Ok, let's be friends! :grouphug:

ok!:beer:

Yes wolf, I was talking about Port Arthur.

Just to add to the above argument, there's really no way to refute that the US does have aspects of culture which are violent. That being said, there are many other countries in the world where you're more likely to die a violent death than the US.

Having lived in both and loving neither, I can definitely say that America IS a lot more violent than Hong Kong. It's not just a media issue.

But it's also a lot more free, and a lot more diverse, and a lot more chaotic, and a lot more polarized, all of which for better or worse.

Yes, compared to hong kong or taipei or even beijing, america practically IS a crime-ridden terrible violent place.
That violence is a direct consequence of freedom. When you have no freedom you don't get uppity and shoot people.

I'll take the freedom and the violence, if you please.

There are those that would argue that freedom is not the source of violence. Rather that imprisonment is.

News in the US goes by one slogan: "If it bleeds, it leads!"

I live next to the city with the highest homicide rate in the country (thanks Mayor Street!) and yet I have never personally witnessed a gun crime. 95% of crime is located in drug neighborhoods where there is battle over turf. If you don't go there, and it's easy to know where "there" is, you are not affected by the homicide rate. That's not to say it's not a problem, just not the kind of problem you think it is.

...and that, I think, is an issue more complex than the availability of weapons or what is portrayed in the media. The reason the US broadcasts that it has a violent culture and is viewed as being a violent place are disconnected from the reality of the actual violence that takes place and the reasons for it. Symptom and disease are connected but pinpointing any single cause in the mess of social issues, class gaps, racial tension, apathy, mental illness, media encouragement, gun laws, and lack of community would be impossible.

That said, as details emerge Cho Seung-hui to reveal a disturbed individual, I believe that no amount of previous weapons legislation, peaceful culture, or security precautions would have prevented the massacre that seems to have been triggered by either mental illness, childhood abuse, or both. Any warning signs that would have hinted at future violence and the need for treatment were overlooked by friends and purposely ignored by family years ago just as were those of Charles Whitman. The underlying reasons for Cho Seung-hui's actions have no connection to a "violent culture" or the desire to commit crimes for personal gain -- making the connection to this incident and daily crime in the US is foolish. When people snap like this, preventative measures have to be personal and need to have occurred years prior to the breaking point.

That made me laugh:P

You're both wrong. The moon is made from Provolone.

I was watching Dateline NBC the night of the shooting, and it was amazing to see. Matt Lauer and some other old reporter were talking with each other on camera about what a "big story" this was and how surprising it was that the locals didn't understand why all the reporters were showing up.

It really sickened me. They had a very callous attitude. Two seasoned reporters telling war stories about past incidents and how this would make a great new story. They kept referring to this as a new record, like it was something to be broken. In almost the same breath, they went from talking about new records to potential copycats who might come out of the woodwork after this.

I half expected them to turn to the camera and say "So all you potential mass murderers out there, the new number is 33. You must kill more than 33 to get into the record books, and really it should be like 60 to get maximum impact."

News like that is the reason I don't watch the news. I scroll through the stories that interest me on my MSN.com page, but other than that, I really don't care what goes on in the world.

I especially hate "Inside Edition" with whats-her-face on CBS.

Now the big issue is "there were indications that this guy would go postal, but we couldn't do anything other than recommend counselling", and that VT should have "done something". Hopefully Wolf can shed some light on this, but it doesn't seem like some person or institution can force action on someone because they behave outside the norm.

I'm just dreading the news spectacle there will be on the 20th, since that's the 8th anniversary of the Columbine incident. I've already seen advertisements for programs that are covering that old story, as well as the VT one. I wonder who the fuck can't just let the dead horse lay there, and let the people in Colorado have some fucking rest already. I'm pretty sure they don't want to watch some thing about the most horrifying thing some of them had experienced, and I really don't want to watch it either.

