- In 1998, a high school junior named Eric Harris from Colorado wanted to put on a performance, something for the world to remember him by. A little more than a year later, Eric and his best friend Dylan Klebold would place bombs all over their school — bombs large enough to collapse large chunks of the building and to kill the majority of the 2,000 students inside — and then wait outside with semi-automatic weapons to gun down any survivors before ending their own lives.
Though I think this article is very interesting and insightful, the author made a lot of disorganized points. If "snapping" from mental illness is considered a moot reason for the shootings, then why does the author encourage the reader to show empathy for those who are psychologically unstable? Mental instability seems to be the root of the problem according to this paragraph, but again the author cites this FBI study that is contradictory to that idea.An FBI study on school shooters found school shootings are never a result of a crazy person “snapping.” Most shooters do have serious mental health or emotional issues, but they all plan their attacks months or even years in advance.
They are distractions from what is right in front of you and me and the victims of tomorrow’s shooting: people who need help. [...] there’s likely another young man out there, maybe suicidally depressed, maybe paranoid and delusional, maybe a psychopath, and he’s researching guns and bombs and mapping out schools and recording videos and thinking every day about the anger and hate he feels for this world.
Though I fully share the opinion of the author, I wonder, if it isn't rather helpful, that society always only attacks the symptoms than the true problems. If society would see the problems for what they are, the first and main response would not be an increase of empathy for the angry few that might or might not turn into homicidal maniacs. I fear the response would be the same response that the foreign looking guy at the air port, the terror suspects in guantanamo bay or even worse the ideologic spoiled fighter in the mountains of pakistan gets. Society tends to react with anger and violence to that what frightens them and as long as it is easier to destroy than to build up, it would choose to destroy the people with a potential dangerous psyche.