I, too, sympathize with the students, faculty, and their families. This is a sad time for all Americans.
In regards to finding out what went wrong, I think a lot of people will be pointing a finger at different groups, whether it is parents, the NRA, the school administration, or the suspects themselves. I say, you have 10 fingers, why limit yourself to one finger? Why not point each one at something different?
Seriously, I think there is probably a vast number of factors that played into these kids going over the edge from stable youths to a state of severe mental illness. No one factor was enough to drive them over the edge, but when experienced in combination (i.e., social isolation + negative peer pressure + a lax faculty + poor parents + easy access to firearms ?) it lead to a catastrophic outcome. Individually, many of these factors are experienced daily by people who are relatively well-adjusted human beings. But for the two suspects, the combination of factors surpassed their breaking point. And few people, except perhaps the suspects themselves, saw this coming.
So the solution, as most of you have pointed out, is not a simple one. It requires us to look at the big picture and address the overlying societal condition. Unfortunately, this is expensive, time consuming, and I suspect that most people lack the desire to make the necessary interventions to produce any positive changes. So are we lost? I don't think so. In the meantime, we can work on finding ways to identify children with low breaking points and then strive for early interventions that might improve their condition.
In other words, until we can cure the disease, let's do our best to prevent it.
[This message has been edited by Gregory Gulick (edited April 21, 1999).]
