A bloody mess, quite literally, in Nebraska yesterday. The Jawa Report [1] did a great job with tracking the story.
And no, don’t start with me about gun control.
One armed citizen …as opposed to a store full of sheep….would have ended the situation with a lot less loss of life. And yes, that would have been preferable.
Billy observes…. [2]
The question: what the hell on earth happened to this person’s values, and how?
The answer is alarmingly simple.
He was on anti-depressants. Long time readers will remember that I’ve seen a few of these cases. One in particular, I wrote about, back in ’02 [3] was far less outwardly violent… and that’s the way it usually goes down. Still, the common thread among a great deal of suicide cases… which this appears to be [4], seems to be the anti-depressants. I must say I’m concerned. What are we shoving into people in the interests of keeping them ‘sane’? I caution those making judgments about the shooter and his relative worth, to consider the number of these cases where prescribed anti-depressants play a role.
Addendum: (David L)
I agree with Bit, as far as he goes. Sadly it seems in every shootings, the perp was given psychotropic drugs. Surely it is time to stop drugging our children.
Howver the problem isn’t so much the drugs which we give to children which amplifies their rage, the problem is our basic sociai values. Rather than emphasis being good, i.e, that old fashioned idea of the Golden Rule, we emphasis feeling good. We have elevated the meme of fifteen minutes of fame into some blasted right. We have youths who believe it is better to be famous than it is to be good. They would rather be famaus but dead, than to be alive.
Suffice to say that in a nation of some three hundred million people there simply is not enough time to allot everybody their promised fifteen minutes of time. On the other hand, we do have our entire lifetimes to be devote to being good.