"Why the hell do some people, who probably otherwise pass for normal, come unhinged like this over love?"

Because it has nothing to do with love.

so what do you think it has to do with? whatever lurks behind this kind of crazy nonsense, love/love lost/etc is so often tipping point.

The average person, does not cap people when love life goes bad. Especially to this degree. Something snapped and it most likely was there long before girl trouble. It's like "going postal", back to the job where a person was fired and shooting them all up; or walking into a crowded McDonalds in Ca and shooting the place up; I'm not so sure there is any explanation of rationale one can think up. Columbine wasn't about love life either. Extending this further--what causes a criminal to commit a crime? why are prisons over-loaded? What about that Tacoma mall[or whatever one that was recently] shooter? or the Jewish Federation shooter in Seattle?
Sad shit. Then the media hypes it all up with a typical answer for the public : he was a loner.
Then there will be the inevitable history of mental illness tossed in for good measure, and society will sit back and say, "Yep, knew it."

Yeah I don't like male violence being framed as tragic romance myself. It has more to do with humiliation, being rejected by a fucking woman, an inferior, there's no way to accommodate it, and who wants to live in a world where bitches have that kind of power? It's revenge, setting things right, I'll show her who's boss.

stepahny, the media is working with what they've got right now. there will be many updates.

i'm sure some don't like 'love gone wrong'/loner not fitting in as an explanation for killings and would prefer to focus on more complex underlying factors. but guess what the correlation is very high. i think what it tells us is that breakups/marriages falling apart/etc are times when ppl need to be damn careful about their behavior/feelings and others around them need to be on guard as well.

I just woke up and see that they've identified the killer and he was indeed a disturbed loner. It seems that all the rightous indignation is currently centered around gun control. However, it'll be interesting to see if there's any national dialogue around the role of the school's counseling service. It would appear that Cho was referred to the service after he wrote some concerning material. The article then said he might have been on meds for depression. What if this guys was referred to a clinic, given a fist full of meds and a suggestion to see counsler? Will anyone notice that this approach 100% failed? I may be putting the cart ahead of the horse here, but it seems like people notice this guy was fucked up, yet it appears that there was nothing there in the system to protect him or other.

Who isn't a loner? This guy had zero friends? How many friends did he have and how many does the average person have?

Philip,

I keep trying to come up with a neat, articulate way to reply. I keep starting over, but I'll give it a shot on a few thoughts and then just hit the darned "post" button already.

"over love". I suggests that the solution is to fix love. There's nothing wrong with love, as it's defined. There's something wrong with all those other complicated aspects. For example, in the Tech situation, it means focusing on the first murder victim. And whether he was a stranger to her, or he stalked her, or they had a relationship of any sort, that becomes the focus of what "set him off". That doesn't sit well with me.

The problem is not love. The problem is, for example, when one is taught that love is equated with abuse. That's not a love problem, that's an abuse problem.

It's not even a lack of love. If I don't love someone that's not abusive. They are not owed my love. The problem is if I, in some way, screw up their life.

What is, as far as I'm concerned, the common thread is injustice (real or perceived), which comes in may forms. Love may be one of those many forms, but as far as I'm concerned, only as a perceived injustice.

I started balbbling already, but promised this time I'd just hit the "post" button.

yep i understand your point i think and frankly i do plenty of babbling too. the weird pattern i've noticed with these types of things over the years is that they often circle back to something wrong on the "love" front--using love very loosely here--and you don't often see ppl going on killing sprees after their mom dies. but lose a job--and i sure pull that into the 'love' definition in a very loose way--or lose a relationship and guys (and it's always guys) go off the deep end, sometimes in very very ugly ways.

okay good point philip. now that ive watched more news this evening; i see the killer left a note stating 'you caused me to do this'.
also, i suppose i have seen this happen with a male neighbor who shot himself after his wife left him. sad and awful. the more i think about it, this must be why my mom took me to safety many times. it was after all, her ex husband, who threatened to kill us with a gun in the 60's.he died, which in the end most likely saved my life.
this stuff is shitty.

I promise this will be last comment (involving gender issues), as we see very differently on these subjects. But when we're thinking about social issues-gender violence, there's always one thing that seems to go unsaid. Yes, women commit horrible emotional violence-I'm a scarred survior of that. However...

Maybe someone should do a post on all the women who "snap" and rape/batter/MURDER their targets-the men who spurned them, who had the nerve to refuse them.