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John Lundberg: A Poetry Book Remembers the '07 Shooting at Virginia Tech

2009-10-23T14:30:12Z

Fred D'Aguiar's latest book, Continental Shelf, has been nominated for the T.S. Eliot Award, a prize given annually to the best collection of new verse first published in the UK. The chair of this year's judges panel stressed a focus on poets "who have dreamed and who have dared." D'Aguiar certainly dared, choosing--or, rather, needing-- to write about a tragedy that's still fresh in the minds of many Americans. The centerpiece of his new collection, "Elegies" remembers those victims of the April '07 shooting at Virginia Tech, where D'Aguiar continues to teach poetry. A poem recounts the incident itself:

While those sirens keep building a wedding cake of sound.
I know there is more. I slice open the door to my office
To find the decorated girl gone and no one else around.

I zoom back to the Web for any news of what's going on
In my immediate vicinity, since I cannot trust the song

And dance of my senses. Then I hear a loudspeaker
Asking everyone to remain indoors and stay away
From windows and I know for sure it's a shooter...

In a blog post published in The Guardian, D'Aguiar's described his need to write about the event. He "found himself writing sonnet after sonnet about April 16, about grief for the dead, about place as a reliquary of joy and trauma, and about the strange guilt at having survived." He also noted the high student demand for poetry classes as both an outlet for grief and an aid to recovery, explaining that "poetry, when faced with grief, makes marvelous things happen. The event of the poem stages immersion in pain and catharsis from it, the drama of a hurt relived, thought and felt through.

In these two excerpts from the poem "Date," D'Aguiar works through his own pain of remembering the dead:

1.
One year later finds me like back then... 
My body where they hook themselves,
Thirty-three fishhooks, one hook for
Each name, buried in me, one hook
For each life lost. Each person caught
Me on a lifeline, took one look at me
Then threw me back for another one
To catch me, hardly a glance and cut
That line and fling me again into that
Element each must fish me from
As they exit from this world hooks
With their names sunk in my flesh.

2.
I eat the spoors of the dead
When I breathe, when I walk, when I run
They rise from underground and stay airborne.
Some lodge in the corners of my eyes and form crusts.
Others line the corners of my mouth and the lines turn
Down giving me a sour look, a frown or complaint.
Those spoors form chigoes between my toes,
Fingers and work their way to my crotch,
Until more of me is dead than living.
I am done, I am done, I am done.

The third and final section of the poem is less structured and more dominated by rhythm, sound and emotion.

Index finger flicked against middle finger and thumb
Not the sound of a gun

Suck teeth, headshake, cipher circle, dozens run
Not the sound of a gun

Handclap, backslap, stilettos rap on ground
Not the sound of a gun

Knuckle crack, July 4th fireworks by the ton
Not the sound of a gun

Appalachia tut-tut, Khoisa click of the tongue
Not the sound of a gun

Drumsticks, engine backfire, pneumatic drill drum
Not the sound of a gun

The shooting goes unmentioned in another poem, a sonnet entitled "Caribbean Cookbook For VT.,"in which D'Aguiar describes holding his first class after the tragedy. Soul food proved a balm for his students' souls, and a little mothering didn't hurt either:

My mum cooked soul food for my final class:
Fried plantains, cow-tail in a stew of casareep,
Boiled dumplings, sliced pineapple and mango

Juice for our first meeting after the cancelled week.
One student arrived with a bouquet for my mother.
Everyone heaped Pirates of the Caribbean paper plates

For this breakfast, minus one of our number, gone
For good. We ate as if on the heels of a Ramadan
Squeezed into a week of nil by mouth, ears and eyes.

My mum flew to Blacksburg for our joint offer.
She rose before the birds and I helped her skin
Exotica and washed up to keep the kitchen spotless.

At 9AM we breezed into my Caribbean class
And served up honeydew with plates of paradise.

From the opening stanza of "Cookbook," one gets the sense that D'Aguiar is trying to bury sadness under so many tastes, smells and colors. It isn't until the third stanza that we realize how closely the tragedy has affected his class, and the real poignancy of his attempt to help his students through their grief.

D'Aguiar took a risk in writing about the victims so soon after the shooting, but I think their memories are in good and compassionate hands. He wrote that "The poetry becomes more important because it promises to outlast crude media depictions of spilled blood, broken bones and blinkered melodrama (the shooter, his makeup and psyche is of more interest to the media than his many, many victims)."

It's no mistake that this last poem ends so hopefully on "paradise."

Susan Klebold: Columbine Killer's Mom Writes Essay For Oprah's O Magazine; "No Inkling" Son Was Suicidal

2009-10-10T15:28:50Z

DENVER — In the first detailed public remarks by any parent of the two Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold's mother says she had no idea her son was suicidal until she read his journals after the 1999 high school massacre.

Susan Klebold's essay in next month's issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, says she is still struggling to make sense of what happened when her son and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher in the shooting rampage at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. Twenty-one people were injured before Klebold and Harris killed themselves.

Paul Krassner: Should Comedy Be Politically Correct?

