<p>I agree midmo-the tenure issue was the tipping point and most likely NOT the cause of this horrible tragedy.
[Police</a> find gun used in UAH shooting in bathroom, more charges pending against Amy Bishop | Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com](<a href=“http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/police_find_gun_used_in_uah_sh.html]Police”>Police find gun used in UAH shooting in bathroom, more charges pending against Amy Bishop - al.com)</p>
<p>re no partnership tracks in law firms…quite common…and some people are relieved to be on the payroll this way, others feel thwarted, humiliated and miserable. There are entire companies that do nothing but go to law firms to consult and to hammer our some way of governance and reward systems but each community has its own culture and standards just as each law firm can be a nation unto itself. Some are top heavy and exploit the young, and some firms give our fair incentives. In this recession such matters are all up in the air again. I have a close friend who negotiated non partnership track in order to have lower hours required a week…ie she only works 50-60 hours a week now! Yeah…she has children and aging parents and didn’t want the rat race of being a partner in her firm without someone at home to take care of the rest of her life’s responsibilities. She has a very satisfying position that works for her in a firm she respects and feels is fair.</p>
<p>one of the things we must teach our children is to trust their instincts when someone else could be mentally unstable. They will meet such people at work…it is inevitable. I worked for the Mental Health Association in a past life and saw how illness does not respect class or education and deeply mars lives. It is very hard to get some people into treatment of any kind and even harder for them to stay consistently under the care of a medical person if diagnosed with a mental disorder.</p>
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So, if the murderer had opened the door and tossed a bottle of flaming gasoline into the room, would ease of access to glass bottles and gasoline be the problem?</p>
<p>faline2, I wasn’t trying to justify homocide or that the outcome of losing a job was any more traumatic for non-academics than for professors denied tenure. My only point was that the process of being held up for essentially public scrutiny for a really long time and measured (in the university I know) by some extraordinary standards differs in degree from the firings/terminations that I see in the corporate world. Everything is done behind closed doors and the firee finds out about it at the very end. I’d guess the same thing is typically true of law firms, though I could be wrong there. But I wasn’t aware that in law firms, the partner-candidates spend weeks writing up a description of their work and distinctive contributions and how it fits into the intellectual history of their field, as well as supplying references in the specific sub-field who can comment on their work. There are probably instances in the corporate world where the situation has the same duration and intensity as that of a tenure review (perhaps the Chyrsler dealerships if that took a long time to mature), but I think those would be the exception rather than the norm, whereas with tenure decisions, the duration and intensity and politics are there in every case. Neither unexpected dismissals, out-of-the-blue bankruptcies like Lehman Brothers, nor long-drawn out semi-public political processes like some tenure decisions justifies shooting people.</p>
<p>Generally when people say guns are the problem they are implying that gun control is the solution. To which I generally like to ask the rhetorical question:</p>
<p>Why does Detroit have one of the highest murder rates in the US while Michigan has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country? In addition, Vermont, known for having some of the most liberal gun control laws, also has one of the lowest murder rates of all states.</p>
<p>I have a role in my company where the consideration of the risk of this sort of incident falls under my watch. We happen to have a good culture, but you just never know…I am having trouble convincing my management that we need some set procedures and ways to identify warning signs. I think the more this sort of thing happens, the more of it we will see- if that makes any sense.</p>
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<p>How often is gasoline used in that manner, to kill people, compared to how often guns are used?</p>
<p>Guns are tools created explicitly to kill humans and animals. They don’t do anything else, so access to guns has to be well regulated.</p>
<p>In this case, if the professor chose to express her rage using a knife or gasoline, the damage she could have caused would be lot less severe. If she carried gasoline, she would have easily been detected because of the size of the “weapon”, the odor, and the rest of the faculty would have had some time to react in the time it took to ignite that device.</p>
<p>Everywhere on earth people get mad. But in America, guns are so available and when American get mad they can buy guns to kill people. Guns dont kill people. People kill people. But if there are no guns availble, may be people go commit suicide instead of getting a gun and go bang bang bang at the crowd.</p>
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<p>Switzerland mandates that all men own and maintain firearms. Switzerland also has much less gun crime than the United States does. The guns aren’t the problem-the people are.</p>
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<p>Actually, most people killed by guns are killed by their own hands-i.e. suicide. Take away suicides and gun deaths in this country drop substantially.</p>
<p>According to the news report, she accidentally shot her brother three times.</p>
<p>Again, WOW.</p>
<p>“Switzerland mandates that all men own and maintain firearms. Switzerland also has much less gun crime than the United States does. The guns aren’t the problem-the people are.”</p>
<p>Switzerland has less people, less social ills less everything than the the USA does. Yes, people everywhere has their problems, but let deal with the issue that in America people can buy guns to shoot people. No gun no shooting.</p>
<p>I thought I remembered the name.</p>
<p>I was living withing 25 miles of that shooting.</p>
<p>Detroit has high incidence of murder with guns; Vermont and Switzerland have low rates… What variable might be the key here? … I’ve got it!! A LACK OF MOUNTAINS causes people to shoot each other!</p>
<p>We regulate cars by requiring driver licenses and license plates and some states require annual safety checks, but people are killed in traffic accidents daily, far more than with hand guns.</p>
<p>[JBlog</a> Central - The Jewish Blog Network | Gopi Podila Murdered in UAH Shootings: Maria Ragland Davis Murdered in UAH Shooting: Adriel Johnson Murdered in UAH Shooting](<a href=“http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=2611802]JBlog”>http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=2611802)</p>
<p>All three killed are non-white too. Wonder what the racial breakdown of the tenure committee was and if this was a factor.</p>
<p>BCEagle, do you mean that you remembered the earlier “accidental” shooting? From the news story I read, it sounds as if there was a major coverup at the mother’s request. Unbelievable.</p>
<p>I just remembered the name in the news. I didn’t really follow the case - I just remembered hearing the name over and over again.</p>
<p>One report I read stated that Amy Bishop’s mother was a “town official” in Braintree, MA, where the shooting occurred, at the time.</p>
<p>It did not say if she was an elected official or an employee of the town. This could explain a coverup, if one existed.</p>
<p>[U</a>. Of Alabama Shooting Suspect Also Shot Brother In Mass. - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston](<a href=“http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/22557530/detail.html]U”>http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/22557530/detail.html)</p>
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<p>Delahunt may have some explaining to do.</p>
<p>I really hope this thread doesn’t turn into yet another argument about gun control, and that if someone wants to argue about that, they start a new thread in the election and politics forum. That discussion does NOT belong here, even apart from the fact that I think it draws attention away from this awful tragedy itself.</p>