I actually faced a similar issue some semesters ago. From day one in my physiology class, a male student sat in the very back of class and spent a lot of the time talking to himself. He was loud enough that he was repeatedly asked to quiet down and the prof eventually pulled him aside and had a word with him, but the only thing he would say to her was that he "hated her" and "hated the class". Some days later after another class, the student punched another for no reason at all. Police were called, no charges were pressed (the victim later said he simply wanted to know what prompted the unexpected assault from this person he didn't know and didn't even speak to, but got no clear answer) and life went on. One day, he stopped showing up to class, much to everyone's relief. Most found him highly annoying and "just weird". We figured with the grades he was getting that he finally gave up and dropped.

We learned, later, that wasn't the case. He had snapped inside a Radio Shack in a local mall and killed two random people before killing himself.

He had acted strange in class, had at least one violent outburst, but there simply wasn't enough there to baker act him. For this student majoring in psychology, the professors that all had degrees in the field didn't pick up on enough of his warning signs to do anything about it.

Sounds like the student he punched should have been encouraged more strongly to press charges. He was the one person who had the legal opportunity to get this guy looked at.

Ok, I'm glad it is not just me who thinks America is not "rampant" with violence. Remember what the word rampant bears in mind. Unchecked, furious and growing and out of control.

I think there are certain areas that might be rampant with violence, but my country as a whole? Nah.

It's a catch 22. We are supposed to have a right to act/say/do whatever we want as long as it doesn't 'hurt' anyone else. Unfortunately, the warning signs of potential future harm usually fall under this so that those who recognize the symptoms of someting serious can't do anything.

However, if we allow 'experts' to have people 'tagged' for closer examination, there will be a group of people who will pipe up about infringing on personal freedoms. It's a very very thin line in a murky grey area.

As a person with a history of mental illness, I rely on my family to point out to me when I need a little tweaking. If I didn't have them, or friends I could trust, I could easily get to a very low point, (though I doubt I would cause anyone but myself harm).

I'm not advocating for troops of rogue psychiatrists roaming the streets with rorschach cards and handcuffs, but it would be nice if we (americans in general) felt a little better about asking someone if they are OK, and reporting it to someone who might actually be able to DO something if there is obviously something off about a person. What the DO is, is the question to be debated for the next decade...

I haven't heard enough yet about Cho Seung-hui to make any conclusions myself regarding if there was anything that could have been done to minimize his potential for being dangerous to others.

I'd like to report some strange behavior from the dork that lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave...:D

I just remembered that I had an "encounter" in the early eighties. I sold glasses to a young woman. She told me that she had just been in the service for about six months (as I remember). I commented that it was strange to only be in for six months, and she said that she and the service made a mutaual agreement that she should be discharged. Her name was Sylvia Seegrist.

Oh, joy. Look who's getting involved in the funerals for the victims.

:angry:

Well stated. Good summary.

http://www.twincities.com/allheadlines/ci_5695553

I hope this person gets flogged publically. This is pathetic and immature.

well, you can't lock up everyone who has the potential to do violence. There'd be no one left on the outside.

they're playing the killer's tapes right now on CNN. It is just fucking horrific.

That kid had NO connection to reality, whatsoever.

I used to work for a university and we had to deal with mental health issues within the university as well as with public health officials and the police department. I've also worked with the police department on mental health issues.

I can't remember who just wrote about the grey area (and kudos to you for pointing this out) but in dealing with both the university system as well as the police department - the mental health system and process is one HUGE grey area.

For instance - (yes - psychology major - specifically abnormal psychology) - most of the time skitzophrenia develops in the early 20's when people are in college. In my college years - 5 1/2 - I had to attend commitment proceedings on 12 different students as they were skitzophrenic and were harmful to themselves as well as to others. The issue is with most of these students is that they are aldults so you can't get the parents involved to assist with the help they so desperately need. The other issue that we came up across - and this has been mentioned in the news media - is that a lot of these kids were asian. (I'm chinese FYI) One of the psychologists that I've worked with and for find different cultures views of mental illness some of the hardest things to overcome.

