School Shooting - What makes a person kill

On 23rd September 2008, 10 students were shot dead by Matti Saari who then turned the gun on himself. (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmPkjy3Rc56YqQQ1LYm_OfXgW5VwD93DDESG0) Reading the article above made me reflect on what is becoming to the human race.

A quick search on Google on “school shooting” revealed 1,780,000 results. I clicked on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting and I would not be lying when I say that my jaw dropped. I extracted the following:

Mind you, these are just the recent incidents for USA. There are many other documented cases that are listed at the website above. Reading these statistics really made me think whether by the time I have children, would it be safe for me to send my kids to schools?

While I take profound comfort at the strict gun control laws in Malaysia (probably the only reason why there aren’t any school shooting incidents in my country) I cannot but worry whether it will be safe for me to send my kids to school by the time they are of school going age. I cannot remember with absolute certainty but I do recall reading in the newspapers that students are getting more unruly and violent.

But what intrigued me most was what makes a person kill? I would like to quote Tapio Varmola, principal of Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences who commented on Matti Saari:

"I personally feel that maybe there are too many silent young boys in Finland who are alone. The parents, the schools and the healthcare system should do something together with young boys".
(http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/9/25/worldupdates/2008-09-24T233624Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-356358-1&sec=Worldupdates)

If silence can drive a person to kill, then I believe a possible solution to stop these killings would be to talk to as many people as possible. What do you think?

The corrective actions for us all is to play our part by reaching out to as many people as possible, regardless of gender, race, age and etc. What I mean is – START TALKING & START SAVING LIVES!