Criminal Deeds

[eppie]

Your right, I am mad. I feel that inhumane bastard deserves to be tried in a court of law, so he could see the damage he's done, and feel responsible and the remorse involved. He took the easy way out and that is what upsets me so much! I'd rather he was killed by police even than shot himself in the head.

MEat, I am sorry I have to say this to another valued member of the lounge but you clearly not understanding what is the situation here.
Do you seriously think someone who killed 20 children would 'see the light' if he would be taken to court?
When you kill 20 children you are completely insane, and you don't have feelings the same way you and I have.

As to the rest, of course what you say has merit, but what if the boy/man didn't even live with his mother so she owned the guns without any issue and he just went over her house, killed her, and took the guns? You're essentially making the same argument as Nomad here for pro-gun, but without a real argument. Nomad came up with some good points for pro-gun in the second part.

I think here you are at least a bit closer to getting it yourself. Of course no social program or law will prevent these things from happening 100%, but the situation right now in the US is far from perfect.
You have (as a generally very individual, low tax, everyone for himself society) very little tools in place to help people with heavy social issues (be it suicidal, be it mental disease, be it rough childhood or whatever) and you mix that with a widespread availability of guns.
The choice is just up to you.....do you want to be able to punish the shit out of a few of these mental cases, or do you want to prevent these things from happening, say 50 % less? True, the social, psychological route is a bit left wing and sissy, but it will diminish the amount of innocent victims.

And how do you feel people should be "treated"? Who is to judge who needs help and who does not?

I was thinking about people who studied for these kinds of things....but maybe that is just me talking crazytalk. (psychologists, sociologists etc.)

In recent years, they [officials] will check your facebook page to see if you've made threatening comments lately, but if you aren't displaying any outward signs of being mentally unfit, how'd anyone know who really needs help or not?

Again, you will not be able ever to stop these kind of things all together....all I am for is trying to make this happen a lot less.

As was the case in Columbine, those two boys weren't insane by any definable clinical standards (at least, not until they pulled the trigger), but rather mad at their peers. Emotional, hormonal boys who needed guidance, but who would have known? And even if physicians do see someone in time, they do make mistake too:

There were signs, that I agree are difficult to see before anything happened, but suicidal teens is actually a very big issue, something that happens a lot. And if you have the type that a part from being incredibly unhappy is also mad at a group of people he or she blames for this unhappiness and you combine that with availability of effective and very unpersonal tools of death something like this can happen. You don't have to have a PhD in psychology to be able to see this behavior.....but of course you need to be there....with which I mean if schools take e.g. bullying seriously and are very active in helping student who are going through rough times you would actually be able to prevent out some of these cases (indeed some of these...maybe 10 %, maybe 20%, maybe 50%...so everybody can decide for himself how much tax money this is worth for him)

Case and point, I do agree that we as a society could do more to help people with morality, I've been saying this for years on these boards, but I don't know the correct way to do it, and I feel putting the power into the states or feds hands could and would lead to political abuse of the system.

I don't completely see what you mean with morality here (maybe it is because I don't get the finesse of the language), but I don't see how you would connect supporting people with mental illness to political abuse.

I mean if you really think that way and trust your government so little I would emigrate if I were you.

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I have to agree with eppie here.

Thanks but I didn't exactly mean what you thought.

I am not saying that this killer didn't deserve to die.
Even if he did this while not knowing what he was doing it would for many reason be better that he would get a death penalty.....but this is not the case.

My point was about meat assuming that someone who commits a, as you said it correct, a crime so heinous it is almost unbelievable being susceptible for any type of reason such as in a trial in court or so.

Apart from asking for a punishment doesn't do anything to get these kids back, it also doesn't do anything to prevent comparable crimes or making some kind of point to someone (the killer, the parents of the kids, the public).
A case like this is just so terrible that the only sane reaction from anyone should be to ask how we can prevent this as much as possible.