a science class at Northern Illinois University’s DeKalb campus a few dozen miles west of Chicago.
After shooting wildly at approximately 150 science students in an auditorium, the shooter kills himself. 21 shot and 6 now dead, including the gunman. [NB: some news reports tally the deceased at 7 but the coroner is emphasizing that "only" 6 are dead, including the shooter.]
If he wanted to commit suicide, why did he not simply go off by himself and pull the trigger? Why did he take so many innocents with him?? It just doesn’t make any sense.
The shooter has been identified but I will not print his name here. He seems to have wanted immortality. I’ll not help the a mass murderer get any level of fame.
Kudos to the good folks from Virginia Tech for reaching out with sympathy and support to the NIU community
[Update: in all fairness, since reports are starting to surface that the shooter, Stephen Kazmierczak, may have been on bi-polar meds (but stopped taking them), my opinion on the matter may change slightly. This shooting may bolster the claims of many that the mental health system in this country is failing not only the patients but the populace at large. Something needs to be done to address these all-too frequent mass shootings by people who've stopped taking their medications.]
7 Comments
February 16, 2008 at 1:03 am
Yet we worry about the terrorists from outside the country to come get us. Maybe we better start paying attention to our own house. Crazy house it is.
February 16, 2008 at 4:48 am
Re: your comments on the health system, I point out:
1. Today’s “sophisticated” medications for mental illness are streets ahead of anything we’ve had before, but they’re still the pharmacological equivalent of doing eye surgery with an axe. And, they’re expensive (as is the constant physician attention needed to monitor their action, not to mention the condition for which they’re being used), more than most students (who can’t be carried on parental insurance, and can’t afford their own) can manage. Which is particularly unfortunate, because the effects of withdrawal from the medications can be more dangerous than the original illness.
2. For me, the number that means something is the percentage of incidents like this per head of population. We forget that we have more than twice the number of Americans than just 40 years ago. That plus the ubiquitous media can turn “no significant change” into what looks like a tsunami of calamity.
3. Until a few years ago, only ca. 10% of American young adults attended tertiary education. Nearly all of them could actually read. Now it’s more than 50%. Many of them, I think, would have no business being in college if our public schools were actually doing their jobs (although, apparently, K. was an exemplary collegian). Again, has the rate changed, or has the dramatic increase in numbers and media visibility of students made the incidents more noticeable?
What’s broken may be our ability to access and interpret facts independently of the emotions that our news outlets make money by goading, and our willingness to see the benefits of paying for a universal health care system. And yes, it will be paying through the nose. It will mean taxes, and big ones. Even bigger if We the People don’t ditch the “entitlement” culture and treat the benefits that would accrue under a universal health plan with respect and restraint.
February 16, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Good points, OC.
I’m still undecided on the universal health care issue. Our country has a habit of doing poorly on large-scale projects. I’m not convinced that having universal will be any better than the current thing in place. Usually I view the arguments as half a dozen of one, and 6 of the other. Other times, I get to thinking it’s out-of-the-frypan-and-into-the-fire. Someone needs to explain to me why I am so pessimistic about it all.
February 18, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Universal health care, the way presented by Clinton, will both bankrupt us and curtail services. I am not sure people understand how economically unfeasible that system is more so now that we are in almost dire economic times.
A cost controlling effort with coverage provided on some level for families of a certain income level or below would be more beneficial to us in the long run. With universal health care the average joe partaking of it will not be getting that early chest scan which could save his life – did you know there is a scan of some kind out there which can detect lung cancer in it’s earliest stages making it quite curable? Did you know most insurance companies will not pay for it? Do you think uni coverage will pay for it? Of course not, not at all. State of the art still goes to those with not those without. Cost control, sorry that is the only way.
February 19, 2008 at 12:03 am
“Yet we worry about the terrorists from outside the country to come get us.”
Um, yeah, that’s cuz they fly planes into buildings.
February 19, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Well, Diesel, considering the topic of my post, I’d say Cooper was commenting about our growing population of homegrown terrorists. Makes us wish Tim McVeigh was the only one. But we’ve had two major university shootings just this year. Should we ignore those because bin laden continues his daily ritual of going from cave to cave?
March 1, 2008 at 1:15 pm
i’m really sorry and i totally symphazise for all the families who lost a son or a daughter in that massacre. yeah i do agree with all of you … let’s see if the government takes some actions to cease it cos to be honest I would be scared to death if I were there … here in Spain , it has never ever happenned but i think there’d have to be more security as well …