The issue on doing something - if you notice something that just doesn't seem right - ask someone (aka care) if they are ok. If the response just seems off - discuss it with a crisis line, or in a university setting - a counselor, your dorm director - someone. So many people out there need help and don't know where to get it.

Does this excuse anything that happend this week. Absolutely not. But it does show some insight into it. In all - it is tragic and I truly feel for those victims.

*and something else that completely bothers me - I was watching the interviews with his former roomates and they were sitting there smiling during most of the interview. Not sure if they were just smiling for the camera or what - but it really just rubbed me the wrong way*

FLAME ON!

Observation:

A lot of the pundits on the tube keep hanging their hats on the fact that this guy was found at one time to be "a danger to himself, and a danger to others." Further, he was at one time committed for this behavior, against his will. This is a snap shot of how our system works and how it is broken. He was committed one time for that behavior at that time. He was obviously released, because he was "no longer a threat" or he never would have been released. And so goes the revolving door of mental health care here in the US. Most people with serious mental health issues end up in jail, not getting the help they really need. We have closed the asylums and hospitals and replaced them with prisons. It is no surprise that this guy was out and about.

I want to hear how this guy's life was like in high school. I have a feelign that will answer many questions.

as far as I know, there's never been enough resources for the mentally ill anywhere. It looks as though people were seeing the warning signs, and were reporting them. It seems as though he had no one to step in and care for him, anyway. Maybe his parents were glad to ship him off to college.

Again, there needs to be a better safety net for teenagers.

Agreed, this guy had nothing to go back on and he has probably been living through a daily hell for the past 10 or so years. I gaurantee no one seriously tried to include him and he was the kid that everyone made fun of in high school.

There is no justifiable reason to do this because he directly affected over 10,000 people but if you make someone's life a living hell, exclude him from society, and give him a gun, what the hell do you expect?

I think he just plain cared too much. I'm a social outcast, I guess, sure -- but look at me. I'm here conversing with and acting like a sane reasonable mature adult. You know why?

Because I dont care what they say or think. I'm here to have a good run while I'm here on earth, cause I wont be here long. Only a handful of decades. So I'm gonna have a good run and not let this shit get me down. I act like everyone loves me anyway, act like all the kids here who hate me are my closest friends, because hate and jealousy get me nowhere.

This kid was sick and needed help. Blame his chemicals, blame his broken mind, dont blame the other kids.

Why not? The kids played just as much of a role in it then the chemicals and the broken mind. It is like telling a very badly treated slave that we shouldn't blame his slaveowner because he cared about his freedom too much.

I agree that it has to do with caring too much but that intertwines with his obvious irrational feeling of being opressed. He said he hated the self-centeredness of people and he had to kill because of their greedyness. This means he had goals and aspirations of being rich at a young age but this dream was repeatedly shot down while watching other people live up his dream. This comes down to jealousy and a unwillingness to accept the failures and realities of life.

Thank goodness for multiquote, so I can do this as one big, long post rather than a series ...

Remembering that my experience is based primarily on Pennsylvania's very different commitment law ...

I did look at the Virginia law. Their standard for commitment is "imminent harm to self," "imminent harm to others," or "substantially unable to care for self." Their law does not define the criteria further. (Pennsylvania is a LOT more specific about dangerous behaviors, and also allows for threats with acts in furtherance of the threats to be utilized as grounds for commitment). Sure, folks were noticing Cho's bizarre behavior ... but until Monday morning, he hadn't crossed the line into observable dangerous behavior. The play posted on The Smoking Gun was weird, certainly showed disorganization of his thinking, but didn't represent any overt dangerousness.

This is a bad week for that sort of thing. Oklahoma City, Branch Davidian, and Columbine all share similar timing, not to mention Hitler's Birthday (anybody else catch the 88 reference in the page posted to the msnbc site?), and the date of the final entry (or was it the blowing up of some Federal Building in DC, I forget) in The Turner Diaries. April 16, the day of the shootings was "Patriot's Day" according to my calendar (which I thought was supposed to be April 19 because of the Battle of the Old North Bridge that's regarded as the beginning of the American Revoluntary War. Guess it was Monday Holiday Billed).


