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October 4th, 2006 at 1:41 am
The Enemy Within
Posted by The Foo in And everything else...

Three school attacks in 6 days… What is exactly happening here??

It is scary how people can just snap. With the latest shooting in Lancaster County, PA, I just can’t get to grips with how a person can have enough hate to kill someone else, yet alone kill innocent kids. And with them being Amish too! What in the world has Amish people ever done to anyone? They are probably the most peaceful of communities, being very detached from the hustle and bustle of our society. Never in a million years would I have guessed that someone would actually go into an AMISH school to do something like that.

It seems that Charles Roberts was angry at god but I still don’t understand his motive – or is there ever one with a complete psycho like that. It just doesn’t add up with the stories… his anger in god and his molestation of 2 girls years ago.

Charles Carl Roberts IV hid it all behind a seemingly solid veneer of fatherhood, a stable marriage to a religious woman, and a respectable job as a milk truck driver.

… so he was a normal guy, which makes it even the more baffling. How do you stop this from happening i.e. when there are absolutely no signs to indicate that one would ever do something like that?

I am very disturbed and concerned considering the fact that we have relatives in Lancaster County and my wife is a teacher. I now have one extra worry everyday – whether she is “safe enough at school”. Schools used to be one of the safest places, not anymore, it is now the most vulnerable of areas.

Columbine opened our eyes to the reality of safety within schools. It is pretty sad when Amish schools (ones that don’t even have electricity and phones) now have to protect themselves as well against shootings and attacks.

So where do we go from here? And what else can we do to prevent this when all we have done in the past 6 years since Columbine looks like it is now in vain. Are we back to square one?

We really need to look at our society, what causes this behavior and what causes the transformation of these so called “normal” people. Is the actual enemy within us with our pressured society?


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  • These things are sad and tragic on so many levels.
  • It is horrible and ridiculous and stupid.

    There are a lot of psychos, or many otherwise normal people that have the ability to snap into something that most of us won't ever snap into even if we do snap.

    It's strange, being in a different country, one where guns are kind of uncommon it seems an obvious question to ask; are guns too readily available in the US? Some people love their guns and are really gung-ho about their right to bare arms but seriously, it's much easier to kill people if you have a gun available. Making laws on guns a bit stricter will not stop murders or stop people being psycho but it's very different to stand back and shoot someone rather than stab them or strangle them. I think there'd be far fewer students (I know the Lancaster thing wasn't a student but other shootings were), going through that teen-angst and rejection and pain, threatening the school if they couldn't get a hold of their parents' gun when they feel like it.
  • theres no one out there completely immune to school shootings. My school has been threatened twice now, once by the same shooters at Columbine, and yesterday by one of our own.
  • jay
    Some things cannot be understood.
  • ANO
    Many people that kill or are serial killers seem to be "normal." They have their own kids, steady jobs and a home life. We'll never 100% understand what drives people to do things like this.
  • p.s. The people I told were all in law enforcement and social services. Some help they are. Apparently, the joke in Idaho is that if you want to do drugs, live in Oregon, if you want to abuse your kids, live in Idaho. Sick, sick world we live in. (My ex is a teacher, too, by the way. Some things in this world just aren't right.)
  • I was absolutely stunned this morning when I read the copy of his letter to his wife. My ex-husband is this way, though -- he's even written some of the exact same words to me. But when you try to tell ANYONE (let alone dozens of people) that this is a tragedy waiting to happen, you (meaning I) get poo-poohed with a "well, we can't actually PROVE anything, so just keep documenting," apparently so that when he does inflict major harm (if he hasn't already) that we can all look back and say, "Wow. I guess the signs WERE there." Dumbasses. Is it any wonder I'm starting to truly dislike society in general and don't go out in the world the way I used to?

    There's a book called "The Sociopath Next Door" that claims that one in every 25 people walking around is sociopathic (which I basically see as someone with no conscience). It's all well and convenient to blame horrible (complete understatement in this case) choices on anger, but we ALL experience pain, sadness, and many (if not most) of us experience tragedy. This person was obviously ****** up long before he lost his daughter. These kinds of things don't just *happen* to people. Bad eggs are out there walking around, brushing by us, plotting, victimizing and generally hanging around. To not be aware of them and not protect ourselves from them is to be next in line.

    I don't have any answers, Foo. Just complaints and sympathy for EVERYONE touched by these maniacle creeps. And while this probably isn't among one of my top 50 reasons I don't teach anymore, it's definitely a consideration. I can't remember the last time I heard of someone walking in with a gun to a pet insurance company.

    p.s. When my ex goes apeshit, please back me up and say, "Yep. She told me so." He has crazy eye. Look out for people with crazy eye. They have it for a reason.
  • xfacktor: Thanks! I'll check it out.
  • You may want to come over to www.writersbeat.com. It's a forum for writers, and you can contribute to the discussion of the Lancaster event by posting the same comment you made on my blog, or the blog-post that's above. My name there is xfacktor, so you can always use me as a referral. Come on over when you get a chance, we're a fun bunch.

    The link to that particular discussion of the Lancaster tragedy is: http://www.writersbeat.com/all-can-say-just-pla...
  • I wrote about the same thing today, but have a little different perspective. See my website and the post "Rest my dear children" to read my response to someone who blamed society for Robert's problems.
  • Sorry but I can hardly read your blog on my screen, the letters are so big that four words take the whole screen !
    But I think you wrote about this terrible tragedy of murdering the amish children at school. For me it was the worst of all school attacks, because it was not just a crazy around shooting, but a well planned act of a mad man. I will never understand why he did this and I do not want to understand it either. This is above all human believes.
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