Regarding the current discussions over the Littleton, Colo., shooting, I agree with Greg Jerrett that the media is over-covering these situations, but I would like the facts.

Not the speculations. Not the best guesses. Not the “my brother’s girlfriend’s sister’s best friend’s mother knew someone there so I’m an authority.” The facts.

There are two facts to every crime: Method and motive. The first we know — they walked in and shot people.

Where they got the guns, what the weapons were, how they got a huge number of bombs into the school without being noticed — these are either unknown, or the media is not telling us. I find the second one hard to believe, and if the truth is unknown, I don’t want to hear people guessing.

The same is true for motive. I hear people who have no connection to these guys speculating about why they ended up as killers.

Listening to Marilyn Manson, wearing long black trench coats, wearing black in general, speaking German in the hallways, feeling outcast, thinking Hitler had the right idea, etc. These are a few of the things people are citing as triggers for murder. Excuse me?

I know listening to Manson isn’t causing this trouble.

Speaking German is out; otherwise many of my next-door neighbors would be bloodthirsty renegades instead of mild-mannered honors students.

Feeling outcast? I think 90 percent of my high school felt like outcasts.

How about Hitler? From a historical viewpoint, Hitler jump-started the German economy, re-instituted a sense of German pride after WWI and got the country back on its feet. He went the wrong way with it, but he did a lot of what he said he was going to do, which is more than you could say for most politicians.

I don’t think any of these theories fit. These behaviors are not murderer-makers. So, let’s all be patient and rational. Most likely, we’ll never know why they did it.

Michael Riley blames a lack of moral teaching. Riley States, “In the past 100 years, moral teaching has been on such a rapid decline, we are almost entirely lost.” As a religious studies major, I find that hard to believe.

Perhaps there is a decline in the number of people going to church, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are automatically immoral. From my experience, even atheists have very delineated morals they have developed on their own by reason and thought.

The most significant problem with Mr. Riley’s theory is even with moral teaching, things go awry. Mr. Riley can’t tell me crime began a hundred years ago. He adds, “Virtues create life and longevity.” That may be a nice theory, but good people die young, too; look at the victims. Some bad people live to be over 100 years old. This whole notion is silly!

Jean Fitzpatick

Junior

Religious studies and biology