I can’t get Dylan’s great song,”Forever Young”, out of my old 60′s head. My beautiful wife is a 30-yr elementary school teacher. An absolute “Child Magnet”. This horror has left those big brown Sicilian eyes very wet.

The history of events like these makes this case in an overwhelming fashion. As a society, we must also come to grips with the fact that generations of glorifying violence in media and entertainment while federal policies destroy families and self-loathing progressives teach moral relativism in our schools has not been without consequence. The idea that a new law will be a fix for this is a profoundly irresponsible proposal, made by a fool or a demagogue.

If we truly seek to understand before acting, we would be taking a very careful look at how, for example, the Swiss have managed to make firearms a peaceful part of their culture’s foundation.

Our national crisis with violence is not a consequence of too few regulations, but of an epic cultural failure that is manifesting itself in virtually every part of our society, from the music our children listen to, to the games they play, the designer drugs they blithely risk their lives on, the corrupt and bloated government that preaches the message of indifference to personal accountability, and the masses too fearful to stand and demand better from everyone around them.

Americans need to gather the courage to make systemic changes if we wish to address what it is about our culture that could produce a person capable of killing his own mother and a classroom full of young children on the way to ending his own life.

Gun laws do nothing about the hell on earth that is the reality of these deeply emotionally disturbed individuals who somehow manage to evade the concern and attention of those around them and wind up perpetrating these unspeakably evil acts.

Is it possible that our public schools have become this bad and our parents this detached? Are we so corrupt, so selfish, so self-centered that these damaged souls can walk among us unaided until the pain of living becomes unbearable? Seek your answers here, America. <<

>>THEY shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

Some of you may have read an earlier comment of mine mentioning that Newtown, Connecticut, is my home town. I left to go to college, and it’s been quite a long time since I lived there, but we all have a home town, don’t we? I am in a bit of a state of shock, and have been trying to collect my thoughts all day, and feel the need to say something. Let’s see if this makes any sense.

Once again, as the loudest voices always seem to do, there will be calls for new and more laws for gun control on the heels of this horrific tragedy. Once more, we will furiously fail to learn anything that is actually useful from this event. Instead, we will choose to think with our feelings and attack the symptoms while ignoring, and in fact aggravating the causes.

By one estimate, there are 310 million firearms in the United States. Guns have been a part of our culture since its very beginning, and they are everywhere. Gun control advocates are forced to ignore this simple fact while constructing their arguments. Forget for a moment that the 20-year-old shooter was breaking laws already on the books in Connecticut by possessing those weapons on his person.

There is literally no way that legislation can be conceived which could come anywhere near having the desired result of removing access to firearms from those willing to break the law to own them. This also ignores the fact that the manufacture of a firearm has become a relatively trivial exercise, and this trend will only continue as a consequence of the advance of materials technology.

I read recently that someone had actually ‘printed’ a working firearm with a $15,000 3D printer. People wise enough to lead on this issue must concede the reality – firearms are here to stay; will only be driven underground by tighter legislation, and the solutions we consider must accept the truth of that.

This is a very serious matter for our society. Violence tears at the fabric of civilization. But we must be in possession of the facts if we are to succeed at this. We must acknowledge that gun-free zones have only ever exposed their occupants to risk. . . .

Her guilt is not warranted, although it’s inevitable in a caring person. Hindsight is 20/20, and you have the benefit of it. She did not.

Teenagers are very very often moody, and although it’s true that Klebold was shy and quiet, this is really not considered an extreme danger sign. He seemed to have friends, for example (not just Eric Harris, either). I actually believe that his relationship with Eric Harris pushed him over the edge into violence, though. It is very very common for these violent young male duos to have one psychopathic member (in this case, Harris) and one depressed/troubled member who is not a psychopath (in this case, probably Klebold), and the two have a synergistic effect on each other in terms of the genesis of the crime. You see that pattern quite clearly in the In Cold Blood pair, for example, which I’ve written about before.

It is one thing to look back and say your kid had some troubles and you could or should have done more, it’s another to condemn the parent for not taking more action when the child’s troubles only look particularly bad in retrospect. Nearly anyone who’s been the parent of teenagers (except near-perfect ones) knows how hard it is to tell serious problems from ordinary problems.

You are making a whole bunch of unwarranted assumptions about Klebold’s mother. That morning of the killings, when she didn’t see him, it was because (as she states) she was getting ready for work and he left very early and suddenly. If you’re getting dressed for your day, and your teenager is getting dressed for his day, and he leaves very early (she says he could have slept 20 minutes longer, so he left at least 20 minutes early), are you supposed to know he’s going to leave early and head him off at the pass? The first Mrs. Klebold knew of it was when he’d slammed the front door, and she leaned her head out of the window to try to speak to him, but he said “bye,” got into the car, and drove away. Was she supposed to follow him in her car because he left for school 20 minutes early? And why do you assume it was the normal course of events in their house in the morning that they not speak or see each other, when she seems to be indicating this was not the normal course of events? She also describes a number of instances where she tries to talk to him (about college, etc.), and my impression is that she certainly was involved with and concerned about her child, and made efforts to communicate with him. He was a taciturn kid, and wasn’t doing as well in school as he had when young, but that’s certainly not unusual and he was doing well enough that he had gotten into four colleges. And he gave the impression of planning to go to college.

