[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Oby, you have to admit, you labeled this a terrorist attack in the original post, before we even knew much about the guy. For all we knew from the first few hours, this guy could have stopped by the church and had a mental breakdown. Or maybe the pastor owed him money. True, now we know a lot more about this crime, and why he did it.

Nothing excuses going into a church, with a gun, and shooting innocent bystanders. No motive, no reasoning, no medical disorder, nothing.
It is, to me, an act of mass murder and an act of terror.

Does this mean that school shooters are terrorists? Damn straight it does. They should be treated as Domestic terrorists just the same as McVeigh. The Fort. Hood shooter? Same stick. If you go out with the aim to kill as many people as possible then you are a domestic terrorist, and deserve treatment as such. Not therapy, not rehab, but either the injection, or preferably a solo supermax cell for the rest of your natural life, with the media expressly ordered to report just the minimal facts about your existence. One picture, the mugshot, and just the basic facts, no long winded testiments, no in-depth examination, no mentioning the prepetrators name on television day in and day out for weeks afterwards. Instead, focus on the victims, the dead people, the good they did and the fact that their lives were cut short so viciously for no reason other than a psychopath had a gun and the mentality to use it.
Maybe then, maybe people will stop seeing such actions as viable, but I doubt it.

One other thing, re: Roof, I'm hearing people around him say he was boasting how he would do something like this. Sounds a lot like the Colorado shooter. And that squirrelly kid who was ticked at women. Man, when will people take these nuts seriously? If someone makes these kind of statements, lock them up in the nuthouse. *

A fair point, the downside is until we get The Minority Report, we can't accurately predict peoples actions based upon their personal statements.
And even if we did take their statements to heart and investigated people for it, there will still be those who slip under the radar, or who don't say anything and then snap.

*Can I call it the "nuthouse"? Maybe I better use "asylum"... or to be safe, I'll say "Mental Health Facility....

I prefer the term 'General Topics' myself.