Garth Rattray

America's deadliest shooting catastrophe at Virginia Tech has 'triggered' a stirring debate on societal shortfalls, the high price of ignoring troubled and/or dysfunctional individuals in need of help, gun control, and the protection of innocent citizens.

Mentally ill college senior, Cho Seung-Hui, displayed antisocial behaviour for years. His physical appearance, stalking of two female students, arson attempt, lack of social interaction and bizarre writings all pointed to obvious serious psychological problems, yethe was improperly treated and mostly ignored. Because a court declared him mentally ill (but not mentally incompetent), he was able to purchase two semi-automatic pistols legally. He wounded two dozen people and killed 32 others before becoming the final victim of his disturbed mind by committing suicide.

People labelled him everything from psychopath to scumbag but he was sick and this was manifested in his aberrant behaviour. A grieving nation, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, asks how such a thing could have happened when Cho clearly demonstrated ever increasing sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies for years. He was obviously suffering in the dark pit of mental anguish and relentlessly tormented by paranoid ideations. He was in deep trouble, yet 'society' barely noticed him while only one or two individuals tried earnestly to help him.

Gun control advocates have used the massacre of helpless innocents to lobby for tighter gun laws that, they say, would have denied Cho access to firearms. Conversely, those for liberalising guns argue that murderers will always find ways of obtaining illegal firearms and that if guns were more readily available to most people, potential robbers and murderers would be deterred in their bloodlust. Because very little debate was dedicated to seeing that society has systems in place to help existing and future troubled individuals like Cho, history is bound to repeat itself.

Unlike America, Jamaica does not (as yet) have psychopathic mass-murders or dismissed employees bent on the vengeful mass-slaughter of those deemed responsible for or complicit in the demise of their livelihood. However, we have a preponderance of young males deprived of positive male role models, of love, of respect for life, of education, of gainful employment and of financial resources ripe for criminality. We have underprivileged, sociopathic drones (controlled by elusive 'big men') with absolutely no compunctions about killing us like helpless sheep. Just like Cho, these people are also victimsof a society that failed to help them - and, just like the Virginia Tech victims, it is usually the innocent (us) that pay the high price in the end.

Although we don't have large single-event massacres like they do in the United States, several daily murders make us arguably the (per capita) murder capital of the world. Our little island has contract killers, triple, even quadruple homicides. Gunmen slaughter infants, children, teenagers, young and very old adults. We have many poor communities where people are confined to their homes and live in fear every day. Numerous communities live under the constant tyranny of ruthless, murderous, marauding gunmen.

The Virginia Tech massacre was hellish, especially because it was carried out by one man, in one place and over a short period of time Jamaica has never had such a concentration of horror, our situation is also catastrophic and hellish. We had 365 murders between January 1 and March 31 this year. Most murders were committed by warped, disenfranchised and hopeless young men, improperly treated and mostly ignored by a society, slowly adapting to murder, crime and violence.

Next week: Do or die.