At 3/20/09 08:14 PM, Nev wrote: Doesn't justify it.
Well, nothing can justify murder.
Lots of people are abused/etc. Seek help for these problems.
Should they seek help? Absolutely. Can they? Well, it's easier said than done. People who are abused lose their self-confidence, because they often feel that the abuse is their fault, not the fault of the abusing dickhead. Because of this lack of self-confidence and guilt, they can't bring up their abuse to people who can help, because their shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mindset makes them think that their abuser is the victim. Complicating matters is when the abuser tells their victim that if they say a word about the abuse, more of the same or worse will come upon them. So then they can't talk about not only because of their often irreparably damaged self-esteem, but also for their own personal protection.
These people are just egomaniacs.
With mentally disturbed people such as this, every case is different. Some are sociopathic megalomaniacs who think that all other people are beneath them, and thus deserve death. These people are sick, because they've lost humanity's most important power - compassion and interpersonal connection. But there are others who can't seek help for the reasons I have described and crack under the pressure of their life's troubles. Perhaps people think they're weird for a completely harmless reason, like they obsess over anime and carry a lunchbox with them and have a speech impediment, and get made fun of for it. Because of this abuse on top of their previous abuse, they begin to feel worse about themselves, and project their past abusers into the personalities of their new abusers. This is when they start bringing guns to school and blowing up classrooms.
The point I'm getting at here is that you're thinking dualistically. You can't take something as diverse as people with mental problems, much less humanity in general, and sort them into one of two boxes. It just doesn't work like that. Every person is different, every "psycho" with a gun in a school hallway has a different reason for pulling the trigger, and every person has had different past events affect their psyche and subconscious. You can't label all of them scum of the earth, whose deserve nothing short of death, because the real scumbags are the people who bully others and beat these people up.
But is it okay to bring a gun to school? I'd say no, because I'm a pacifist. But Nev, you have to realize that these people don't just wake up one morning and decide to kill people because they hate the world. They're people too, as cliché as it is to say so, and they've got reasons that can be understood.
