NIU shooter took psychotropic drugs

When Bush expanded the Brady gun control law at the start of the new year, the reasoning was that it would stop tragedies like the one that took place at Virginia Tech. But I knew - just knew - it would be only a matter of time before another incident like this happened anyway, thus proving the Brady law expansion to be ineffective.

Sure enough, it did.

And I also knew - with 100% certainty - that Steve Kazmierczak, the gunman who killed 6 (including himself) at Northern Illinois University last week, would be found to have taken psychotropic drugs (as was known to be true of the Virginia Tech shooter). I was absolutely sure of it.

And sure enough, this has turned out to be true too. It's now known that Kazmierczak took antidepressants, including Paxil, before the shooting.

Let me be perfectly frank: I think it's another case where suburban society - where money reigns - expected perfection, and that's what put Kazmierczak in the condition that led him to be prescribed these drugs. But it was only after he started taking the drugs that the massacre happened.

This is what happens when we worship money and "success." America today is little more than a business. In the environment of suburban America, people are judged their whole lives, and they don't have the opportunities to channel their abilities. It should be no wonder that people feel like they can't live up to expectations and seek help from a pseudoscience like psychiatry.

This should be a national call to make the lazy media further examine the role that psychotropic drugs and the hypercompetitive, lockstep environment of suburbia play in these tragedies.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_re_us/niu_shooting)