Interesting brush with infamy. I remember her well. Especially since I'd been at the Springfield Mall only a few days before the shooting.

Mental health law, because of the civil rights issues of detaining a person against their will, and violating their right of self-determination of treatment, is based on the notion that a patient will be treated at the "least restrictive setting" for their care.

Emergency commitments are just that ... emergencies. A person's behavior two years ago may be interesting and helpful to understanding them and their situation as it provides context, it is not relevant to the commitment process. You can only be treated for what you're doing NOW, not what you did, or what you might do.

The door swings rather than revolves most of the time.

Interestingly, the state of Virginia has been, over the last few years, in the process of attempting to revise their commitment laws. I think that the speed at which those changes occur might increase.

I doubt it. While a lot of people who are severely mentally ill show signs of it in high school, a lot of the time they don't. He may have been a bit odd, shy, bookish, geeky, but then most of us here were. Schizophrenia, in particular, is like that. All of a sudden, entering into your early 20s, you start having some strange ways of perceiving the world that you become more and more convinced are absolutely true. You start believing that certain songs have special meanings inserted in them for you, and you alone, or that you can hear the thoughts of others, or god and the devil start talking to you, or that the way you pick colors of clothing has impact on world politics.

There are a lot of resources for the mentally ill. People (patients and their families) don't necessarily take advantage of them, however.

This is particularly true in the Korean community. They have a much stronger stigma about mental illness than a lot of other cultures. They keep things in the family most of all, sometimes will seek help within their own community, and only very rarely approach their local mental health services. When I see a Korean parents and their pastor (to translate) show up, I know that the situation has deteriorated to the point where someone has gotten hurt. They don't come in to do a commitment otherwise.

It is too early to make that assumption. As I stated above, he was probably a bit odd, but pretty much normal in high school.

Now that we know he has a prior commitment on his record ... this should have prevented him from being able to purchase the pistols. I don't know how Virginia's version of the background check works, though. In Pennsylvania, involuntary commitment results in an automatic denial through PICS (Penna. Insta-Check System).

Because you're a basically normal kid. Actually, one with a better sense of self-esteem and independence than many.

You are trying to interpret his world through your own ... none of the things that he was concerned about were real.

Independence, sure, but not self-esteem. I hate myself, I think I'm ugly and dumb and a lot of other bad things, then i hate myself more for being all angsty and thinking it... I just dont let it bother me.

I've been a social outcast while living in america and it bothers me a lot but I never felt any violent urges because of it.

yikes, i just realized -

at TAS,
I'M the kid who sits in the back of the class
talks to myself
dresses weird, acts rather crazy, all of that...

I wonder if they think I'll be the next to snap?

You are buying into his take on reality. The things he said were only truth to him, not to the rest of us. Many people tried to be friends with this kid. The kid was the problem, not those around him. I will leave the psychoanalysis of his childhood to the experts.

I know, that is why I said obvious irrational feeling of being oppressed. I've been irrational before and all it does is build up on each other.

I don't buy that. It is extremely rare that someone will try to be friends with the creepy, violent obsessed kid that never talks. Yeah, they may try to include in a conversation every once in while but I can almost guarantee that no one actually tried to include him in their group. Am I blaming anyone for that? Of course not, I wouldn't do and I'm sure 99% of people wouldn't either.

If people had been friends with him, if that were even possible, he would have used some other rationale to kill. It's a brain chemistry problem, not a social problem. If awkward loners always turned to killing, the streets would all be red with blood.

Yup, normal kid ;)

Could people have been friends with him? I doubt it, from what I've seeen so far. Many cry that they'd be different if people gave them a chance, but in reality, they push away anyone who tries to get close.