2009-06-16T17:24:46Z

Arnold Schwarzennegger announced his candidacy for governor on the Tonight Show. John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show. And now Sarah Palin has in effect announced her candidacy for president in 2012 by denouncing Late Show host David Letterman for a joke about her daughter--the wrong, younger daughter, it turned out--being knocked up by baseball star Alex Rodriguez.

Palin accused Letterman of promulgating statutory rape. He apologized for the joke. Neither Rodriguez, who was once Madonna's insignificant other, nor the flight attendants' union, made any public objection.

Palin also objected to being compared to a "slutty flight attendant," though Letterman didn't apologize for that one. Palin never complained when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert--separately but equally--compared her to the generic librarian in a porn movie who removes her glasses and lets down her hair. When Jay Leno told a joke about John Edwards and Bristol Palin, implying that they had sex, Sarah never mentioned that. And she didn't say a word about Larry Flynt's porn movie, Nailin' Paylin.

But this wasn't the first time a comedian has been accused of telling a joke that could be blamed for the possibility of instigating a criminal act. In his book, Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict, Paul Lewis quoted a Leno joke from January 2005: "Do you know what week this is in our public schools? I'm not making this up. This week is National No-Name-Calling Week. They don't want any name-calling in our public schools. What stupid dork came up with this idea?" Lewis then wrote:

No doubt staying with his fixed role not as a satirist but a comedian, Jay Leno sent this joke flying, along with tried and true observations about Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton. Anything to avoid 'preaching' to his audience, anything for a joke, a laugh. Leno may begin his routine by asking 'Did you see X or Y,' but affecting how viewers see anything is the last thing he intends.

It appears not to matter that, however ridiculous it sounds or can be made to seem, National No-Name-Calling Week might just be a good idea. A step away from a culture that leads the world not just in gun violence but specifically in school shootings. Not taken into account by Tonight Show gag smiths was the fact that there were 23 fatal shootings and six fatal stabbings in American schools during the 2004-5 school year, climaxing in the Minnesota Red Lake High School murder/suicide that left nine people dead and 13 others wounded a mere two months after Leno enjoyed his dork putdown. Does it matter that Jeff Weise, the junior who began this killing spree by murdering his grandparents and ended it by killing himself was, as Red Lake students told MSNBC, 'regularly picked on him for his odd behavior,' that he was 'terrorized a lot by others who called him names'?

'Hey,' I can hear you thinking, 'take it easy. Lighten up. It's just a bleepin' monologue.' It's the 'just' part that gives me pause. The Red Lake teen jokers, the ones who found, perhaps, an outlet for their aggressive instincts or were also, perhaps, just enjoying a joke or two at Jeff Weise's expense: should we lighten up on them too? Unlike Jay Leno, their humor was spontaneous, an expression of what was running through their twisted little adolescent brains.

"Perhaps they were feeling anxious, insecure, depressed, stressed out; perhaps the ridicule they served up was therapeutic, not for their target obviously, who would eventually acquire a more lethal weapon but, in the moment of laughing, for them. That the overlap of healing and hostile impulses...in cases of adolescent name calling, can be fatal appears not to have factored into the creative process followed by the Tonight Show staff. As Leno told the Los Angeles Times, members of his audience have a simple desire: they 'want to hear a joke.'

A January 2005 press release issued by the No Name-Calling Week Coalition stated: "Results from 2004 bullying surveys in schools indicated that students reported a significant decrease in the amount of bullying and harassment in school after taking part in the first No-Name-Calling Week and its activities. More than 5,000 educators and administrators have officially registered to take part in the [2005] week."

OK, then. So a priest, a rabbi and a bully, all fully armed, walk into a bar to hunt down a punch line . . .

Paul Krassner is the author of Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Reserve your copy at paulkrassner.com.

Super! School Chief Disarms Gunman

2009-06-09T16:25:04Z

A former NYPD officer carrying a gun forced his way past security at Orangetown Middle School in Rockland County on Tuesday, but was stopped by school superintendent, Ken Mitchell. The gunman was able to fire three shots before Mitchell kicked the gun away and pinned him to the floor. Thanks to Ken Mitchell, no one was injured.

Louisiana School Shooting: Student Shoots Himself In The Head After Firing At Teacher

2009-05-18T12:41:24Z

LAROSE, La. — A Louisiana middle school student stormed into a classroom and fired a gunshot over a teacher's head Monday before shooting himself in a bathroom, authorities said. Investigators found a suicide note and plans for a rampage in the teen's journal.

The 15-year-old student, whose name was not released, fired once around 9 a.m. inside a classroom at Larose-Cut Off Middle School, then shot himself in the head, said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. He was in critical but stable condition. The teacher had never taught the teen.

Hampton University Shooting: Former Student Shot Two, Turned Gun On Himself

2009-04-26T20:57:32Z

HAMPTON, Va. — A former Hampton University student armed with three guns followed a pizza delivery man into the student's former dorm early Sunday, shot the delivery man and a dorm monitor, then turned the gun on himself, university officials said. All three survived.

No current students were injured and both victims and the alleged shooter were expected to recover. Officials could offer no motive for the shooting.

Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: Growing Up In the Shadow of Columbine

2009-04-17T17:19:27Z

Originally published on Youthradio.org, the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe.

Erin Bilir grew up in Littleton, Colorado and remembers the day of the shootings and how it changed everything for kids in that town.

By: Erin Bilir
At 12:08 on the day of the Columbine shooting, I was sitting in a playground sandbox playing with my Barbie dolls, not at all aware that five minutes away shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were committing suicide.

I was only six-years-old and like most childhood recollections, my memories of that day come in snapshots. I remember my mom picking me up from school early and hugging me so hard I lost my breath. I remember seeing my neighbor racing across her lawn to her car, tears running down her face, shoes clutched tightly in one hand. I remember not understanding. Being afraid but not quite sure of what.

Now I know that I was lucky - that I am lucky. I'm a student at a private school where the term "falling through the cracks" is applied to those who don't consistently make honor roll and join a sports team. What happened that infamous day in April at Columbine was both worlds away and within walking distance. I was never close to any of the victims. But Columbine had a significant effect on us all.

After Columbine, it was the little things that changed. Suddenly I couldn't stay out with my neighborhood friends after four o'clock even in the summer. Parents would huddle in front of the door of our kindergarten class, shaking their heads, squeezing each others' hands. My mom, a gastroenterologist, began to see more and more parents from the surrounding area coming in with ulcers. I never wanted to go to the mall down the road because the teenagers in long dark trench coats and heavy makeup who gathered around the fountains now left me petrified. Columbine was a reason to start looking at the kid in the back of the bus with low slung jeans, large headphones, and black nail polish with suspicion and anxiety. The air was thick with paranoia. Some parents we knew made their only son throw out his entire CD collection because it consisted of too much Eminem, Marilyn Manson, and Slipknot.

It was a communal tremor of fear, a backlash against youthful rebellion of any kind.

But some changes were for the better. Parents started reading books with titles like "Communicating with Your Estranged Teen." Game nights were revived. Columbine flowers were planted. More people were seen embracing each other in the streets. Columbine allowed for strangers from different corners of Colorado to grieve for the frailty of innocence. Columbine created an informal support group numbering in the thousands.

10 years after Columbine, my community is still reverberating with the sounds of those gunshots. And For me, April 20th 1999 will always be the day when I stopped sitting down with my parents to watch the six o'clock news. Here where I live, we are all still Columbine.

Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org Read more: Murder, Gun Violence, Columbine, School Shooting, Eric Harris, Erin Bilir, Youth Radio, Dylan Klebold, Gun Control, Colorado, Youthradio, School Shootings, Guns, Littleton, Politics News

Gunman Shoots Up Greek School, Injuring 3 And Killing Self

2009-04-10T08:34:18Z
ATHENS, Greece — A teenage gunman who wounded three people at a college in Greece and killed himself had warned of the attack hours earlier on an Internet posting that included photographs of him posing with weapons, police said.

The 19-year-old man, armed with two handguns and a knife, opened fire at the vocational training college in western Athens and then shot himself in the head, authorities said. He died in hospital several hours later.
Read more: Greece, Foreign Affairs, Advocacy, Greek School Shooting, Greek College Shooting, Athens School Shooting, Athens College Shooting, Andreas Lykourentzos, School Shooting, School Shootings, School Shooters, World News

French Nursery School Shooting: 5 Hurt

2009-03-20T08:45:43Z
LYON, France — Several teenagers were taken into custody Friday night after 11 adults were injured in a pellet gun shooting near a nursery school in the French city of Lyon, the city's prosecutor said.

Prosecutor Xavier Richaud told reporters it appeared that a 17-year-old had been trying out a new BB gun from his parents' apartment earlier Friday, injuring adults near the Harmony nursery school as they collected children before the lunch break.
Read more: Lyon Shooting, France, France Nursery School, School Shooting, French Nursery School Shooting, Nursery Shooting, Lyon, France Shooting, Foreign Affairs, World News

Anne Dunev: Who Needs the Brothers Grimm When We Have Teen Screen?

2009-03-19T13:54:00Z
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a town called Edendale that had many little children. The children were very happy. They liked to run and play and giggle and tell stories, much like children have always done.

The parents of Edendale were very busy people. They had jobs to go to, and houses to run, and bills to pay, for the King demanded many taxes and the parents wanted a good life for their happy children.

Then one day a stranger came to town. He was dressed in a white coat, but his heart was black. He said that he was a new kind of doctor from the big University. He said that he was an expert in children's development and had come to examine all the children of Edendale.

At first the parents of Edendale were skeptical about the stranger in the white coat. Their children were doing fine, they said. Look how happy and active they are. Their cheeks glow, their hair is shiny, they all read and write. They are normal children.

Oh no, said the stranger. I have observed your children. They gaze out the window during lessons. They lose their pencils and they run and skip far too much for their own good. They love their parents and they prefer to sing and dance rather than sit still. They have sick brains and sick minds. Every child must be tested! Immediately!

The stranger threatened the Head Master that he would lose his job if the children were not tested. A new Head Master from the capital could be found. So the Head Master told the parents that the children would not be allowed to attend school unless they had the tests.

