The killer’s 22-page letter details many things about his life, and came with a packet of documents as well.  This guy wasn’t leaving anything to chance.  I’m reminded of the scene in Full Metal Jacket, when the drill instructor offers up infamous killers who made miraculous shots under difficult conditions, and when he asked where those men received training, the answer, of course, was the Marine Corps.  The line that sticks with he is “This goes to show what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do.”

Wow...Beltway sniper reference as well.  Anyway, moving on.

This guy was *motivated*.  Crazy as a loon?  In some ways.  Needed killin’?  Yep.  But, like people (with balls, that is) said after the Columbine kids did their thing, he had his shit together.  There was obviously a huge part of this guy that was sick...no one climbs a clock tower and thins out the herd when they’re emotionally healthy.  But there was another side to this guy, one that he felt the need to express in a twenty-two page letter.

I never wrote a 22-page anything that didn’t involve HTML and an animated GIF.

So how does this tie in with SpongeMike Sweatpants?  Well, for starters, he’s pissed that the NRA is coming to Tuscon to do some last-minute voter campaigning...as though they don’t have the right, nay, the responsibility to counter his radical bastardized liberalism with some common sense.  Another way it ties into Mike “Hey, I asked for extra butter flavoring!” Moore is something the killer himself wrote…

What’s this?  You mean a new law outlawing the murder of humans with a device of any kind wouldn’t have prevented you from killin’ folks, Mr. Flores?  You already knew it was illegal and you had the guns for a long time?  You mean *I* shouldn’t be punished for your insanity and depression creating a completely new and unpredictable situation that feel-good legislation like gun control and “ballistic fingerprinting” wouldn’t solve or prevent?

I hate to sound like I admire the guy...he’s slime, and I’m very glad he’s dead, but c’mon here, people, this guy is fisking Michael Moore from beyond the grave, and in my book that’s worth an raised eyebrow before I spit on his memory.

If you read the letter, as I have, it paints a picture of a very aggressive, unbalanced guy who, through a series of aggressive (and perhaps threatening) episodes designed to regain his sense of manhood that being a male nursing student seems to have robbed him of, he was washed out of the program.  In his letter he attempts to paint himself as a victim, and I don;t buy it.  He was a jerk, and I get that from his own words.

I also get that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, any lawmaker, politician or blowhard movie maker could say or do would have stopped him in any way.

The University of Arizona is a gun-free zone.  Perhaps if it were not, things may have been different.  Perhaps not.  The fact is, this guy was going to “settle accounts,” as he put it...he was going to “have his day of reckoning.” We need accept it and start looking at ways to prevent this kind of activity.  Yes, I believe this guy was an aggressive, abrasive jerk, but he also clearly asked for help.  Did he come straight out and say ‘I need help?” No...and depression doesn’t work like that.  You would think a school designed to train medical professionals could recognize the signs.

Like I said, we need to get to the root of why a nursing school failed to see a person crying out for help with a serious medical condition.  We need to find out how to spot and *treat* these people before they snap and kill.  We need to accept that fact that this time, society (specifically the college of Nursing in this case) *does* bear some of the burden.  Robert Stewart Flores Jr. was obviously chemically depressed, and not in the “oh, I hate my life, I’m an angst-ridden teen” kind of way.  He had a serious medical illness that could have been treated with medication.  He didn’t see it, but medication and a few letters of apology, perhaps a hearing or two and he might have been right back in the driver’s seat, controlling his fate and getting his degree.  Instead, an insular group of people who train the next generation of medical professionals ignored the signs, instead focusing on his aggressive outbursts and playing the ‘We’re scared of the man” card.  UofA bears some responsibility for creating the atmosphere in which Flores thrived as a psycho...we can accept that and strive to repair it, or we can blame the gun, the NRA and Charlton Heston. 

Because we all know there’s nothing Moses likes better than a good bloodbath.

Thanks to Instapundit, Rachel Lucas, Clayton Cramer, and Lee for various links.

Thanks to Janna for pointing out my original version of this story had the wrong school...I mixed ASU up with UofA!