h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you examine the story, you'll see exactly why. Their lawyer, along with a goodly percentage of humanity holds them blameless for their crime. It's not *their* fault- it's the fault of "Vice City", it's the fault of "Marilyn Manson", it's their parents, everybody's fault but theirs.

Of course, with those kinds of ideas floating around, it's just a perfect excuse for any little heathen who's pee'ed-off at the world to go berserk.

Kids aren't stupid. They hear this stuff all the time, it may even give their concience a balm to see themselves as being helpless victims whilst they're perpetuating the act.

I really think this is the root cause of such things as Columbine.

Such things never happened in this country, for nearly all the 400-some-odd years of existance (*despite* the fact that most young boys had guns or access to guns throughout this history. I kept a shotgun in my closet for all my teen years, for example, and I had cousin's and friends who had much larger arsenals, but the idea of going berserk and killing everyone who'd ever looked at you wrong was not an option to us) until "experts" and "social scientists" on tee-vee (many of whom, as the article notes, don't deserve the title) began to blame everything on everyone except the perpetrator.