German School Shooting Points To Need For Suicide Prevention Amongst Mass Murders
A gunman's apparent suicide following a murderous rampage through a school in Germany today is adding to calls from many health officials to provide programs to prevent the alarming tide of suicides amongst mass murderers.
U.S. health experts point to an emerging pattern in which suicide is typically preceded by a wave of inhuman murders, making the perpetrator's death by his own hand that much more difficult on the families of those he killed.
"Research has shown that people who engage in activities like shooting sprees and mass killings are ten times more likely to be suicidal than those who do not engage in brutal killings, or are at least able to limit their homicidal outrages enough to keep them secret," said psychology professor Clint Brown of the University of Alabama. "The case of this German tragedy emphasizes the need to help keep these at-risk people from hurting themselves until they can be brought to justice and hurt properly by the state."
Governors from Alabama, Washington, Colorado and Virginia say that it's time to use federal dollars to promote the end of suicide in murderers, before another killer strikes again and kills him or herself before giving the survivors and victims' families a chance to have a go at the fucker.
"We cannot sit by and let another [Seung-Huo] Cho disciple slip through our fingers," said Virginia governor Tim Kaine, referring to the massacre of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech at the hands of disturbed gunman Cho, who consequently ended his own life before anyone could, at the very least, kick his ass. "The suicides committed by these murders really show a complete disregard for jurisprudence."
Human rights activists and the religious community alike are also calling upon Capitol Hill to divert funds to what's being called the Keep The Bastard Alive (KTBA) program.
"It's very important for anyone contemplating a murder spree to know that God loves them, and that killing themselves is a mortal sin that will send them directly to the Devil," said Father John Humbert of the Denver Diocese. "The Devil delights every time a triple homicide ends tragically in suicide, and this alarming trend must be stopped."
One possible solution, say KTBA advocates, is a school curriculum more focused on the rule of law. The idea is that this would make multiple-homicide perpetrators think twice about circumventing the law process by murdering themselves and thereby violating the U.S. constitution's promise for a jury of peers and a swift trial.
"We consider it critical that a person who has just killed his family, shot up his school or taken out ten or more innocent victims is aware that depriving themselves of a trial contradicts the very Bill of Rights that our society was founded upon," said Arne Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education. "Armed with this knowledge, the killer might pause before taking his own life, which would allow us time to arrest the fucker and makes sure he gets pummeled in prison."
"And it all starts with education," he concluded.
Some law officials and legal analysts say that penalties for spree killings and execution-style murders are too harsh, and give the perpetrators nowhere to turn except to the business end of a loaded gun.
"If they know that the only place they can go in life, from that point on, is life in prison or the electric chair, then they're just going to end things the easy way," said legal expert Humphrey Roban. "No, we have to at least give them the illusion of a chance -- the chance to say, 'Sorry, judge, but I just got a little carried away,' or, 'I didn't mean it'. After that, I figure everyone in the the court room could take turns stomping on the perp's head for a while."
