From the New York Times:
The insane revenge of a man maddened by financial worries
brought death to at least thirty-three children today when the Consolidated
School in this little village of 300 souls, eight miles north-east of Lansing,
was dynamited just after the morning bell had called the classes together.
Forty-one dead have been identified and one is still unknown.
When all was said and done, the Bath School Disaster had taken 45 lives. This was indisputably the worst attack on a school in U.S. history.
The attacker did not use guns in this situation, he used dynamite. It didn't matter what the tool was, the result was dozens of innocent people dead. The attacker was not an immigrant, but if he was it wouldn't have made a difference.
In the case of the Bath School Disaster, the attacker was clearly having problems. From the Clinton County Republican News:
The story of Kehoe's crime is almost unbelievable. He had strongly opposed the Consolidated school from the beginning. He contended that such an educational system was too expensive and had enough supporters in this belief to get himself elected a member of the school board. He then fought for a 10-grade instead of a 12-grade school, but was overruled. He became more bitter than ever and is said to have threatened to get even with the community.
Last year after the death of Maud Detluff, township clerk, he was appointed to fill the vacancy and was a candidate for the office at the election last spring. He was defeated and this added to his rage against his fellow townsmen. The owner of a fine farm, he neglected to work it and was forced to secure a mortgage. Just recently the mortgage was foreclosed and Kehoe swore that high school taxes cost his [sic] his farm.
Andrew Kehoe clearly had mental illness. No sane person would be willing to attempt to murder a single individual; much less a school full of children. Dangerous people like this should not be in our society, and they should be treated for their illnesses and society should be protected from them.
I don't know why Cho Seung-Hui did what he did. We may never know. What is clear though, is that there is never any valid reason for murder. We can debate the validity of gun control laws, the reaction of the local police, whether Obama or Edwards politicized it the right way, whether Bush politicized it the wrong way. All that we know is that yet again, many innocent lives were taken for no good reason by an insane maniac.
The common thread in both of these cases is that the person doing the murdering is insane. Many crimes committed on a daily basis are the result of mental illness. Our society has ignored this elephant in the room for too long. The Bath Disaster occurred because of a mentally ill man. The Columbine shootings occurred because of mentally ill kids. The murders of yesterday occurred because of mental illness. Our nation needs to have a serious dialogue about treating mental illnesses in order to prevent attacks like these. If we can help people move away from committing desperate acts of violence, and protect society by removing dangerous people from it, we will minimize the number of these incidents in the future.