Apr 16 2007
VT Shooting (over)reactions
The killing of innocents always brings out the conflicting feelings in me. I feel rage at the evil that was done and helplessness at not being able to do anything as the horrific drama unfolds.
I feel sorrow for the families of the victims, horror at the suffering the victims themselves must have suffered, and pity for the unmentioned victims, the family of the shooter, for they are victims also in that they well bear his stigma in his coward's death.
But sadly for me, in this day and age, I also feel frustration at the politicians and media (bloggers included) who will spin, promote and demagogue away with this event. What ought to be a shared moment of national sorrow becomes a media circus in what Michelle Malkin has labeled the Blame-the-guns bias watch.
And the sad truth is that as I watched the events unfold, she was totally correct, within hours the first calls for gun control were generated, one at the President's briefing, another in the promos for the MSNBC Scarborough and Country gun control special.1
I won't say that the topic is not relevant, nor that there may or may not be some merit to it, but have we lost our compassion to the point that we have to trample on the dead while the steam still rises form their corpses in order to "scoop" the story?
And already one alleged false report has surfaced from such hasty reporting, that being the false identification of the shooter:2
The Internet rumor mill, chasing down leads on the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, has been grinding all day. Allah debunks one of those rumors, which Hot Air received, investigated, and debated this afternoon and evening:
More anti gun reactions at the NYTime and Reuters.
There are some interesting reactions from the blogsphere too.3
Bull Dog Pundit: "In one sentence they say is that it is 'premature to draw too many lessons,' yet they then go on to say that stronger laws are needed over 'lethal weapons,' even though nothing is known about how he got them."
That reminds me of an email conversation with a friend who asked the same question, and offered that how he got the gun made a big difference. I disagree. How he got the guns is a pointless distraction.
Bryan Preston examines how resident aliens can obtain guns.
This dovetails into the rumors he was here on a visa. Let's make sure we roll the immigration issue into it.
Clayton Cramer ruminates on concealed carry and massacre prevention.
I know more than a few faculty, either full-time or adjuncts at various colleges around the country who have carry permits. In those states where the laws allows it, some of them carry on campus. Many of the others would do so, at least when teaching night classes.
Would this have prevented this tragedy? It's hard to say. In most states, about 3-5% of the population eventually get a concealed carry permit. A few carry all the time; some carry frequently; a few carry very seldom. I would not say that there was a strong chance that repealing Virginia Tech's rule, and similar ones around the country, would make a big difference. But it would make a big difference to anyone who survived because one victim could fight back!
And that last sentiment brings me to an ironic editorial.
Andrew's Dad, noting a recent editorial from Va. Tech's university relations vice president arguing against allowing students to carry in self-defense on campus, blogs:
Imagine if students were armed
In an editorial dated Sept. 5th, 2006, Larry Hincker Vice President of University Relations from... wait for it... Virginia Tech, replied to an editorial from Bradford Wiles titled "Unarmed and vulnerable," Aug. 31. The last line of Mr. Hinckers editorial states:
Guns don't belong in the classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.
Just imagine if students were armed. We no longer need to imagine what will happen when they are not armed.
Update: The original Unarmed and vulnerable commentary has been located.
Bear in mind this was from back in August. How prophetic.
Unarmed and vulnerable
From a Virginia Tech Blog, August 31, 2006
Bradford B. Wiles
Wiles, of New Castle, is a graduate student at Virginia Tech.
On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my graduate-level class was evacuated from the Squires Student Center. We were interrupted in class and not informed of anything other than the following words: "You need to get out of the building."
Upon exiting the classroom, we were met at the doors leading outside by two armor-clad policemen with fully automatic weapons, plus their side arms. Once outside, there were several more officers with either fully automatic rifles and pump shotguns, and policemen running down the street, pistols drawn.
It was at this time that I realized that I had no viable means of protecting myself.
Please realize that I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia, and do so on a regular basis. However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech's student policy, which makes possession of a handgun an expellable offense, but not a prosecutable crime.
I had entrusted my safety, and the safety of others to the police. In light of this, there are a few things I wish to point out.
First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.
Second, I considered bringing my gun with me to campus, but did not due to the obvious risk of losing my graduate career, which is ridiculous because had I been shot and killed, there would have been no graduate career for me anyway.
Third, and most important, I am trained and able to carry a concealed handgun almost anywhere in Virginia and other states that have reciprocity with Virginia, but cannot carry where I spend more time than anywhere else because, somehow, I become a threat to others when I cross from the town of Blacksburg onto Virginia Tech's campus.
Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.
That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.
I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, "I would feel safer if you had your gun."
The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.
I am qualified and capable of carrying a concealed handgun and urge you to work with me to allow my most basic right of self-defense, and eliminate my entrusting my safety and the safety of my classmates to the government.
This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.
That is one aspect of the debate that will not happen much in the MSM outlets, but will be in heavy debate in some places like O'Reilly and Hannity, and in the blogsphere.
And also debated, with less vehemence, will be the notion that we as a people as so sheep-ish that we allow one guy to kill people when a group of the potential victims could have easily overwhelmed him.