The stranger brought in a group of testers who also wore white coats. One by one the children were interviewed. "Do you ever feel that other children don't like you?" was one question. "Do you feel nervous about getting up and speaking in front of a group?" was another. "Do your parents ever have arguments at home?" "Have you ever felt sad?"

Many of the children answered yes to some of these questions. When their friends moved away or their pets died, they sometimes did feel sad. And sometimes they did get nervous in front of a group. And, even in Edendale, sometimes the parents had arguments. The tester marked with a big red pen and one by one the children who answered yes were taken to a little office. You are mentally ill, the stranger in the white coat said. You must be put in a special hospital. I want to see my mother and father, each child said. All in good time, when you are better, said the stranger in the white coat.

And many of the brightest and most dynamic children were taken away, locked up in a hospital far away from Edendale.

When the children did not come home from school, their parents went to find them. They asked the Head Master where are the children? The Head Master had no answer. The children had been taken by the man in the white coat.

The parents drove to the hospital. "Why have you taken our children?" they asked the stranger in the white coat. "Your children have an illness in their brains," he told them. You must pay for their drugs and treatment and we will tell you when they are well enough to go home.

"We have never heard of brain illness before," said the parents. How do you know our children have it? "We are doctors, so we know," said the stranger in the white coat. He did not tell them that the only diagnosis was the way the children had answered their test questions.

In the days that followed it was very quiet in Edendale. There was no more laughter heard in the schoolyard, or in the neighborhoods. The children did not run and call to each other to come and play games. The children were afraid to make too much noise, or they might be taken away, too.

The stranger in the white coat stood once again outside the school and observed the children wandering listlessly at recess, or sitting, alone, on the benches. And for the first time he smiled, a very tiny smile.

***

A fairytale? Like the ones the Brothers Grimm gathered in Europe in the 1800's that formed the basis for Western children's literature? After all, we have rights and we would be protected from doctors who would diagnose psychiatric disorders from a questionnaire. But this is exactly what has happened to many kids and teenagers. The test is called TeenScreen, and it is part of a "mental health initiative" called The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, established by President George Bush in 2002. Its mission -- to test all American school children. In one school in New York, 50% of the kids were found by this test to be "at risk." The treatment? Psychotropic drugs that carry the all too real risks of suicide, suicidal ideation, homicide and homicidal ideation. Ideation means forming thoughts and ideas about it. And some American kids, after being tested, have been taken straight from school, without their parents' knowledge or consent, to psychiatric facilities for treatment. If you think this could not happen here, please see http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/453/52/
For more information, go to www.ablechild.org and http://www.teenscreentruth.com/.

If you think you are safe because you are past high school, read all about the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The real goal is to test everyone, from cradle to nursing home. Call it a Brave New World.

Read more: Public Schools, School Shooting, Political Psychology, Mental Health, Children, Fairy-Tale, Psychiatric Drugs, Raising Children, Teen Suicide, Fairy Tale, Schools, Europe, Children's Health, New York, Psychopharmacology, Teenagers, Living News

German School Gunman Told Car Hostage He Killed 'For Fun'

2009-03-18T17:40:34Z
The teenager who killed 15 people during a shooting spree in southern Germany last week was looking for a second school to attack "for fun", according to the man he held hostage as he fled the scene.
Read more: School Shooting, Germany School Shooting "For Fun", Germany, Germany School Shooting, Tim Kretschmer for Fun, Tim Kretschmer, Foreign Affairs, World News

Germany School Shooting Prompts Calls For Tighter Gun Control

2009-03-13T13:35:01Z
Two days after a school rampage that left 15 dead, shocked Germans are demanding measures to prevent future "human time bombs." Like their country's politicians, German commentators aren't sure what the right solution is -- or if one exists.
Read more: School Shooting Winnenden, Winnenden Shooting Spree, Winnenden Germany, School Shooting, Winnenden School Shooting, Winnenden Rampage, Germany, German Shooting, Winnenden, Gun Control, Germany Shooting, Winnenden Shooting, Germany Gun Controls, World News

Florida School Shooting Ends With Student's Death

2008-11-12T16:13:43Z
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A 15-year-old student died after a shooting at a Fort Lauderdale high school Wednesday, and police were questioning another student believed to be responsible.

Sophomore Amanda Collette was confirmed dead after being discovered on a hallway floor by a school resource officer at Dillard High School around 11 a.m. Another 15-year-old girl was being held and questioned by police in the death.
Read more: School Shooting, Florida, Home News

Peter A. Ubel: Why Health Care Never Wins Elections

2008-10-14T16:35:45Z
Despite Barack Obama's recent surge in the polls, much could change between now and election day. While it looks like this election will be decided by the economy, unexpected events could dramatically change the campaign narrative. Terrorists could conduct an attack inside the US. Obama, despite his two years of steady poise, could say something really stupid between now and November, that would cause independent voters to flee.

But one thing is certain: this presidential campaign, like all recent campaigns, will not be decided by the candidates' health care proposals.

