Women's rights and other rants

I have been thinking about two news stories and I have to say something.  First, the horrific rape and murder in India.  Apparently this sort of crud happens a lot there and the response is that women should not leave their home or wear clothing that provokes attack.  WHAT?  This was the same lame excuse used by that dentist in the Midwest, whose mid-life crisis fantasies cost his assistant her job- one she had held for TEN YEARS.  Really? His wife found out he was "lusting in his heart" for the woman and demanded she be fired.  Nice.  Blaming the victim is popular in many cultures.  I can't tell you how many times I was told "you made me do that" as if this person had no free will of his own.  Are men SO weak that mere clothing forces them to behave like knuckle dragging Neanderthals?  There is a new movement afoot; one that focuses on teaching boys how to behave, not teaching girls how to avoid assault.  I doubt it will do much good, but I can always hope.  I have the same feeling about gun control.  I don't think this is the answer to problems like the one at Sandy Hook.  Attention to mental health issues might have done more good here.  They are yelling about the mother having guns in the house.  Do you really for one minute think that she would have kept them if she thought the boy would use them to kill her?  Who is to say they were not locked away, but he got to them anyway?  She paid the price along with the rest of the innocent victims.  It is probably not a popular thing to say, but she didn't deserve to die either. The kid had major mental health issues.  I wonder how much of his problems were being swept under the rug.  Guns in the schools won't solve the problem either.  Remember Virginia Tech?  They had their own police force.  Ft Hood was a military base, for crying out loud.  It is easy to say that these tragedies could have been prevented if everyone was packing, or if no one was packing.  But where do you draw the line?  Timothy McVeigh blew up a building using , among other things, fertilizer.  My point is that the crazy person will always be able to come up with something to cause mayhem. We need to figure out how to help them BEFORE they get to that point.