VA Tech: Blame it on Prozac?

The media are starting to pick up on the idea that the killings at VA Tech were the result of the so-called Prozac syndrome -- that some users of Prozac and other SSRIs are impelled to violent or suicidal acts.

Don't blame it on Prozac. Mass killers existed long before Prozac did and will continue to exist long after it is discontinued. In fact, it's probably best not to worry about the cause at all. Cognative science is a long way from being there yet; and we certainly don't want to lock someone up or limit his civil rights just because he "might" commit a crime some day.

By the way, the figures quoted this week calmed 40 deaths in K-12 school shootings over the past ten years. That's 4 deaths a year, probably below lightning strikes and certainly less than high-school football deaths (20-30/year) or bicycle riding (around 600 minors/year) or drowning (40/year).

Don't be like a Drug Warrior, and turn this into a killer weed with a deadly drug fiend behind every door.

Most of my life, I have been in favor of strong gun control (inspite of growing up in the West, hunting as a child and a teen, and still owning several guns myself); but yesterday I realized that strict gun control is just another form of prohibition law; and with the strong demand level in this country, woudl lead to the same kinds of prohibition defects like black markets and corrupt cops. When I started analyzing the differences between us and England or Cananda, it became obvious that the differences are in the level of demand. Depriving an Englishman of a gun (other than his shotgun) would be about like depriving me of a root-canal. Work in this country on gun control, like drug control, has to be on the demand side by education and by eliminating causual elements in the society (like lack of mental health facilities)