The US health care system is a bigger threat to the American population than terrorism ever was. As horrific and evil as were the attacks on 9/11, and as much as we needed to mobilize our troops to depose the Taliban from Afghanistan, the more than 3000 people who died on 9/11 are dwarfed in numbers by the tens of thousands of people who die, needlessly, because they have no health insurance.

Ask people what they are worried about, and health care usually sits near the top of their list. Almost 50 million people in the US have no health insurance, people who have to decide whether that gash really requires stitches, or whether that heartburn is a mere stomach problem or sign, instead, of a potentially fatal heart attack. A similarly vast number of people have too little health insurance to cover the basic health needs. Consequently, they hover in economic peril, one serious illness away from bankruptcy.

To make matters worse, persistently rising health care costs threaten our global competitiveness, handcuffing US industries with huge expenses. This health care inflation also adds to state and federal budget problems.

Yet despite this dire situation, health care doesn't win elections, because health care problems never feel as immediate as other threats. When the Dow Jones plummets 800 points, people understandably worry. They can see their life's savings dwindling, and their hopes of early retirement evaporating. When a student conducts a school massacre, everyone is caught up in the terrible drama, with their view of gun control quickly rising up their list of concerns: gun control advocates will feel even more passionately than before the massacre that we need to restrict gun ownership, while gun control opponents will become even more convinced that the whole situation could have been averted if more of the teachers were packing.

There is no aspect of the health care crisis that has the immediacy of a bank foreclosure, a terrorist attack, or even a verbal gaffe from one of the candidates. Our health care crisis fails to win elections in part because it doesn't feel like a crisis to enough people. It also fails because it is hard for candidates to come up with a simple solution to such a complicated mess, and therefore any solution a candidate puts forth is easily caricaturized and criticized.

Both candidates have proposed ways they think will improve our health care system. I feel strongly that Obama's approach, even in its preliminary form, is far superior to McCain's. But that probably won't matter on election day. Ultimately this campaign will be won over other issues.

Read more: John McCain, Health Insurance, Barack Obama, Health, Obama Health Care Policy, School Shooting, Health Care Policy, Campaign Issues, Election Day, 2008 Presidential Race, 9/11, Gun Control, Health Care Proposal, Politics News

Josh Horwitz: The Same Old Story

2008-08-04T14:57:59Z
In the aftermath of the shooting at Northern Illinois University in February of this year, Americans struggled to understand how Steven Kazmierczak could have perpetrated such a terrible tragedy. National media outlets quoted close friends of Kazmierczak who described him as "probably the nicest, most caring person ever." His professors said he was "a nice kid" and "extremely respectful." NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said that law enforcement had "no indications at all this would be the type of person that would engage in such activity ... There were no red flags."

They were wrong.

A recent article in Esquire, published more than five months after the shooting, paints a far different picture. Unlike the sweet, award-winning graduate student that we heard about in February, Esquire writer David Vann tells the story of a troubled, volatile individual who was clearly a threat to himself and those around him.

The warning signs in Kazmierczak's behavior date back to his childhood. In high school, he idolized serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, and was fascinated by Hitler and his crimes against humanity. Along with this obsession with violence, Kazmierczak developed severe mental health problems as a teenager. By the time he graduated from high school, Kazmierczak had attempted suicide three times, taken eight different medications for mental illness, and been institutionalized on five different occasions--including a stay at the Mary Hill Residence, a psychiatric hospital, where he spent nine months in in-patient care.

After leaving Mary Hill, Kazmierczak decided to join the Army. When it was found he had lied on an enlistment form, Kazmierczak was sent to the William Beaumont Army Medical Hospital's psych ward. The Army then determined he was a potential danger to himself and others, and Kazmierczak was given an "uncharacterized" discharge and kicked out of the service.

After 22 troubled years, Kazmierczak arrived at Northern Illinois University, where he tried his best to conceal his past from his new peers, friends and mentors. However, his disturbing behavior continued. At NIU, Kazmierczak engaged in long, detailed conversations about school shootings with a friend on campus. When Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 fellow students at Virginia Tech, Kazmierczak was excited. He studied everything about Cho--his writings, his planning, his timing, and how he obtained his guns.

Not long thereafter, Kazmierczak began stockpiling his own weapons. In December 2006, he applied for a Firearms Owner Identification (FOID) card in Illinois and was approved just one month later. The FOID application contained only one question that pertained to mental health. Kazmierczak was asked if he had been institutionalized in the past five years. He hadn't been--and no further explanation was needed.

Having obtained his card, Kazmierczak purchased five handguns and two shotguns over the next 13 months from federally licensed firearm dealers. Then, on February 14, 2008, he entered NIU's Cole Hall and killed six people (including himself) and wounded 18 others. Not long before the shooting, he told a former girlfriend, "If anything happens, don't tell anyone about me" and "You can write a book about me some day."

The truth is that Kazmierczak exhibited as many red flags as Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. Six months earlier, the Virginia Tech Review Panel had published a report detailing Cho's disturbing and lifelong struggles with mental illness. The report also included a list of recommendations on how to prevent such a tragedy from happening again--including measures to improve screening of gun purchasers.

