Is this an epidemic?

[Tiff]

I'm in agreement with Jeff for the most part, here.

First off, the security issue. It's an adult education facility, not a high school. People PAY to attend college, and should have the freedom of an open campus with the right for people to come and go as they please. You can't expect every college to have armed guards at locked, timed gates, and for college students to have to pass through metal detectors on their way to classes, and for dorms to be on lock-down by 9:00 pm. College students are going to have friends come and go, they're going to be out late and returning to their dorms at all hours (becuase they PAY to live there, and have keys to their rooms), and they're going to be hanging around campus. To expect so much strong security is unrealistic.

Secondly, the issue of people being bullied. Now, I agree that kids can be cruel, and that with enough bullying, it can cause a victim to break down in emotional ways. However...if one is bullied and becomes unstable enough to bring a rifle to school and start randomly blowing people away, I believe that SOMETHING was unstable to begin with, and that it was perhaps TRIGGERED by the bullying, and not necessarily caused by it.

I was bullied mercilessly from 6th grade to about 11th. I was threatened, teased, sexually harrassed by boys, etc...and you didn't see me blowing everybody's heads off. I dealt with it in a stable fashion. Sure, there were times I went home and sobbed my eyes out...but I had enough stability to know that bringing a weapon to school and shooting peopl eWHO HAD NOTHING TO DO WTIH MY PAIN wasn't going to solve anything. The idea never even CROSSED my mind.

[Princess Latona]

(DISCLAIMER: I'm no expert on this, no matter how I might sound. Anything I say is not meant to offend anyone.)

I agree with you, Tiff. Bullying may have a hand in some of these school shootings (especially in younger kids), but it is hardly a concrete cause of these shootings. It's one piece in the puzzle of why they occur. I went through very similar garbage when I went through school as Tiff did, yet I never once thought about harming anyone who hurt me.

I think a big part of it may be mental illness (especially illnesses like Bipolar or Schizophrenia, not to say everyone who has those illnesses will commit these crimes), yet I also wonder if it's a lack of coping skills for our society in general. We live in a pretty stressful time, and a lot of pressure is put on people to be successful "on schedule" -as in, be through with school, be married, and have the house, kids, and dog by age 25 or so. (Ha!) If you don't meet those "milestones", you can be seen as a failure. Couple that with stories I've read in the past about increasing numbers of college students seeking mental help for depression and anxiety, and I'm beginning to wonder if there aren't a few screws out of whack in our society today. It's no wonder people are breaking down and burning out with all the pressure that's out there; hell, I'm going through cognitive (behavioral) therapy myself because I'm on that threshhold of depression/anxiety/OCD-ness.

In most people, that can cause a ton of stress, but otherwise cause no harm. In someone who has latent (or mild) mental illness, that could possibly be a trigger. It comes to mind that, at my consultation at my first Psychiatric visit, I was asked if I had a family history of mental illness. I would imagine, if someone does, it likely ups the chances they may have some degree of mental illness that excess stress or anxiety can exacerbate.

Again, it isn't a cause of these shootings, but it certainly can't be helping.

Another thought, though if someone can explain this better than I can, I'd be grateful. When I think of these shootings, one thing that keeps popping into my mind is "narcissism" for some reason. I think for me, it's due to the fact that, even though suicide is one of the top causes of death for Americans, you don't see too many of these school shootings in the media. (Though the ones you see are more than enough.) One would think, if these shootings are tied to depression/suicidal tendencies, there would be far more of them than there are. So I wonder if they're either a last-ditch cry for help ("I tried to ask you all for help, but you wouldn't listen! Now look what I've done!") or the whole "If I'm killing myself, I'm taking as many people with me as I can". Sorry, my explanation is so crude, but it's the best way I can currently describe it. Maybe someone can better understand/interpret for me?

(Again, nothing in the post above is meant to offend. Apologies if anything did, it wasn't my intention.)

[Senshi_of_Vision]

I think you may have hit the nail on the head Princess Latona, try as I might to justify it just being mental illness theres got to be a level of ego to mass killers. Its one thing to be so fed up with life that you want to take your life, but it takes a certain kind of persona ie a individual who thinks that taking other lives will make their name in death where it couldnt in life. I mean look at it you can actually hit sites like Wikipedia (which I love that site so its not a knock) and find pages on mass killers. Tv channels like true tv (ex court tv) the biography and other channels of the like run specials on mass/serial killers. With all the glorification they get even if its infamous its enough to make someone who is already unstable think hey im going to go out anyway if I take a few people with me everyone will remember my name.

I seriously think that the victims should be the ones remembered not the one who made them victims. The news needs to stop dragging these stories out for weeks, historians need to not make the antics of murderers topics of shows. I know it wont stop it completely but I think sometimes if we stop all the best selling books,tv shows and interviews with psychopaths will it stop fueling others who think "let me make a name for myself?" I dunno but I think it would be a good start to stop glorifying these killers by keeping their names in the media.