Not sure what to think of this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/v...8d67_story.html

It IS horrendous news. But I am at least glad the NYPD has come clean about this so quickly -- rather than trying to stonewall.

There seems to be shootings in our city practically every day!!! It's crazy. I cannot understand why people hurt other people. Is it pure meanness? Or is it stupidity???

Well, jabber, not only are you a nice person, you're mentally stable. A lot of these folks are really mentally ill and their thought processes are not anything like what normal people would recognize. Give them a gun and the results are too-often what we see.

But you raise an interesting point: I do think a lot of people have poor impulse control and very bad tempers. They're the ones who just might want to get even with someone, hence the fired employee who returns and shoots up the office, the guy who shoots his wife, etc. I don't think these folks are crazy by any legal or psychiatric definition, but they are powder kegs.

In fact, I know a guy like this. He owns his own business, is a committed Christian and reads his Bible daily, but he has a titanic temper and a lot of people are afraid of him. (So am I). If he ever loses it, there won't be people on television saying they can't understand why such a nice guy would do something like this. I think he actually does have something wrong with him; someone who is in his 50's should not be acting like an out-of-control teenager emotionally.

I think you hit the nail on the head there, Ellemm, with the poor impulse control. It's probably a lot more complicated than that, though. There are anger issues, feeling one has no control over one's life, and sometimes there are physical causes like a small tumor in the part of the brain that controls impulses. And then there are those who have addiction issues, which leads to poor or no impulse control as well as extreme anger triggered by things of no consequence to most of the rest of us.

Temper is something everybody should work hard to control. What I don't understand is how any human being could shoot another person in the face. And I've heard of this several times in recent months. How cruel is that? It goes beyond comprehension.
IMHO...