Lest anyone accuse me of blaming the victim, I will clearly say that in a similar situation I doubt I would be the guy to rush the gunman, the hero in the face of overwhelming odds. I would likely cower in a corner and wait to die. But the reality is that we preach so much non-violence that I sometimes wonder if we are breeding the ability to fight for our survival. Have we become so used to letting the government protect us that we have lost the ability to protect ourselves? It scares me, not just that I might be right, but that the thought occurs to me at all.
I have posted before that I plan to get my carry permit, and this again reinforces my desire to do so. Not so I can necessarily be Rambo in a situation like that, but so that I will at least have the ability to have a choice. With the no gun rules, these students did not have that option.
But then I stop. I realize I am doing it too. Am I so insensitive to the suffering that I can editorialize on the event mere hours later?
As I look at all this, I return to the feeling that too much has been said too soon, and I am complicate.
But hope abounds. People like Ken Schram have historically been on the warpath against guns, and I fully expected him to rally the anti gun forces tonight.
But in his commentary tonight, he seems to also see the idiocy of the early overreactions:
32 people murdered.
29 others wounded.
Honestly, I can't wrap my mind around the enormity of what happened at Virginia Tech.
Others don't seem to have that problem.
I'm dumbfounded by the people who've leaped into this tragedy by ignorantly proclaiming how it could all have been avoided if only more students carried guns.
The lame-brained notion being that if the college kids were armed, one of them could have placed a round between the killer's eyes.
Equally ignorant is the clamor of those who insist that the Virginia Tech tragedy proves that every gun owned by every person in the U.S. should be confiscated and gun sales forever prohibited.
Some news organizations are eagerly fueling the frenzy by offering instant internet polls on what people think should be done.
It's as if 32 dead college students are nothing more than fodder for political points of view on gun control.
The gun nuts versus the anti gun nuts.
And I simply wonder when we lost the social capacity to simply express sadness.
I wonder why we can't put the issues on hold for even a short time and quietly mourn the dead and pray for their families.
I guess maybe there is hope if that guy can take a measured moderate approach. Maybe I will call his show and thank him for that tomorrow. By then I expect his anti gun feelings will be back on track.
But for now, for this moment, he is 100% correct. Tomorrow is a good day for discussions, debates, blame and decisions.
Tonight we should just hold each other's hands and pray. I will close on that note and on this image, which I found at Sister Toldjah.
RIP. God have mercy on us.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, The Virtuous Republic, DragonLady's World, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, The Pet Haven, , Conservative Cat, Pet's Garden Blog, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
- Hot Air [back]
- Who is "wanusmaximus?" [back]
- source: Michelle Malkin [back]
18 Responses to “VT Shooting (over)reactions”
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the V.T shooting is one more example why society should get off the PITTY POT with these mental’s, people that are a danger to society via mental problems, or Substance abuse need to be Put away in one of those good Old Fashined mental institutions. Counseling is just one more way to Wait for another situation like this.
Why have we heard nothing about the shooter’s family?
Give it a rest. After 4 years of road bombs in Irag and hundreds of pictures of complete devastation, What are you folks all up set about?
We lost almost 3000 people on 9-11 this little maggot was only trying to make himself important. For 2 plus hours he became a legend in his own warped mind. Yes young people died. Its too bad, but its not going to change the world. They will only be missed by those that knew and loved them.
Two years from now you and I won’t remember their names. But I’m sure the news media will shove the name of the college down our throats till in sticks there like Columbine.
We will hear months of double talk about gun control, and little will change. The most that will be accomplished is more guns will go deeper into hiding, and ammunition will be stockpiled.
The wackos will still be out there, and more people are going to die. If not by guns then by things like bombs in subways, or Saren gas at sports events. Stop refering to every death a “Horrible” or “Tragic” its just a fact of life in 2007. GET-OVER-IT and move on. Its out of your control
I understand Karl’s sentiment while writing the blog, but i also agree with Enough Hype. Yet the latter’s comment made me more sad than the shooting itself, especially the last part:
“Stop refering to every death a “Horrible” or “Tragic” its just a fact of life in 2007. GET-OVER-IT and move on. Its out of your control”
Some people have feelings and questions that just can’t “get over” and move on. They want to understand. If we take it for granted, that this is life, this is all there is, we have no control over everything, we can’t change anything, then what’s the point of it all?
We learned to live in an unhealthy world and became infected ourselves, to the point that we can’t critically see a psychopathic action as what it is, and we accept it all in silence, like cattle to the slaughterhouse.
I think we can make a difference and prevent not only the VT shooting, but all the deaths in Iraq and Gaza, and Darfur, and all over the world, from taking place in the name of lies and disinformations so that those in power can continue their war against the rest of us. Yesterday it was the terrorists. Now with Cho, it would be the people with psychological problems. We have to educate ourselves about what is healthy and what is unhealthy, both in us and both in the world around us. An editorial i read today wrote:
//But there are individuals [psychopaths - google the term and buy books] who never feel remorse, who are incapable of feeling remorse. Nothing in the world can help them to see the error of their act, the violence they have perpetrated on another, and to see the need to repair the damage. The reaction is more along the lines of “What of it?” or “Get over it”.
