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.