School Shootings

There was another school shooting this week, although unless you were keeping your eyes open when reviewing the media, you might have missed it. See, this one occurred in Finland, rather than in this country or our favourite former colony, meaning there was much less attention given to it.

I wrote a lot about the last massacre committed by an angry loner, and I think a lot of those comments can be related directly to this more recent tragedy. I don't know whether Finland will respond in the same way that the US did to the VA murders, but the temptation will be there to start the old blame game. "Oh, he watched violent videos so he wanted to kill", "Oh, he had access to weapons so he wanted to kill" and so on, ad fucking nauseam, until every cliche has been trotted out. Well, shite. The only person directly responsible for these murders is the person who grabs a gun and starts shooting. And when, as they so often do, they kill themselves after the rampage or as the police close in, well, you just have to accept that the prepatrator has escaped the punishment society so desperately needs to inflict to console everyone.

But if someone does realky want to try to understand why this sort of tragedy intermittently occurs, and what could be done about it, then it might be worth taking a look at the lives these guys led before they aimed their weapons at their classmates and teachers. Because, generally speaking, them seem to be quite fucking bleak. Take the comments about by the detective looking into the Finnish massacre about the killer (as reported on the BBC):

"Det Haapala described the young man as a "lonely rider" who had been bullied by other students at the secondary school"

Then consider these comments about Cho Seung Hui, the killer at Virginia Tech:

"During Cho's time in middle school and high school, he was teased for his shyness and unusual speech patterns. Some classmates even offered dollar bills to Cho just to hear him talk. According to Chris Davids, a high school classmate in Cho's English class at Westfield High School, Cho looked down and refused to speak when called upon. Davids added that, after one teacher threatened to give Cho a failing grade for not participating in class, he began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth." "The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, 'Go back to China.'" Another classmate, Stephanie Roberts, stated that "there were just some people who were really cruel to him, and they would push him down and laugh at him. He didn't speak English really well, and they would really make fun of him."Cho was also teased as the "trombone kid" for his practice of walking to school alone with his trombone. Other students recall crueler names and that most of the bullying was because he was alone.""

Or take Jeff Weise, who murdered nine people before shooting himself:

"Weise allegedly had a history of trouble at the school, getting into fist-fights. Although no clear motive has been attributed to Weise's actions yet, he was described as a loner, who was bullied – possibly due to his appearance."

Now bullying is not new, and, not matter how many well meaning but faintly patronising campaigns there are, it ain't really going to go away, if we are honest. And not everyone who is bullied becomes a school shooter, just as not all those who watch violent films are going to go on a rampage. But rather than looking for parts of a country's culture to blame after one of these shootings, maybe it would be would be worth examining exactly how a young man can be so ostracised by his schooling and by those around him that he sould see himself as a "social Darwinist" who has the right to wander around the corridors of his school and can "eliminate all who I see unfit".

According to Sky News, that bastion of common sense George W Bush has said we should be on the lookout for odd people. To quote:

"When people see somebody or know somebody who is exhibiting abnormal behaviour, you do something about it, to suggest that somebody take a look."

What sort of abnormal behaviour would that be, George? Perhaps binge drinking so much that your wife threatens to leave you? What about hearing the voice of God in your head? And how about invading a sovereign nation based on spurious and deceitful intelligence, causing a civil war and awful carnage in the process? Is that abnormal behaviour, you fatheaded fuckface?

The Blame Game

Christ the media pisses me off sometimes. Numb-nutted sensationalists. Cho goes on the rampage, kills 32 people but lacks the common decency to stay alive and therefore give the media the juicy and salacious prospect of a long trial. And with no blame figure left alive, and with a need to milk this story for everything it is worth, the media starts flailing around looking for someone, or something, else to blame. Let’s have a look at some of the gems they have come up with over the past few days:

It is the fault of a movie. Yep, that old chestnut. A movie made Cho kill 32 people and himself. Damn, that must be one influential movie. Almost as influential as other movies that have made people kill. Like Child’s Play 3 inspiring the murder of Jamie Bulger. And Star Wars Episode Six: Return of the Jedi inspiring Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, maybe not when you sit down and think. Real life may influence movies, and movies may influence real life. Eastenders could push someone over the edge; Christ alone knows that the very fact it is broadcast makes me angry. But there is no causal link between the movies and real life violence. Cho may have felt a link or an affinity with characters or events in Oldboy. But the movie did not make him kill. 3,132,000 watched Oldboy in South Korea. To my knowledge, those 3,132,000 have not gone out and committed mass murder. Judging by the lack of 10,022,400 killings, anyway.

