I am so disappointed and disgusted by the reaction to school shootings. After the Virgina Tech shooting, people did the same thing that they did with Columbine and other such incidents.
Instead of understanding that those people took such drastic actions because they were miserable, that they were at the end of their ropes, and helpless and powerless to fix their lives, everybody just blames and insults them.
The Virgina Tech incident was an even more illustrative example because Cho left an explanation in video and writing as to why he did it. He explained how and why he was miserable and why he felt he had no other choice but to go on a rampage. However rather than taking this information and using it to come up with a way to provide other people who find themselves in the same situation—which there will be more and more of as time goes on—a place to go to get help to fix their lives, they instead bad mouth and bash Cho. They call him insane, that he had a deranged mind. They ignore the content of the letter and video, pleas for change and instead take issue with his grammar. They call his letter a rambling, ranting, incoherent manifesto. They ignore WHAT he’s saying and WHY he’s saying it, and nag about HOW he says it. That helps nobody. Even worse, they try to hide it from the world and only release what they feel is appropriate for public consumption—specifically the parts that are good for ratings and helps their attacks on him. That certainly helps nobody.
They try to understand why he and the others did it, but for the wrong reasons. Instead of trying to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by helping such people, they instead try to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by finding warning signs that they can use to catch such people. They want a way to punish these miserable people instead of help them. Those people are the sad and pathetic ones.
Some may excuse their behavior by saying that they are just hurt and angry over what happened and are just lashing out at the bad guy. However this doesn’t stand up because the victims aren’t the ones analyzing the cases and letter, it’s the so-called journalists and paparazzi doing it; those people doing that are not lashing out, they’re just incompetent and aggressive fools.