I can buy a gun here with less paperwork than if I were to buy something that is really controlled, like one package of Alleve, a cold medicine.

Reminds me of the bank that gives you a free gun when you open an account in Bowling for Columbine.

Alaska is the new Texas.

Serious.

A past history of pleasure playing Doom-like first person shoot-em games. The view from the protagonist’s eyes prevalent in these games offer an almost realistic training experience, including the viewing of blood and body carnage. Enter a new room and pull the trigger almost as fast as you can point. It seems that ALL high school shootings are post-Doom, however the record Hokie Cho broke belonged to the Texas clock-tower shooter, who was pre-Doom.

I can understand how someone from your generation might consider FPS games to be a major contributing factor to such incidents. However, as one of the 99.9999% (that’s the actual precision) of the hundreds of thousands that have played many hours of FPS games and have not committed mass homicide, I have to doubt your conclusion. I strongly suspect that the violent stress relieved by these games have probably prevented more incidents than they have caused. Plus, they aren’t going to go away, so it’s futile to talk about how much blame they deserve.

Rather remarkably, my high school actually approved a project proposal of mine to make a level of Doom that modeled my school and contained professors and school administrators that you had to shoot and kill. There’s no way such a project would be approved today. And yet, it resulted in harmless fun and stress relief when I did it.

If the University gave good funds to a social club aimed at seriously recruiting and pleasuring outcasts, could that have made a difference?

This is probably a good idea, but it reminds me of something Richard Dawkins said about how getting atheists organized into groups is like herding cats. It could be, though, that these loners are really desperate to feel a sense of belonging and membership to a club. A true loner, though, would probably think that membership in a club would make him as socially superficial as all the people he hates.

As for concealed weapon laws, I’m afraid Cho supported Steve’s position. I doubt if Cho would have done anything different were he in Alaska, but he might have been cut down in the first classroom by a crossfire.

I agree. More weapons in the hands of the public could prevent mass shootings like this. But, in my opinion, the cost of such a plan severely outweighs the benefits. That was my point.

A past history of pleasure playing Doom-like first person shoot-em games. The view from the protagonist’s eyes prevalent in these games offer an almost realistic training experience, including the viewing of blood and body carnage. Enter a new room and pull the trigger almost as fast as you can point. It seems that ALL high school shootings are post-Doom, however the record Hokie Cho broke belonged to the Texas clock-tower shooter, who was pre-Doom.

A society which does not know how to deal with mental health problems. Hokie Cho was referred for mental health services by an English teacher due to his creative writing. In 2005, he was approached by officers because of complaints from two women who said they were annoyed by his calls and instant messages. In 2005 his roommate reported that he had discussed suicide, and he was taken to a Psych hospital. He was evaluated, but refused to admit himself.

Availabiilty of easy-to-use weapons. Who knows how hard it would be to procur a handgun if handguns could not legally be sold in this country? One would think ‘not too hard’ since our starting point would be in the millions, but I suspect that the change could be made in a year or so, and that after the change it would not actually be that easy to buy a gun except in the south side of Chicago and maybe East St. Louis. From my knowledge of England’s gun ban, all of which was acquired by reading Dick Francis novels, after the change from guns allowed to no guns allowed, it is now quite difficult to buy a firearm in England. And if you did, your transaction would probably be caught by a couple dozen of their closed circuit cameras.

Kids can be cruel. The slashdot comment about being nicer to people seems important. Who knows how mean some of Hokie Cho’s fellow students were to him after he first started down his loner path? If the University gave good funds to a social club aimed at seriously recruiting and pleasuring outcasts, could that have made a difference?

As for concealed weapon laws, I’m afraid Cho supported Steve’s position. I doubt if Cho would have done anything different were he in Alaska, but he might have been cut down in the first classroom by a crossfire.

Arming people in general makes people in general more polite, because you don’t know who around you is armed.

It’s a truly sad day when politeness is motivated by fear of death. I really hope that you’re wrong about that.

Have you really ever altered your behavior because you were aware of the concealed gun laws in the state you were in?

So while tusseling with the incongruity of applying for a permit that I didn’t think should be issued, I researched the state that had most recently (then) passed a conceal law: Florida. Turns out that right after they passed their conceal law, violent gun crimes took a nose dive.

So I don’t abide by your Wild West argument. Arming people in general makes people in general more polite, because you don’t know who around you is armed.

Alaska/here is one of the very few states that anyone can carry a concealed weapon without permit; a law I don’t agree with. When I got my conceal permit they taught me things that everyone that carries a gun absolutely needs to know; and despite my owning many guns for many years, I didn’t know those things until that class.

I was surprised last week as I drove into the McDonalds parking lot; a guy was getting out of his car with a cross-the-back (attaches to the belt on both the right and left side) holster with what looked to be a .45 auto in it. He removed his holster with the gun in it, threw it into the car, shut the door, and walked into the restaurant. The times that I carry I have never once allowed my gun to be seen, so his actions surprised me.

That’s my two cents.