Regrettably, the U.S. Congress and state legislatures have taken little action in the wake of the panel's report to deny deranged shooters access to firepower.

Today, gun laws in Virginia and Illinois remain fundamentally unchanged. The current FOID card application in Illinois is nearly identical to the one that Kazmierczak sailed through in December 2006. And while Virginia clarified the process by which mental health records are transmitted to their State Police, loopholes remain open that allow prohibited purchasers and others to buy guns without undergoing a background check.

At the federal level, the picture is no more impressive. Last year, Congress passed the "NICS Improvement Act of 2007," which was signed into law by President Bush. The bill was intended to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by creating financial incentives for states to submit more disqualifying records to the federal database, including mental health records. Before it was passed, however, the National Rifle Association was permitted to make a number of detrimental additions. Contrary to its original purpose, the legislation will now require states who accept grant funding to create programs to restore firearm purchasing privileges to those previously restricted because of mental health disability. Moreover the bill has yet to be appropriated and no grant money has been disbursed. The bottom line, however, is that the U.S. Congress has not passed meaningful gun control legislation since 1997.

If the cases of Seung-Hui Cho and Steven Kazmierczak have taught us anything, it's that red flags and warning signs do appear consistently among shooters before they engage in acts of mass destruction. What is needed is a screening process that effectively identifies these warning signs before individuals purchase handguns, assault weapons, and other firearms. A handful of states have effective laws that go beyond a simple computerized background check and thoroughly screen gun purchasers. New Jersey is a good example--the state conducts an actual background investigation on an applicant before licensing them to purchase a handgun. Moreover, the recent decision by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller expressly stated that background checks and licensing and registration laws were constitutional.

The question is, how much more bloodshed will it take until we implement such best practices on a national level to prevent terrible tragedies like the ones at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech?

Read more: Gun Violence, Shooting, School Shooting, Seung-Hui Cho, Cho Seung-Hui, Virginia Tech Shootings, Shooting Northern Illinois University, Steven Kazmierczak, Gun Control, Steve Kazmierczak, Virginia Tech Massacre, School Shootings, Northern Illinois University, Politics News

Jonathan Fast: Adkisson's Assault on a Unitarian Church Stirs Memories, Raises Questions

2008-08-01T14:21:02Z
Last Sunday Jim David Adkisson, a 58 year-old unemployed truck driver from the town of Powell, Tennessee, entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville with a 12 gauge shotgun and began firing at parents and friends who had come to see their children in a church play. The news set off a chain of associations for me, because I am a Unitarian-Universalist, and, like those parents in Knoxville, I had often sat in the sanctuary of our church, the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut, watching my children, clad in makeshift costumes cobbled from old curtains and junk jewelry, struggling to remember their lines and overcome their shyness as they tromped across the stage, acting out some parable they had cooked up with the youth advisors, celebrating themes dear to their heart such as social justice, love, and respect for all people of all kinds and shapes and colors. Today my children have grown and moved away, but I still find solace in a Unitarian Universalist church, this one in East Greenwich Rhode Island. My wife is pastor there.

The shooting also drew my attention because, as a professor at a school of social work, I devote much of my time to the study of violent incidents. Having recently completed a book about school rampage shootings, I found myself, like so many others, trying to understand what had driven Adkisson to perform such a desperate act. While this had elements in common with "workplace shootings," it also resembled many of the school shootings I write about in my book. Others might categorize it as the work of a "Home grown terrorist." Perhaps these categories have more in common than criminologists have supposed.

I argue in my book that because the school shooters were adolescents, they were involved in that psychosocial crisis which the psychoanalyst Erik Eriksson referred to as "identity formation versus identity diffusion." They decided to commit an act of violence against themselves (and others) because they saw no future in the adult world. Adkisson was 58, in the middle of the stage which Eriksson called "Middle Adulthood," whose psychosocial crisis he defined as "generativity versus stagnation." By generativity he meant not simply having children but contributing to the establishment and guidance of the next generation. Such work might involve teaching, leading a youth group, or serving on the board of a not-for-profit. Stagnation might refer to a worker who remains in a job that has lost all meaning, or a wife trapped in a loveless marriage. The next stage in Erikson's schema, the crisis of old age, consists of "integration versus despair." Erikson made the point that all these crises are occurring at every age, but some take precedence during certain periods of a person's life. According to some sources, Adkisson was alcoholic and subject to lingering dark moods. Alcoholism is often associated with getting developmentally "stuck," at the age when the drinking began. Was he an adolescent walking around in grown-up cothes?

News reports suggest that Adkisson was a man for whom life no longer seemed worth living. School shooters reach this state after years of being bullied, abused physically or sexually, and rejected by peers and girlfriends. Social awkwardness, psychiatric problems and learning disabilities further aggravate the situation. Adkisson had failed in relationships (he had recently been divorced by his fourth or fifth wife) and failed vocationally (he had lost his job and could not find another.) His food stamps had been terminated, making survival difficult.