The truly horrific acts of evil, or the majority of them, are those perpetrated by such human looking predators. These predators can take positions of power in organizations and in society and can instill an environment where the morally weak are easily influenced into mimicking such acts. Other people who are not pathological can be influenced by this environment and can come to accept that such acts are normal or part of life. A mundane example is the way violence and taunts are now accepted as being part and parcel of sport. There is nothing about violence and taunts that is intrinsic to sport, and yet few bat an eye now when it shows its head. Many even hope it will show its head.//
http://tinyurl.com/yvekgq
I advice to read the whole article to understand both Cho’s action maybe, and why the whole world is as it is. Because, with knowledge we CAN make a difference, Knowledge IS power and protects. Never heard that before
Knowledge is power. If the pilots of 9-11 (one being a classmate of mine from U.S. Air Force Academy Class 91) knew that the two other planes had imploded in the largest skyscrpapers in the North East they would have went against their outdated FAA guidelines to negotiate with hostages and started to think about using the fire axes next to their unsesure cockpit doors to hack ANYONE coming into their cockpit. The bottom-line is that too much information is not bad. If half of the classrooms at VT on the second floor knew that two fellow students were murdered on campus (never happened at VT in the 20th century) they would have started to think about what they would have done as human beings to protect themselves. I lived in South Korea for two years… this issue has NOTHING to do with Koreans. It has everything to do with Ignorant Americans and our legal system and our love for hollow point ammunition. My Grandfather was the chapter president of the NRA in Stanford Connecticut, my fater was a Brigadier General in the Army and I served as a Missile launch officer for ICBM missiles under very tight mental guidelines in the U.S Air Force. Nothing is MORE ignorant that America’s right to own guns. If the professors in the classrooms that tragic day at Virginia Tech owned advanced Taser guns… Cho would have dropped in .2 saconds … quicker than any 22 or 9 mm round going through him. The thought of America being armed in classrooms is as ignorant as our budget shortfalls and our value of the U.S. Dolllar. The average State Police force has 2 accident ’shooting’s per yer… mulitply that by 340 Million ignorant gun toting americans and you have self induced genicide. I’m a fiscal Republican, but common sense American first. Our right the bare arms was Null and Void after the introduction of the high velocity ballistic round. We need to take a lesson from our Australian brothers who have the most logical gun laws in the ‘free world’. They are a nation of criminals since their foundation as a nation was formed by criminals being banished from England. Most Americans think we are a nation that most deserves the right to bear arms. Don’t you think a nation like Australia which was formed by criminals deserves the right? But they are sane - then have the tightest gun rules in the free world and laugh at the U.S.
We Americans are ignorant… Ugly Americans who can’t undertand history older than 300 years. God Bless America!
US service academy grad, by standing behind US citizen’s right to own guns, by default you should have not used the phrase “knowledge is power”. Because owing guns to protect ourselves has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge. Give machines and robots guns and they can use them. Even animals can be taught how to use guns. You know why human beings have no claws, or sharp teeth or why they can’t spew venom? Because we have mind (though doesn’t apply to everyone anymore, it’s an antique something forgotten). Human beings’ physique is one that shows that human beings are NOT made to kill. We are not built like that, instead we have brain in order to use it and find find ways to PROTECT ourselves and AVOID being killed. Your proposal is one that leads humans back into being animals. Knowledge has to do with using all one’s faculties at once in order to think, assess, make decisions and apply them. Then only is Knowledge power.
I prefer the knowledge that I can defend myself and the knowledge that my gun trainihng makes it possible for me to hit my target accurately.
That is power.
The US Constitution was not qualifed by caliber and until the second amendment is repealed, I will continue to be an advocate for Responsible Gun Ownership.
LSU
YOUR A SICK SHIT!
i just want to say that here in nyc we feel your pain . i just want to say that i am in college and don’t feel safe here because they don’t ever check id’s or anything and that means anyone can walk into a build . you guys will make it but never forget what happen on April 9,2007 a that the whole world wil keep in their hearts.
The person here that commited the killings did not know what he was doing. You can call him anything you want any it won’t matter. Mental health and all other services in this country has declined over the years and labled the equivalent of a welfare check. No one can predict if and when someone will become psychotic BUT there was two (2) hours in between the first shooting of two people until he returned and engaged in a mass killing. Cho was psychotic that is his story, But what is the college and the state police’s BS story? Common sense was not in play for the people we deem sane? The college and the police were engaged in Cover Your A_ _ Mode. I can see it now. The College Officials in the board room saying: “Hey, Let’s not tell anyone yet and maybe they will find the killer, and maybe we can ride this out and maybe we can avoid a SCANDAL. Can you pass the creamer please?
The College officials and the state police gambled, rolled the dice with your children….and over 30 people more were shot to death. We need more Mental health Intervention, More common sense, and less guns.