Hear That Sound? It's Feces Hitting the Fan.

[kandrathe]

John Hinkley came from a reasonaby stable family.  ...
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Yes, I concur that "insane" killers can come from any social strata. The failure in those cases (ala Columbine) is in society (parents/teachers) identifying and intervening in psychosis rather than waiting to stop a psychopath until after there is a body count. For the criminally insane and dangerous, we should not wait for the expression of their insanity.

I have some personal experience with this one. A real psychopath was intent on killing my sister when we were in high school. Our experience was that the juvenile, justice and school systems were totally ineffective at getting that boy the help he needed. He was eventually prosecuted for B&E, and stealing an antique 18" medieval dagger and did juvenile time until he was 18 years old. He was released, record wiped clean (due to him being an adult now :blink: ), put back into the same high school, in the same classes as my sister, and even seated in the chair directly behind her. The stuff of teen slasher films.

If you want to reduce the size of the criminal class, get foolish laws off of the books, but build a social framework where the assumption of the law abiding citizen is closer to fact than it is now.

Win the war of ideas.  That is the next war.  Losing it means America devolves into a navel gazing amalgam of increasingly polarized "communities of interest."  Armed polarized communities of interest.  That should make for some good blood sport, I imagine, for whoever is left to run the global media empires.

Occhi
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I wholeheartedly agree. But, I still refuse to permanently condemn the redeemable. We must be a society that helps to turn losers into winners and ultimately that means that each of us must concern ourselves, directly or indirectly, with the success of others. Even if they are scofflaws and criminals.