Second, he wanted revenge against those who had deprived him of his work, his social stature, his means of survival. School shooters long to get back at the kids who tormented and excluded them, and teachers who treated them unjustly. The eminent criminologist Park Dietz has spoken of the danger inherent in this situation:

When somebody has so little to lose, so that it all seems meaningless to them, then they're likely to consider revenge as having considerable value. They may think of suicide as an escape from it all. That's a terrible combination, being suicidal and wanting revenge. That's at the heart of most of the workplace and school mass murders of the last 20 years. (Park Dietz, as quoted in The Hook, December 4, 2003)

Third, Adkisson had created a "sham ideology," a theory to support the violence he was prepared to commit. For school shooters, this usually consists of some garbled "philosophy" justifying homicide. It is usually compounded from a misreading of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand, and too many viewings of the Oliver Stone film, Natural Born Killers. Adkisson's manifesto, a four page letter left in his SUV, blamed Liberals much the country's woes. Those of us who have followed the Bush administration's unraveling of the safety net and re-allotment of the Federal budget to corporate welfare and the war in Iraq found ourselves scratching our heads. The news that Adkisson's most recent ex-wife had once been a member of the congregation he had attacked provided a clue to how these antithetical ideas might have become conflated.

Black and white thinking oversimplifies the world in dangerous ways. Clever spin doctors have been driving a wedge into our body politic for decades, convincing us that Liberals think about everything one way, and Conservatives another, and there is no overlap. But this is a lie designed to polarize voters. Even within Unitarian-Universalism, the religion Garrison Keillor evokes every time he wants to make a joke about Lefties gone wild, people hold views that range all across the political and cultural spectrum. There are pro-life atheists, and theists who support assisted suicides. Many of the school shooters were raised in bible-belt communities where behavior was similarly divided into extremes. You could be good or you could be evil. You could join Team Jesus, or play for Satan.

One more factor motivated Adkisson: the hope that he would be killed by law men during his Sunday morning assault. He said in his letter that he hoped he would not leave the church alive. In other words, where we see a tragic, meaningless murder of the innocent, Adkisson, beneath the brittle shell of his narcissism, saw a suicide attempt. Some of the school shooters committed suicide after completing their shootings while others hoped the police would do the job for them.

Suicide by cop.

When men who derive their self-respect from being able to provide for their families are deprived of the privilege, they often question the meaning of their lives. Sometimes they contemplate suicide. A falling Dow-Jones historically correlates with a rising suicide rate, and vice-versa. A recent Huffington post by Barbara Ehrenreich investigates the problem of suicide and the current financial crisis in depth. Between unemployment, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the weakened dollar, a swelling national debt, a vanishing safety net and a costly war, the outlook is grim.

While these problems will take time to address, there is one thing that we can do right now: urge our legislators to pass laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of people who might behave irresponsibly because of age, lifestyle, or psychiatric problems.

Read more: School Shooting, Preventing School Shootings, Jim David Adkisson, Jim D Adkisson, Unitarian Church Shooting, Ceremonial Violence, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church, School Shootings, Religion, Media News

Paul Helmke: NRA, Guns On Campus: 0-for-15 in 2008

2008-06-18T18:49:58Z
When a baseball player goes 0-for-15 at the plate, fans call it a slump.

So, what do we call it when the NRA goes 0-for-15 in Statehouses across the country? As the New York Times showed in April, the gun lobby has found itself on defense this year, and its batting average in 2008 is unimpressive.

The best recent example of how things are changing on the gun issue are the gun lobby's efforts to force guns into college campuses across the country. In 2008, these efforts failed across the board.

The gun lobby made "guns-on-campus" bills a big priority across America this year, and what do they have to show for it? A goose egg.

The roll of states that rejected these gun pushing efforts is quite interesting. Many are typically identified as part of the gun lobby's base.

But "guns-on-campus" bills failed this year in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Only two bills remain in the hopper -- in Michigan and Ohio -- but neither has moved in the last two years.

Forcing school administrators to allow guns on campus against their will is a bad idea that needed to be defeated. The NRA sent alert after alert to their members this year urging them to back "guns-on-campus," but they still got zero bills passed.

Even legislators that previously received the organization's backing rejected these proposals. Two key examples:

"Guns-on-campus" legislation failed in the South Dakota Senate by a vote of 17-14 last February. Six "A-rated" NRA state senators voted against the bill.

Similar legislation in the Indiana State Senate fell short of passage by one vote. Ten NRA-endorsed senators voted against the bill.

In many of these states, the bills didn't even come to a vote.

Louisiana is the most recent example. College and university administrators, police officials, student body presidents -- even the LSU football coach -- came out against the idea. The bill's sponsor couldn't even get it to the floor for a vote.

The Police Chief at the University of Cincinnati, Chief Gene Ferrara, recently told CNN, "I don't think the answer to bullets flying is to send more bullets flying. My belief is we ought to be focusing on what we do to prevent the shooting from starting."

I couldn't agree more. Arming college students is the wrong lesson to learn from Virginia Tech. What that tragedy should teach us is that we need to strengthen background checks so dangerous people like the mentally ill Virginia Tech shooter can't easily obtain guns in the first place.

