"They had it coming" is the subtext of his essay, Mark, just as I state it was the subtext of that Onion parody (which had the good sense to at least avoid base moralizing in favor of satire). I wonder how you account for that open solicitation to hunt down and then post the address of one of the Columbine survivors, or Ames's comparison of Klebold and Harris to John Brown and Nat Turner, if you believe Ames is not attempting to justify school violence. Since you respond only to literal-mindedness, let me spell it out: Does he think Brown and Turner were villainous or heroic? And what corollary might we draw based on that answer?

You write in your review of Going Postal, as if channeling the sympathies of its author, that you identified with the Columbine massacrists. You and Ames go to great length to show with what demons they supposedly wrestled, and how these were brought to vivid psychic existence by bullies and taunters from CHS. Indeed, you cite approvingly that fetid eXile contest to disclose the current address of Rocky Hoffschneider as though it were a tribute to Ames's moral rectitude.

So let me inquire: What do you think should have been done to Hoffschneider by publishing, with the promise of reward, his whereabouts in a magazine? You write that the "evil" he represented -- as the stereotypical adolescent male of Middle American suburbia -- was greater than that of what Harris did, so you're saying that uttering vicious anti-Semitic taunts and shoving one's girlfriend in a locker is worse than murdering 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 24 others. Do you still stand behind this proposition?

"[Y]ou're not interested in an explanation for school shootings, as you openly admit in the Comments section." What I wrote was this: "I offer no alternative explanation to account for people like Seung-Hui Cho." How do you get from that to my not being interested? By definition, writing an essay that reprehends one thesis attempting to account for school shootings betrays a rather obvious interest.

"Ames hasn't even written anything about the Cho shooting, and yet you're already presuming to tell us what he thinks of it?" Actually, Mark, if you click on that AlterNet link, you'll see that your doyen of homeroom pathology has indeed commented on the Cho shooting, updating his sordid book in quick time -- and I'm sure not with a whiff of opportunism -- to mark the Virginia Tech atrocity. So much for your slavish appreciation of Ames's pioneering work, then.

"Furthermore, if you had read the book you'd know that Ames rejects the all to convenient "people who just snap" line of thinking. So not only do you irresponsibly pass off your guess of his view as fact, but you mischaracterize the view while doing so. Good work."

I may have used the word "snapped," but I in no way mischaracterized Ames's view that school shooters are "made" rather than born. The absence of the word "just" before "snapped" might have helped you better parse the characterization.