My Little Life: I Wasn’t Going to Say Anything...

…and neither was I but I think that Mama M hits the nail fair on the head in this post…

Borrowed from “http://lcooks1.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/as-seen-on-tv/”

Muzzle the media. They add no value to tragedies like this other than feeding of it for their own benefit and gain. Like suicide, and regardless of whether or not the perpetrator dies in commission of the act, this is a ‘look at me’ act. We need to take all the value from such ‘look at me’ acts.

Deal with the problems not the symptoms. Banning guns will not stop this type of senseless act – it will just change the tools. Let’s not forget that New Zealand’s most deadly but most overlooked mass killer DIDN’T use a firearm, and neither did many of the all-time high scoring serial killers.

Accept that the information genie is out of the bottle. It is so easy now not just for people to self-publish their own manifestos (no matter how loony-toon) and but also to locate the information that not only enables but that almost encourages them to commit such acts of destruction. I followed a thread over the weekend in a remote-control aircraft forum that pretty much detailed how an R/C or light general aviation aircraft might be used in a terror attack – ironically to prove how ineffetcive it might be (debatable) to protect the ‘rights’ of R/C enthusiasts.

People look after people. over the last couple of decades, governments across the western world have decided that it is cost-beneficial to close down the places where people with social issues could be cared for and watched over. Placing them back into the community was meant to be a good thing and, once upon a time, it may have been – back in the day where care staff would physically visit them, and the ‘bobbie on the beat’ had a fairly good idea who on his or her patch needed special watching – and that’s just not the criminal element.

Put the machine back in its box. One of the reasons that it appears so cost-beneficial to let these people out in the community is because we get to save money through needing less people for monitoring, caring and supervision and we think we can get away with email and other digital monitoring. It doesn’t work, not the same as good old regular face-to-face contact. It is all too easy not for the socially dysfunctional to avoid the human contact that might offer indications that someone is gearing up to elevate their social status from ‘just a bit odd’: banking, shopping, mail can all be done now from behind the ‘safety’ and anonymity of a screen.

I’m not a big supporter of the NRA nor do I have any intention of being drawn into any arguments over the right to keep and bear arms…that’s just a big red herring…guns are the tool of choice in America: in other parts of the world, high explosive, sharp instruments and clubs fill the same gruesome role…we need to focus less on the tool and more on the problem of identifying and intercepting these people before they get anywhere near their selected ground zero…

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