I feel so bad about this shooting. I'd like to offer my condolences to the families, friends, and fellow tribespeople of those wo were killed. Although I can understand why the Native Americans on the reservation might feel that public reaction is colored by their ethnic and racial status, I believe that hatred and killing are everyone's problems.

Some comments on suicide: Suicide can be viewed as a disease with risk factors like other diseases. Some of the known risk factors are applicable to the student who killed himself. Suicide tends to run in families. Children of parents who commit suicide are more likely than other people to commit suicide. The student/killer's father died by suicide. People who have suffered a major loss are also at risk for suicide. The student's loss of his mother and his father, as well as his exclusion from school, would be major losses. Suicide also tends to appeal to people who are very controlling and feel out of control. There were many problems in the life of the student/killer which he could not control, but he could and did control his own exit from life. Add to this the many problems common on reservations, including poverty, drugs of abuse, alcoholism, disgracefully substandard medical care, and feelings of racial injustice, and the situation was very volatile. These may be explanations, but certainly not excuses, for the mass killings.

I'll suggest something which is probably controversial. If the guard at the entrance to the school had been armed, a lot of tragedies could have been prevented.