Anyone remember Patrick Purdy? Time Magazine still does:

Slaughter in A School Yard

Jan. 30, 1989

The gunman drove his Chevrolet station wagon to the rear of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif. He stepped out, carrying a Chinese-made semiautomatic AK-47 rifle loaded with 75 bullets. Carved into the AK-47's stock were disconnected words: " freedom," " victory," " Hezbollah." He wore a flak jacket under a camouflage shirt jacket that bore other words, one misspelled: " PLO," " Libya," " death to the Great Satin." He had placed plugs in his ears to dull the sounds of what he was about to do. Patrick Purdy, 26, a drifter with guerrilla-warfare fantasies, had returned to the school....

Just a "normal" pyscho.

For her part, Dianne Feinstein blamed the gun with the psychotic "Hezbollah" carvings:

Let me speak for a moment about perhaps the most notorious assault weapon, the AK-47. This gun, developed in the former Soviet Union, is one of the most widely used military weapons in the world. It is not used to hunt, at least not to hunt animals. It is not well designed for home defense. Its ammunition can easily pierce walls and kill innocent bystanders. I will tell you what it is good for: the rapid killing of other people. How well I remember when an unstable drifter by the name of Patrick Purdy, with an assault weapon modeled after the AK-47, walked into a Stockton schoolyard in northern California. He lay on his belly, and he fired indiscriminately into the schoolyard. He fired 106 rounds of ammunition. By the time he was done, 5 children were dead and 29 were injured--five children dead because a of drifter who could gain one of the most powerful military weapons and use it against children.

Fortunately for us all, gun control has nothing to do with Joel Hinrichs.

Or has it? Might he have had a mental history which prohibited him from buying firearms? Has anyone checked with his psychiatrist? Do we even know whether he had a psychiatrist?

Officials like OU President David Boren were very quick to blame Hinrichs' mental, um, problems, but I noticed that the references were worded in such a way as to defy precise analysis.

From an NBC News report:

"We know that he has had what I would call emotional difficulties in the past," Boren said. "There is certainly no evidence at this point which points to any other kind of motivation other than his personal problems."

Hinrichs' father, Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr., said he is clinging to the idea that his son's death was unintentional. He said he communicated with his son and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He said his son was a very intelligent and private individual who somehow lost the confidence that his life would be a good one.

He told The Denver Post that his son had trouble making friends with peers. He said his son took a year off college to try to cope with depression.

Or is this "confidential" and known only to university officials? If so, why? Bear in mind his father's remarks about his son's apparently lifelong interest in explosives:

His son also had an interest in explosives, Hinrichs said.

"Every little boy does that," he said. "He went a little further than most."

But he was, like, you know.

Coping.

With depression.

I've seen a lot of things, known a lot of depressed people, and a lot of coping mechanisms. But I've never known any depressed person who thought of "coping" by means of explosives.

But let's just assume that the spin being promulgated is true, and that Joel Hinrichs was a depressed lone nut who saw an explosive way out of life. Allowing for the possibility that the act of self detonation with "Mother of Satan" TATP explosives -- 100 yards from 84,000 people -- was in no way connected with terrorism (or "extremist groups" as they put it), I have a couple of questions.

Isn't it dangerous for mentally ill people to blow themselves up in front of football stadiums?

Isn't it at least as dangerous as mentally ill people opening fire with guns?

My stubborn (but sometimes elusive) common sense tells me that if Hinrichs had owned an AK-47 like Patrick Purdy's, had he sat down on that same bench with it and put a round through his head in front of a stadium filled with people, someone, somewhere, might have asked questions along the following lines:

Is there a double standard? Why should nuts with guns be considered more dangerous than nuts with explosives?

Certainly, the possibility of psychotic individuals (or lone nuts) committing highly dangerous acts like suicide bombings is not a new one. Indeed, I've discussed it before when I discussed terrorism by homeless suicide bombers. (An idea raised not by me, but by a regional director for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition...)

I'm tempted to ask why irrational suicide should be considered less dangerous than "rational" suicide, but it might be a distinction without a difference.

(At any rate, it doesn't seem to make any difference.)

UPDATE: Interesting editorial from the Enid (Oklahoma) News and Eagle:

It's clear the FBI, which is in charge of the investigation, is trying to be tight-lipped because they don't have all the answers. They can state they have no direct evidence "at this time" to support any reports Hinrichs was involved with terrorist organizations or he intended to do harm to the fans in the stadium.

They probably are doing the right thing by limiting their comments until they have confirmed answers to all their questions. But, the information that is being ferreted out by the media is starting to paint a disturbing picture. Why would Hinrichs try to buy large quantities of a known explosive material? What was his motive for committing the suicide in such a public and dramatic way? What kinds of associations has he been involved with recently and what were his political views?

We applaud Boren for the attention he has given the matter and his daily briefings regarding the status of the investigation. Yet, we also believe there are more layers to this story than are being publicly disclosed at this time.

We can be patient for a little awhile as the FBI does its job of investigating the situation. However, it's imperative the truth be presented in full as quickly as possible. And, the questions need to be answered sooner rather than later in order to best serve the OU students, faculty and the fans of its spectator sports.