I was editing a draft of an article about celebrity in The United States when the news broke about the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech. My immediate reaction was, "My God, not another one." With news updates of the rising death toll as background sound, I decided to write about why this country has so many incidents like this compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina opens with the line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Perhaps the same is true of countries. If that is the case, we are America the violent.

One of the immediate reactions to shooting incidents is to start beating the gun control drum. Canada and Switzerland have many more guns per capita then the U.S. and far fewer acts of gun violence. Restrictions on the right to bear arms will not cure our problem. We need to look at why our society is so violent. Just as the answer to our drug problem is not interdiction of drug traffic but answering the question of why Americans have such a great need to drug themselves; we need to figure out, in a land that seemingly offers so much, why so many of our people are murderous malcontents?

I've read that suburban teens are more likely to kill themselves than inner city youth. A possible reason given was that suburban teens have such high expectations for their lives that any diminution of their lifestyle is seen as complete failure and a reason for suicide but urban kids feel lucky just to have survived another day in their violent environment.

Perhaps, because our country offers so much in the way of crude satisfactions and so many choices for pleasuring and anesthetizing ourselves, people who incur any minor inconvenience, perceived slight or temporary setback, instead of working to overcome the situation or, heaven forbid, admitting that they may be at fault, decide to kill other people and/or themselves. It's easier.

Do these people look around at the great abundance that seems to come to some and become so enraged, so jealous of what others appear to have, whether in the way of material goods or a better life, that the only way they can react is to take lives?

When these people kill strangers, are those strangers symbolic representations of their misguided discontent? I believe that was the case with Klebold and Harris. I hope a higher court overturns the decision to seal the records of the interviews with their parents because I believe we could learn a great deal about the psychology of those who are incapable of channeling their violent emotions into some safe outlet.

When these massacres take place, the issue of self-esteem is often raised. It is often suggested that the perpetrator may have suffered low self-esteem and so it becomes a rule that people should have their esteem bolstered to ensure it remains high. I contend that it is people with high self-esteem who bully and have little regard for others and it is those with low or moderate self-esteem who, in order to prove themselves to the world, go on to find a cure for cancer or otherwise benefit mankind.

Another factor I discount as a cause of these violent acts, is the amount of violent images present in movies and TV. Many people are capable of viewing these images without becoming homicidal. There is something malevolent buried deep in the psyche of those individuals who act on their murderous impulses. I hope that someone will be able to prevent future incidents by discovering the mixture of circumstances that act as a catalyst to set some of our citizens off on deadly rampages.

I am completely at a loss as to why this violent behavior is particularly an American phenomenon. All I can offer are a couple of observations by people wiser than me.

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." - Oscar Wilde

"Consider this: We live in a country that has never made a movie about Leonardo da Vinci and has produced three about Joey Buttafuco." - Pete Hamill