After watching some of the videos, I think I might understand why he finally snapped...because he's a fucking tool, and everyone that knew him probably felt the same way.

Comments, in no particular order:

Ibram, even your low self-esteem is normal. We all love you, just not in that way.

It seems that HIPAA regulations, civil and privacy rights interfere in some cases. Maybe there should be situations that override these policies, that come before violence starts.

Aside from my well-known opinions on guns, this guy should never had been able to get a gun.

Mental health "mechanisms" cost money. Who wants to pony up? My guess is that themercenary doesn't want his taxes increased to pay for someone else's mental healthcare - until there's a shooting spree, of course. :rolleyes:

UT is right. In fact, if people had tried to be his friend, they might well have been his first targets - he may have percieved them as being the cause of his distress.

That's scary. Need some counselling, Syc? :cool:

Perhaps. :)

Seriously, though...when I watched those videos, I was like, "Wow...what a fucking nerd." And I suspect that that's how many people viewed him. No wonder he just finally lost his mind. He was fine on the surface, but raging underneath...and he decided to finally let loose Monday. The two Columbine shooters came across the same way to me.

Have any links to the videos? I heard they aired on television but haven't caught them floating around the net, yet.

Scroll down to the video section on MSNBC.com...make sure you're using IE or FireFox.

You might be correct.

Has anyone seen my liberalism? I know I must have left it somewhere. I TOTALLY agree with your statement, Sycamore. Ill? Yes he was. An angry fuck that no one would want to be around? Yes he was. :bolt:

Ha, ha, ha. ;)

Damm tootin. There is not enough money out there to fix the problems with the mental health system in the US.

When I was in high school, there was this guy that nobody liked...and people tortured the shit out of him. At one point, he said he had a list of people to kill...apparently, I was in the top 10 at one point. My friends and I would joke around that he'd exact his revenge at graduation. He didn't...and I just saw him a couple of weeks ago working at a BP gas station.

We all thought it was funny in 1994...in 2007, the guy probably would have been expelled...and maybe followed through on his threats.

Well, complaining isn't going to fix it, either.

Ok, then quit your bitching.:D

Given my well-known opinion on guns, this guy should never have been able to get a gun.

The information on the Cho's 2005 hospitalization is that it was involuntary.

He was not a U.S. Citizen. I went looking for the 4473 online, and the BATFE has taken it off their website, so I can't see the wording on it. I know that it asks your citizenship status, and I thought that 'no' resulted in a denial.

Please, everybody stop trying to regard this guy as normal, a geek, a nerd, whatever ... none of those things bear any relation to the kind of serious mental illness that's a play here. You will not succeed in making any kind of sense out of what he says and does.

They wouldn't play for me off MSNBC. I watched these two videos at LiveLeak: 1 2

Its just gibberish, random. Talk of Jesus and the wealthy, martyrs and torture (being set of fire?) I assume he never had to endure. The one thing that interests me the most is that as he reads out these aggressive and violent words to express his anger, his voice doesn't once change pitch. Completely flat tone, emotionless.

He was very mentally ill.

Well said, and more importantly the TV needs to stop giving his picture, video, and manifesto so much air time. The time should be given to those who died.

At work we call that "fucking nuts."

I was taught to identify schizophrenia by using The Four As. (it's a distillation of the work of Eugen Bleuler, a 19th century shrink).

Affect - flattened or inappropriate. (Cho is as flat as a pancake)
Associations - loose or strange ones, making odd, often nonsensical linkages between things
Autism - inability to relate socially to others in one's environment, living in your own enclosed perception of the world.
Ambivalence - the ability to hold two concepts in complete logical opposition to each other in your head, and not see the conflict

four for four.

They don't teach identifying schizophrenia this way anymore.

I'm not sure what exactly you're saying here, Wolf. If he was schizophrenic, it certainly could have been a result of environmental and/or psychosocial factors.

Yeah my grade school days I can remember at least 3 times where kids were caught with "hit lists".