View Single Post
Old 12-19-2012, 01:26 AM   #58
Saya
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 9,548
I'm also struggling to see what was fucked up about his home life from what we know about him as a fact. He seems to have lived a better life than a lot of kids, a lot of mentally ill kids if the was in fact ill. According to the Guardian, he did get preventative care at his high school, he was assigned a psychologist not because they were afraid that he would be violent, but that his meekness would make him a victim: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...a-what-we-know that's a pretty damn good school that would do that.

I think this is already turning into a bad mothering accusation as well. There's a really triggering article I don't want to link, but its getting pretty popular in that this mother outs her son as having problems and can become violent and now she's afraid if she doesn't get better help and a diagnosis he'll be a mass murderer one day, and the article goes on to talk about what mothers (and shame on parents who divorce and make life even more stressful for them, but its mostly about the mothers) should look out for. And she basically is saying that the reason any mass murder has happened is because of lack of health care! All we know about his mom though was that she liked guns. And she made a comment once that hey, at least she's prepared in case something happens. She could have been driving him to a doctor every god damn day for all we know.

We seem to know now that in Columbine, a lot was going on there. It was really complicated and messed up. There was a lot of simple answers at first, it was Marilyn Manson, it was video games, it was the parents. Years later where we know a lot more and a lot has been said about it, we know it was a pretty complicated scenario. I really think Michael Moore had a lot to do with it, Bowling For Columbine was a good and successful film that showed multiple aspects and just as importantly, didn't let our memory of Columbine die after we just heard simple answers and walked away. It seems with other mass shootings, we forget quickly, and we don't have the follow up that we had with Columbine. Even on the heels of the Aurora shootings, where we KNOW access to mental health care wasn't an issue, we're throwing the same things out. Even after the Sikh temple shooting, the white supremacist aspect made us uncomfortable, so we forget. I can only hope that someday we'll have a clear analysis on what went wrong and how we need to change and we won't be too insecure to listen.
Saya is offline   Reply With Quote