I thought about that as well. While I can still see things through the eyes of Hitler and possibly understand why he did the things he did, his case is much different from the current one. He was not isolated. He had many friends who agreed with and followed his ideas. He was not in nearly the same mental state. This guy wasn't the leader of a country. He didn't have a legion of people agreeing with his every word. He could have been helped.
What he did was wrong, no doubt, but he didn't deserve to die. He derserved it just as much as each of his victims deserved it. He's a human being. A precious life. I have just as much sympathy for him as I do for each of his victims.
You guys should take a sociology class so you can learn that your vision of the world isn't the only one and yours isn't more "right" than anyone elses. It's typical that you hate what you don't understand. It's how every form of evil comes alive.
Obviously, he couldn't be helped, because he did what he did. People that do those types of things are not people that you can reach. LIke his roommates said, he wouldn't even communicate with them to say hi or chat, obviously he didn't want to be helped.
With that, I think he was helped as much as he could have been helped. Let's take a reality check here and look at his life. He was a college student, living a life that was hardly horrible. I've been to Blacksburg many times, that place is amazing. He had all of these wonderful opportunities every day to try to pick his life up and do something with it and he made the decision not to. There are plenty of people out there having incredibly fucked up lives that don't have the opportunities he was given that don't choose to shoot 32 people.
He did deserve to die more than his victims by the end. The victims didn't murder anyone, he did. So, therefore, once he made that decision, yes, he did deserve to die more than his victims did at that point. He made that choice.
I have taken sociology. I have great empathy for many people, but I don't empathize to the point of ridiculousness. There's a line here, and he crossed it, turning what would have been pity for him from me into disgust and righteous anger. And it is righteous, because he did what he did and he deserved the consequenses of that.
It's not like he was some poor guy living on the streets that endured torture and decided to react to that on the spot out of desperation and hopelessness. You're talking about a guy who was educated and had his life ahead of him to choose how he wanted to live. He didn't go through anything at least in the last four years that could ever make me care as to why he would decide to do something so ahorrent. He wasn't driven to anything, he decided to hold on to his jealousy, rage, and sickness so tightly that he turned into a monster. And it is my belief that he did that by choice in spite of the many opportunities afforded him to have a better life.
I don't think that you should believe as I do, I don't take that right from anyone. I respect that you've lived your life a certain way and come to the conclusion that you should feel pity and sympnathy for this man. That isn't the point. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and to disagree. I wholeheartedly feel differently than you on this point and that is MY right as well and I will talk about it.
Either way, it's a pointless debate because neither of us know what he went through or if he went through anything at all. We say "he MUST have gone through something terrible to have done such a horrible thing", when the truth is that he could just as easily have gone through nothing more than to live his life a little poorer than most with a good, supportive, loving family, but had a mental problem that drove him to do what he did. The only person that will ever know the truth of the matter completely is dead, and good riddance to bad rubbish in my opinion.
My belief is, I don't care what happened to him, it's pointless to me now and as soon as he killed his first person he lost the right, in my eyes, for my consideration and help and caring and pity. I'll leave those feelings for the victims, their families, and their friends.
