Unless you've been disconnected from the world over the last 24 hours (something I can't imagine given all the data devices I carry), you've probably heard about the school shootings at Virgina Tech. From a criminal law perspective, there isn't much to talk about; according to the press, the shooter committed suicide and you can't prosecute a "dead, former person" (reference: Property Law with Professor Welling).

What I found more interesting was an article from Newsweek talking about the psychology of serial killers and what drives perpetrators to commit acts like the Virginia Tech shootings. As the article indicates, it's difficult to really analyze the mind of a perpetrator when very few live to be apprehended.

The Newsweek article reminds me of an article I read before from the New Yorker (no reference available) that discussed why people looking to commit suicide attempted to use the Golden Gate Bridge; there was some belief that jumping off the bridge was glamorous and people wanted to go out in a big way. I guess the same thing can be said here, as mass shootings tend to be remembered in history.

But the article in the New Yorker had a suicide survivor making a statement that I think really sums up what everybody has to remember. To paraphrase, the survivor said that the moment he jumped over the rail and off the bridge, he realized that all of his problems were fixable. Maybe if everybody realized that, we wouldn't have incidents like the one at Virgina Tech.