There are lessons to be learned from the Virginia Tech massacre, says alexander cockburn |
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Since there undoubtedly will be a next time, what useful counsel on preventative measures can we offer faculties across America?
Arm teachers and students. There have been the usual howls from the anti-gun lobby, but it's all hot air. America is not about to dump the Second Amendment giving people the right to bear arms.
A better idea would be for appropriately screened teachers and maybe student monitors to carry weapons. This is not as outre as it may sound to European ears. A quarter of a century ago students doing military ROTC training regularly carried rifles around campus.
Five years ago Peter Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old Nigerian student, killed three faculty members at Appalachian Law School with a handgun, but before he could wreak further |
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| What should be banned from campuses are not weapons but prescriptions for anti-depressants |
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carnage two students fetched weapons from their cars, challenged the murderer with guns levelled, and disarmed him.
Ban anti-depressants. What should be banned from campuses are not weapons but prescriptions for anti-depressants. Eric Harris, co-slayer (with Dylan Klebold) of 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine school shootings in 1999, was on Luvox, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) of the same class as Prozac and Zoloft. Initially Harris had been prescribed Zoloft, but told his doctor he was having suicidal and homicidal fantasies. So the doc shifted him to Luvox.
Sixteen-year-old Jeff Weise, who killed 10 schoolmates at Red Lake High School on an Indian Reservation in 2005, was on Prozac. The manufacturer said four per cent of children in one of its tests of Luvox developed short-term mania. Other studies of the SSRI anti-depressants have claimed they have a 15 per cent chance of prompting suicidal or homicidal reactions.
Cho Seung-hui was on a prescription drug. The likelihood of it being an anti-depressant 
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