A bittersweet story out of Decatur, Georgia in the US about a potential school shooting that could have ended far worse was defused by a bookkeeper at the school named Antoinette Tuff who convinced the would be shooter, Brandon Hill, to lay down his gun by telling him about the woes that fell on her in life. The report state he had an AK-47 Type gun along with a bag containing 498 rounds of ammunition.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/21/20118311-authorities-georgia-shooting-suspect-had-nearly-500-rounds-of-ammunition?lite

Opinion: Now, some of you are probably wondering 'Martyr, you said 'Bittersweet', but this has a happy ending, no one died.' True, no one died, but stories of youth doing this or in this attempting this are becoming all too common than they should be. The article said the shooter was doing this because he felt that no one loved him, and he was willing to end his life while taking the lives of others with him. Now, I'm not Anti-Gun, in fact, I'm Pro-Gun, but my real issue these kind of things are arguably always linked to some negative emotional/mental health. I think these kinds of things should be opening the eyes of our citizens that these people, IE people with these emotional/mental problems, are out there and if we don't do something about helping people, they'll keep doing these things and taking the lives of people who don't deserve an end like this.

Anyway, that's my take on the article, how do you all feel?

Warning: Please do not turn this into a soapbox for Pro-Gun/Anti-Gun preaching, I don't want to hear your yawp and it's not permitted in accordance with BGSF rules. So please let's keep this topic as free of political discussion as possible.

About 50 years ago, it was decided that Mental Health would not be provided by the government anymore, so tens of thousands of folks who have mental and emotional issues were kicked out of institutions and hit the streets, most of them ended up homeless. Sure, most of these folks were probably harmless, just not functional in society. Insurance companies also have a dim view of supporting mental health care, with little to no benefits offered.

So, where are these people supposed to get the help that they need? I mean we can be nice to them, like we should be to anybody really, but that is not enough, it's barely a start with some people.

To be honest, that was one depressing article to read despite the outcome.

Should also be a wake up call that treating people like garbage can have serious effects on said people. I'm not saying everyone is set to have some mental breakdown (which I have to believe is what happens to these kids when they decide to do this stuff) but, there's no harm in cultivating compassion for each other. And I don't know about other countries/states but, there is a SERIOUS lack of available mental health care. I believe FL is actually facing a law suit about how it's treated it's mentally ill over the years. It's just sad.

Kudos to the bookkeeper for caring enough to try and stop him though. In this case, that one person's selfless act saved countless others.

No, I agree, I think we should be appealing to Congress to help them. The duty of a government is to help these people as they are still citizens of the US, it makes me feel bad for people with these problems because in the case of school shootings, it's more often than not these people not having gotten the mental or emotional help they needed to have their issues resolved without resorting to such a drastic form of suicide.

Edit @ Naxos- You're exactly right, look at Columbine, one of the key problems that caused it was bullying. Bullying can have these kinds of consequences. It's like John Marston says in Red Dead Redemption, you can only crap on people for so long before they decide it's their turn to pull down the pants.'

I think people need to grow a thicker skin, but at the same time, this is no cause for justifying bullying and neglect. Many problematic people in societies come from backgrounds of neglect or abuse, be it physical or emotional. I'm not saying we need to be loving each other and holding flowers or one another 24/7 but humanity as a whole is in this weird cycle of preaching being kind to people but at the same time it turns a blind eye to taking a dump on people for some factor they don't like about a person. Things need to change if we want to avoid issues like this.

Hey, that's about an hour from me, and about 10 minutes from my sister and her husband. I'm really glad there was a good, diplomatic outcome to this.