I recently wrote the following statements on an opinion page and since have thought there may be a lot of meat in these thoughts.

"The Mental Side of Life has three elements...Knowledge...Feeling...and Willing. The Key to Knowledge is Thinking. The Key to Feeling is Appreciation and Gratitude. If you are angry, pitiful, etc. and you have poor knowledge in your thoughts at the time, what will you do? Behave poorly! Hollywood keeps saying there is no correlation between movies, TV, MTV, Video Games, etc. in human behavior and I wonder could it be that the research is a little old and biased?"

I think maybe like the climate scientific facts; maybe Hollywood could be a little flawed.....when they say there is no correlation in what we watch and what we do? Just maybe the video games involve participation and practice? I personally think it is "garbage in and garbage out"! Reputation is repetition, repetition is reputation! Athletes know this to be true. For a child to practice with violent video games, practice, practice, practice, is it then most likely to be repeated when faced with a stressful situation. The same with adults continually watching psycho movies, etc., knowledge in, knowledge out. The only way I believe we can make proper choices, is to have in our knowledge base equal amounts or more of reinforced proper behavior. Our kids don't do as we say, they do as they see us, the world, do.! The true principles of positive behavior based in all the world's religions are not being taught. Why? Maybe because of the widely supported effort to keep Christianity out of the schools, the teachings of right and wrong, have been severely damaged. Where in the past parents or teachers succeeded, today the gang or street mentality; or, poor Hollywood teachings prevail! The individual enlarged ego is severely damaged. If it feels good do it! If you want it take it. You are entitled to high self-esteem! Whether it harms another or not! What happened to earning self-esteem? Self-esteem is the by-product of doing the right thing!

Here is the University's 'gun free' policy.

http://www.iss.uab.edu/Pol/FirearmsFtab.pdf

MelP- You might ask the advertisers whether television has any influence on its audience.

Seems we all know that it does. Yet Hollywood denies any correlation. Thanks.

This is a chilling part .... When the gun jammed, the "courageous" remaining five professors managed to shove Bishop out of the room and barricade the door, possibly putting other staff or students at risk.

Why didn't they tackle her to the ground? Cowards.

MelP: Taking the opportunity to use this to lambast the bogeyman of other people's entertainment choices seems a little contrived.

This was a deranged woman with little impulse control and a lot of apparent narcissism, whose political views likely pushed her to similar views as yours concerning those particular entertainment choices.

I bet she lived in a world where she saw herself as peaceful and loving, but pushed by the outside world to do the things that she did. She would justify herself as not responsible for what she did (at the same time as she felt guilty).

I bet that she was all for banning those violent movies, TV shows and video games. She never viewed herself as a cause of violence.

Most of those 'violent' entertainments that people want to ban are about good people stopping evil ones, and I hope that is something all good people would want to do. They don't differentiate between Bruce Willis in Die Hard vs Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers.

You "bet" she was! You lose! Most of those violent shows that people watch are good stopping evil! What was her definition of her shooting people because she couldn't get her desires? Good! You lose!

I wish to ban random non-sensical shootings, movies and videos, where people get up and you shoot them over and over and children and adults set at the controls and play or watch over and over and over. Practice makes perfect, whether right or wrong. Like the teenager who replied when asked why he shot the people...he replied...."it really didn't happen, they will get back up."

MeIP, problem is that as much as you want the joy joy happy feelings for everyone, banning violent stimulation doesn't stop evil people from doing evil things. I agree that non-sensical violence as you quote are unneccessay, however it comes down to the person. If they are unstable to begin with, no amount of censorship will prevent them from doing evil things. Its like blaming a pencil for misspelled words.

Thanks for the interest. I believe in order to make a choice in a given stressful situation you must have as much or more positive reinforced knowledge in your brain from which to choose your response. When your feelings begin to make you react, any kind of an intervention, gives you an opportunity to choose wisely.

Between stimulus and response there is a space, in that space lies your ability to choose your response and in your response lies your freedoms and your growth. That space can be what my mother use to say count to 10 before you react.

My point is that unless we quit putting excessive garbage in the old brain from the media, movies, TV, friends, gangs, and; instead follow-up to be sure we have positive reinforced knowledge in the brain, then we are likely under stress to choose poorly.

Jim, am I making any sense in trying to clear up what I mean? What I am trying to say, is that Hollywood and the media, the family, friends, school teachers, community leaders, preachers, mentors, etc. etc., we all need to intensify our efforts to espouse and manifest by example good behavior in helping others. Maybe the news (media) needs to quit concentrating the airways nightly with "who shot who", "who was beaten and robbed", "the next whacko", etc. etc. Quit giving the poor behavioral people the majority of the airtime! This information, constantly being absorbed by sick individuals creates copycats seeking their 15 minutes of fame, leaving their legacy to humankind. I just believe the bombardment of bad news upon people inclined to choose poorly is making things worse?

Another of the "gun free zone" failures! Obviously "gun free" in name only. Ask yourselves why these mass shootings only occur where the inocent are legally required to be defenseless. There is no law which will prevent these deranged people from killing so please tell me why the assaulted are left with no means of prrotection? Granted, it won'y stop the initial assault but it will minimize the damage. Remember, "when seconds count the police are only minutes away".

Gee whiz..and here i thought that only right wing kooks were the only ones who went on shooting rampages...she must have had a conversion right before she snapped. Funny how this story has had no "legs" in the press

Mike, If you check your facts on the nutcases who go on these rampages you'll find, in a large percentage of cases, they were left leaning idealogues. The same with all but 1 Presidential assassins. The left has a high propensity to do this because they are desperate for their ideas to become a reality. Except their usually ideas can't be implemented without force because a majority of Americans have conservative values. They are afraid to let things work out naturally because to do so would be self-defeating. MelP sounds sweet and very naive when it comes to reality. Before there were violent movies, there was crime. Before there were guns, there was crime. Read your bible...Cain and Abel. There will always be crime. The thing to do is make the punishments severe enough that these miscreants at least think twice. But I am afraid even that is a little naive. There is just evil in this world. Not misunderstood people...just evil.