The college authorities and the police are to blame for not locking down the campus. Hindsight is a really wonderful thing, isn’t it? I bet the authorities really wish they had locked down the campus. Now. But the fucking media can’t concede that it is only in retrospect, when the authorities realise that locking down the campus may have stopped Cho’s lethal progress, that is makes sense to have implemented draconian security procedures. At the time of the first two murders, it looked like the college and the police were dealing with a domestic dispute. And whilst double murders are comparatively rare, they are far more common than spree killings. And double murders seldom, if ever, result in mass killings.

The media needs to be blamed for showing Cho’s footage. Bollocks, frankly. Is it distasteful so show the ranting of a diseased mind so soon after his killing spree? Well, quite probably. But since when have we really expected taste and decency from our media? And why the fuck do you think they broadcast tasteless shit? Because there is a market for tasteless shit. And aside from everything else, there is still the awesome power of voting with your remote control. If you don’t want to see Cho ranting, then don’t watch him. And I struggle to find a news outlet that is reporting on the reaction against the broadcast of Cho’s video that doesn’t have the video available on their website. It is beyond hypocrisy, really.

I could go on and on, but I am sick of this subject and appalled by the media’s fucktarded presentation of these terrible murders. Why do they feel the need to lash out and blame everyone and everything else for these killings? The person responsible, and the person we should all be blaming, is Cho. And that cunt is dead. He’s lying in the morgue.

Which, frankly, is the best fucking place for him.

Freedom and the Mentally Ill

You can read the plays of Cho Sheung-Hui here and here, if you are so inclined. They are poorly written, unpleasant and immature. They are also focussed on rage against others, and have significantly violent overtones. You can believe the person who wrote them would be capable of this. But it is important to remember that writing these plays does not mean he is definitely going to commit mass murder. After all, if writing violent nonsense meant you were going to go postal, then James Herbert would have gone on the rampage a long time ago.

The most these plays could have been treated as were warning signs - which, it appears they were. But what precisly can be done when these warning signs are shown? Do you force someone to get help? Do you force them to take medication? Do any of these ideas have any place in a nominally free society?

The recent Mental Health Bill here in the UK has provoked debate around this issue. Some people may be showing signs of being a danger to themselves or others, but until they actually commit a violent act, then surely they are fundamentally innocent until proven guilty? There is a difference between displaying out and out psychosis and the alarming signs that Cho Seung-Hui showed. If you asked almost anyone today whether Cho Seung-Hui should have been detained for displaying the unpleasant behaviour now being reported by his peers and his professors, then the answer would almost certainly be "yes". But if you asked last week, when all there was against Cho Seung-Hui was erratic, insular behaviour and writing violent plays in a country that enshrines freedom of speech in their constitution, then the answer may well have been very different.

There has to be a balance between protecting society from those with violent mental disorders* and allowing freedom for those with such disorders. The brutal truth is that in a free society those who knew Cho Seung-Hui probably did all they could to help him and protect themselves by recommending counselling etc. It is worth revisting the basic truth that the key cause of the Virginia Tech massacre was not a failure to heed warning signs - it was Cho Seung-Hui deciding to go out and start shooting.

*And I cannot stress enough that there is a massive difference between the vast majority of mental illnesses and the behaviour of the likes of Cho Seung-Hui. The debate around the Virginia Tech shootings will always be over-wrought, but to directly link the mentally ill with this sort of atrocity is like claiming that all South Koreans are potential mass murderers - total fucking horse shit.