Yes, as cbraver mentioned, this was not a kid. He had already graduated, and worked since. He was continuing to take some follow-up courses. 27 years of age, he was most certainly an adult.
I'm pretty sure he was a gradua
te student, not a gradua
ted student. 27 year old graduate students are pretty common, especially PhD candidates. Doctoral students are generally there 5-9 years after their undergraduate, depending on the program and their success. I have some late-20 aged students in my undergrad courses though. When people think of college, they seem to think of only the 19 year olds binge drinking and snorting coke off a just-got-out-of-the-house girls ***. That's really just a fraction of the college community. But, to the same end, I agree with ya.
I say that to say this: This isn't a troubled kid problem, it's a troubled American problem.
As far as reasons? meh, there is no way to give an exact prognosis. The fact is the only one with the real answers to that question took himself out after he finished his work. Investigations might reveal attributing factors, but nothing to give a difinite answer.
The extra mind**** here is that he was studying self-injury in the prison systems.
Arming students is a poor solution, the fact remains that these mass university murders are a relatively infrequent occurence. Far more cases of assault, etc are the case, and arming students will only aggrivate or worsen the outcome of incidents that are minor in comparisson to this sort of thing.
Arming teachers is nearly as bad, I've had the benefit of extensive weapons handling and I can say for certain that the average Joe is as likely to miss his target and potentially injure or kill non-combatants. In fact, I've done work with local and federal law enforcement in Canada and I can say for a fact that even a large portion of these trained individuals lack the proficiency for 100% round accountability.
I know that will probably never be a popular opinion, but, that's how I feel. 100% round accountability is negligible when you have a guy on a stage firing into a crowd of students. The Supreme court has ruled it's not the responsibility of the government to protect you, and therefore it is yours. As far as people thinking that small fights will suddenly become big deadly ones if students with concealed carry permits can carry on campus, 48 shall issue states have seen otherwise with the general public. And, honestly, most college students are a lot more mature than the general public. The big scare when Florida passed concealed carry laws was just that, but people will concealed carry permits turned out to be a cops best friend.
That said, I'm not expecting my view to be a popular one, and it certainly would need to be well thought out. I'm not saying it's the solution, but I think it should be considered. So, don't rag on me too hard.
Some might say more stringent firearms laws and controls is the solution, my view on that is that even with that you will still find committed individuals who will obtain them in order to carry out crimes. This type of situation appears to me atleast to be unpredictable, and unpreventable. I am sorry for the families who lost their loved ones.
No doubt. Gun control doesn't work. A lot realize that now though, and that's (in my opinion) why shall issue has increased to 48 states. I'm sure some gun-grabbers will be going crazy over this one though. This next election we have gun-grabbers lined up for presidency. I'm buying a bunch of AR-15 lowers pretty soon, because if someone like Obama gets in I bet he'll probably attempt to pass some unconstitutional laws.
Unlike most Americans, I'm not willing to give up freedom to psuedo-security and fear.
