Virginia Tech Tragedy

On Monday, April 16, 2007, as I watched early reports about the terrible shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech University the thing that surprised me wasn’t necessarily that the shooting had occurred but that the shooter wasn’t a registered sex offender or a family member of a registered sex offender.

Why would I say such a horrible thing? Because it is inevitable unless we make some drastic changes, and I am surprised that it hasn’t happened already.

The most frustrating thing for me on the day that it DOES happen will be that all of my efforts to raise the alarm – that the efforts of the many groups to which I belong who also work tirelessly to raise the alarm – went unheeded. We have already seen several needless deaths of children committed at the hands of those made to bear the burdens of this modern-day Scarlet Letter, namely Dylan Groene and Christopher Barrios, Jr., and I am very fearful that something on the scale of the VT tragedy will happen.

What’s even more tragic about this situation is that it is perpetuated out of red herring mechanisms that exist in the name of public safety but in reality increase the threat against that very safety exponentially above where it would be otherwise.

With over 630,000 registered sex offenders living in our communities as well as their family and friends there are potentially over 2,000,000 Cho Seung-Hui’s coming to a boiling point with every passing moment, with every passing law.

The experts agree with this, and it is unfortunate that it will apparently take a tragedy the scale of that which occurred at Virginia Tech to wake the American people into demanding a change in these laws.

The Hope4Tomorrow Foundation supports responsible/balanced legislation regarding sex offender management.

http://www.hope4tomorrow.us

“An attack at Virginia Tech University has killed at least 32 students including the gunman who apparently took his own life.”

This sentence is either foolish or evil. Take a look at the verb. Then find its subject. Did the “attack” go on a kill-crazy rampage, or did a depraved English major named Cho do it? Did the “attack” kill Librescu as he protected his students, or did a desperate madman do it? Will survivors spend years trying to forget the look on the attack’s face? If Cho hadn’t killed himself, would the attack have gone to trial?

This sentence subtly takes the focus off the people involved by reifying an event and then past-tensing it into neutrality. Much like when we hear AP reports of “12 people were killed today when a suicide bomber exploded on a bus.”

One more thing, and I welcome responses from anyone out there who can give me an answer. I am nearly 50 and live in New York and yet I have never felt the need or the desire to own a gun. To those gunowners out there I ask, why? Why do you own guns? What do you need them for? Is owning a gun some way of asserting a masculinity you do not inherently have? Is it a replacement for some area of your body that may be smaller than average? Is it a way of projecting courage in a human being that lacks the same?

with regards

C. Lingaraj
http://www.medindia.net

Perhaps the real problem (just another possibility, I’m not proposing an absolute) is that many of us have come to believe that we are “owed” immediate gratification. Perhaps the “shooter” wanted an immediate solution to his problem. We may never know. I do know that many pundits were quick to trot out their favorite “demons”. Heck, even Franklin Graham trotted out Satan.

Could things have been done a different way? You bet but as has been pointed out this isn’t a perfect world. Look at the politicians posturing from the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia jetting home on the next plane to the President going to VPI&SU today. Maybe I missed it but one of the Clintons has probably commented “I feel you pain.”

The whole event is horrible. There is probably no easy answer and even more disturbing no “fool-proof” way to prevent it or a similar event from happening in the future. If there is another event I have no doubt that we’ll see everybody “choosing up sides and smelling armpits”. The liberals will point at the conservatives and the conservatives will point at the liberals. I have no idea whether the shooter at VPI&SU was a conservative or a liberal but he got to a point where his “enemies” needed to be put in their place. And we keep doing it.

\”I\’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly\’s actions,\” Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, \”because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus…\”…