Forcing colleges to allow armed students on campus is a terrible idea.

Fifteen of America's State Legislatures agree.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)
Read more: School Shooting, Law Enforcement, National Rifle Association, Police, Guns in School, Lsu, Virginia Tech, Nra, Guns, Politics News

College Newspaper First On The Scene In Northern Illinois University Shooting

2008-02-18T21:25:31Z
When news breaks on college campuses -- as it did when a gunman killed five students at Northern Illinois University last week -- reporters from the college paper are often the first journalists on the scene. For reporters at The Northern Star, the student newspaper, the incident became far more personal when they learned that one of their own staff members was among those killed.

Daniel Parmenter, a sophomore, worked as a sales representative for the Northern Star, selling advertising on commission. He had joined the newspaper last semester.
Read more: Northern Star, School Shooting, Illinois University Newspaper, Illinois University Massacre, Illinois University Shooting, Northern Illinois University, Media News

Same Gun Dealer Sold to 2 Campus Killers

2008-02-17T08:47:30Z
MADISON, Wis. — The online gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter said it was an unnerving coincidence that he also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five students at Northern Illinois University.

Eric Thompson said his Web site, , sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Steven Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide. http://www.topglock.com
Read more: Gun Violence, Guns, Illinois Shooting, Mental Illness, School Rampage, School Shooting, School Shootings, Shooting Northern Illinois University, Eric Thompson, Seung-Hui Cho, Virginia Tech Shootings, The Gun Source, The Gun Source Website, Gun Website, Politics News

Illinois Shooting Tragedy Pushes Election Off The Top, Mostly

2008-02-15T10:09:14Z
Yesterday's shooting tragedy at Northern Illinois University was shocking late-breaking news event that pushed politics clear off the page and screen, at least for a while. I say "shocking" but of course it is, alas, less so than it would have been a year ago, after Virginia Tech but more recently after a spate of similar events like the Omaha mall shooting, Colorado church shooting, the Missouri City Hall shooting, as well as the three other school shootings — in the last week — in Louisiana, Tennessee, and California. So perhaps "shocking" is no longer the word.

The story took the top spot on all the nightly newscasts and was widely covered on cable, but not nearly the way Virginia Tech was almost a year ago. MSNBC broke in with the news at the end of the 4 p.m. hour with a detailed ongoing report, then went to the regularly-scheduled programming of Hardball and Tucker; on CNN, The Situation Room teased four top stories — three election-related — and led with the Romney-McCain endorsement before switching to coverage of the shooting. Though it made virtually all the front pages today (the Oregonian's top headline is particularly heart-stopping: "'Run, He's Reloading The Gun'"), it is surprisingly not one of the five-part switching top stories at Time.com (only a headline, no photo), though it is the second of six switching top stories at Newsweek.com. It has been the big story today on cable (in addition to the Bobby Cutts conviction), and was big on the morning shows, but though the story will likely appear at the top of the three evening newscasts this evening, none of the anchors will be traveling to DeKalb, Illinois for the story (as they all did for Virginia Tech and the Minneapolis bridge collapse, for example). As for the political media, the story has not yet cracked Politico.com with a political angle (which we've seen before), nor does it appear on The Page or First Read, and though it's been an above-the-fold top story here at the Huffington Post since yesterday afternoon, it's been one of the smaller headlines under the top box. Between the rush of the campaign and the shocking regularity of these shootings, it just doesn't seem as big of a story, particularly in light of the campaign.

Or is it? Between the rash of shootings and the shock of this story, could this become a campaign issue? Maybe — but probably not. Senator Barack Obama has already given a statement, but seems to show no intention of returning to his home state, where this tragedy happened — and no one seems to be asking about it. The sad fact is that we're in election season, and gun control is a well-known loser for the Democrats. It's been a non-issue thus far in the campaign; indeed, the only time I can recall seeing it really dealt with in a debate was in the CNN/YouTube debate with the guy who called his gun his "baby." That question was answered by Bill Richardson (background checks and no guns for mentally ill people!) and Joe Biden, who was just getting into it when moderator Anderson Cooper called "time." That was in July 2007; now it's February 2008. Only two Democratic candidates remain, and gun control is still not an issue. Will five school shootings in a single week change that? Will the fact that a kid on medication could purchase three handguns and a shotgun, walk into a packed lecture hall and use them change that? That will depend — on whether the candidates make it an issue, and on whether the media asks them about it.

Read more: Msnbc, New York Times, Fox, Cnn, Washington Post, Illinois Shooting, Shooting Northern Illinois University, School Shooting, 2008 Election and Gun Control, Gun Control, School Shootings, Guns, Media Coverage of School Shooting, Virginia Tech, Media News

Ill. Gunman's Rampage Baffles Friends

2008-02-15T09:00:44Z
DEKALB, Ill. — If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Kazmierczak didn't fit it: outstanding student, engaging, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field.

And yet on Thursday, the 27-year-old Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case, stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a geology class. He killed five students before committing suicide.
Read more: School Shooting, Gunman Northern Illinois University, Shooting Northern Illinois University, Northern Illinois University, Niu, Politics News