There is no question that some parents of violent kids have failed to take an interest in their children, failed to notice clear warning signs and do something about them, but it’s not at all clear to me that this was the case with the Klebolds. Not at all.

Dylan however was a different story. He was clearly severly depressed. Yet his own mother described a typical day in their house–she hears his tone of voice is different, but he’s up and gone without her even seeing his face. How many days was that typical; it’s the absolute epitome of modern American family life. We come and go with barely a word between us beyond “How was your day?” “Fine.” That’s the extent of many converstations with kids. Do most families eat breakfast togther? Do ANY? How about dinner?

Do most parents pick their kids up right after school, when everything thought and experience spills out of them afresh? Or do they see them later in the evening, when nothing is going to be shared? If they even take the time to intrude on the solitude such kids enforce in their own rooms.

I have lost count of the students to whom I’ve spoken who barely see and hardly ever speak to their parents, because both mom and dad are working, and the kids feel like there’s no point in even trying to share what’s on their mind. And these are “good” kids, from “good homes.” One of them committed suicide last year; her parents had “no idea” she was so unhappy. Hey, they gave her everything–a car, a private school education, a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood. How could she be so unhappy?

How could they know?

Going back to Klebold, when he lost interest in learning, when he went from an eager, happy learner to a disinterested student, something significant was going on, and it was not sufficiently addressed by his parents. We will never know exactly what happened to that happy child to alienate him so, but something did, and that it went virtually unaddressed by his parents is the greatest tragedy, because it led to his final act of terror.

I am profoundly sorry for his mother because I can’t imagine living with that level of guilt. But it is not unwarranted guilt, and she knows it.

The debased culture is exactly right. This is related to nature and nurture arguments. We know that both are relevant, but we lack knowledge of their proportional contributions. So, we manage risk by promoting desirable or functional behaviors. We teach our children to respect individual dignity, irrespective of incidental features. We teach our children that life has an intrinsic value and should not be capriciously taken. While this does not guarantee an outcome, it does increase its likelihood, and that is the best we can hope for in this world.

The issue is specifically self-esteem without earned merit. The conflict occurs when merit is subsequently required or demanded, but the individual has only their ego to qualify them. This is relevant because in our world, resources, both natural and human, are finitely accessible or strictly limited, respectively. There is a risk associated with exploitation of these resources, and we mitigate it through selection of individuals on their merit.

I did hear a suggestion from a retired police officer that sounds sensible to me. There are many retired cops out there who could be hired – 2 to 4 depending on school size – to wear a custodian uniform and be on the ready near the entrance to the school. It would be a boring job, but the presence of a custodian, armed and able to respond, would present a higher level of protection than is now available in most schools. Worth looking at, IMO.

Mental health problems loom large again. We quit institutionalizing people back in the 60s. Are these mass shootings part of the blowback from that? I don’t know, but it seems that society and government might look at that before pulling out the gun control elixir.

Unfortunately, I know what the parents and families of these slain children face. I wish I could hold them, comfort them, and tell them that life can go on. It’s a path that leads you through the depths of despair, but for most, the sun will eventually shine through. May God’s Grace be on each and everyone of them. They will need it.

A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris’ perpetual deceitfulness. “I lie a lot,” Eric wrote to his journal. “Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water. Let’s see, what are some of the big lies I told? Yeah I stopped smoking. For doing it, not for getting caught. No I haven’t been making more bombs. No I wouldn’t do that. And countless other ones.”

Harris claimed to lie to protect himself, but that appears to be something of a lie as well. He lied for pleasure, Fuselier says. “Duping delight”—psychologist Paul Ekman’s term—represents a key characteristic of the psychopathic profile.

Harris married his deceitfulness with a total lack of remorse or empathy—another distinctive quality of the psychopath. Fuselier was finally convinced of his diagnosis when he read Harris’ response to being punished after being caught breaking into a van. Klebold and Harris had avoided prosecution for the robbery by participating in a “diversion program” that involved counseling and community service. Both killers feigned regret to obtain an early release, but Harris had relished the opportunity to perform. He wrote an ingratiating letter to his victim offering empathy, rather than just apologies. Fuselier remembers that it was packed with statements like Jeez, I understand now how you feel and I understand what this did to you.

“But he wrote that strictly for effect,” Fuselier said. “That was complete manipulation. At almost the exact same time, he wrote down his real feelings in his journal: ‘Isn’t America supposed to be the land of the free? How come, if I’m free, I can’t deprive a stupid f—ing dumbshit from his possessions if he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his f—ing van out in plain sight and in the middle of f—ing nowhere on a Frif—ingday night. NATURAL SELECTION. F—er should be shot.’ “

And the majority of those signs that Susan Klebold enumerates as clear after the fact were clear after the fact because they were only revealed to her after the fact. It’s not that she looks back at things she already knew and sees them in a different light after the shootings, it’s that she only learned most of these facts after the shootings, because they were previously kept from her, either by her son or by authorities who were aware of some of them.