Wednesday, April 18, 2007

On the Virginia Tech killings

Cho Seung-Hui's Plays - News Bloggers

Assuming they are genuine, it is pretty weird reading two short plays by a mass murderer that indicate he did indeed have serious mental issues of some description or other.

I am not sure how I feel about the rapid publishing of this material. It's ghoulishly interesting, but seems too soon after the event.

In cases like this, I can't help thinking about the killer's family and the burden of guilt or shame they presumably must feel. (This is assuming they are relatively normal family and have not mistreated the killer as a child in any dire fashion.) I don't mean to diminish the pain of victims' families, but at least the death of an innocent victim does not carry the same psychological burden of self assessment as that of being the "normal" parent of a mass murderer.

On the topic of gun control philosophy generally that this raises, there's a good discussion in progress at Catallaxy.

1 comment:

therapydoc said...

Very good point. I would bet they'll be on the first plane back to South Korea. It's going to be very hard for them here.