Comments on the Virginia Tech tragedy

NBC's actions

I must admit that I was appalled to see that NBC put clips from Cho Seung-Hui's deranged video to air. Is it not obvious that by doing so NBC has shown every psychopath with a grievance how to get their fifteen minutes of fame? How many copycat mass shootings will there now be in which the killer mails a video to the media?

Did NBC consider the effect on the victims' loved ones at all? Can you imagine being the parents of one of the murdered students, turning on the TV and being confronted by Cho ranting incoherently that it was all their fault? I hope that the parents of the victims sue NBC for all it's worth on the grounds of knowingly inflicting mental anguish - a tort law in the United States.

Liviu Librescu

There has also been much more about Cho than his victims and way too little about Liviu Librescu the 77 year old, Jewish Holocaust survivor that lost his life by barricading the door to Norris Hall's Room 204 while his students jumped out of the window. He must have known that he was going to die. Did this small, slightly built man wonder about the irony that his last day on earth would be on Holocaust Remembrance Day?

I'll ask a really politically incorrect question here. If he was a 40 year old gay black man then wouldn't his name be all over the media and his life story be told in the most minute detail available? Of course it would. The anti-Semitism of the media and the Left has barely been put on hold for even a moment to acknowledge Librescu's bravery at a time of the worst shooting in the nation's history.

Has anyone seen reports from the mainstream media that Librescu is listed in Who's Who In America, Who's Who in Engineering, Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in Science and Engineering? I hope that someone tells his story in detail in order to teach people that goodness, personal bravery and the ability to overcome great obstacles to achieve success still exists in our increasingly morally inverted and narcissistic world.

'Understanding' evil

It has been revealed that in December 2005, Cho was declared "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" and posed "an imminent danger," according to a temporary detention order issued by a Virginia district court. Court documents show that on December 13, 2005, a Montgomery County District Court judge ordered Cho undergo mental evaluation at Carilion St. Albans Hospital. The judge issued a temporary detention order on the grounds that Cho was "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as mental illness, or is seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment."

NBC, and various others, are justifying showing the Cho video so that we can understand him better and be able to recognise his type of evil in the future. The people making this ridiculous statement belong to the same group that tells us all is relative and we're not allowed to judge others. Who is going to judge? And to whom do they go?

The advent of mind-controlling drugs from the 1970s onward led to the closing down of most of the institutions for the mentally disturbed. Those retarded and mentally ill people who would formerly have been confined are now considered a class all of their own and carry the same victim status as any other group. Apparently, we need to 'understand' them in order to help them. If we understand that they're completely deranged and a danger to society then what seems to be the most prudent course of action, locking them away in an institution, is the option of last resort. As a result we have human time bombs like Cho walking the streets just waiting for the appropriate trigger to set them off.

How did he get the guns?

With a not inconsiderable police record and a judge's verdict that he was mentally ill how does it come about that Cho was able to walk into a gun store and legally purchase two handguns? There is a law that the mentally ill cannot purchase weapons. As I understand it, there's a form that the purchaser needs to fill in that includes a question about whether they've had any form of mental illness. Strangely enough, Cho didn't tick that box. If that's the case then heads need to roll from whatever official level that allowed it to be so simple to avoid being detected. Surely, someone, somewhere, must have a database that can be used as an authorisation source in the same way that credit card transactions are authorised? That is very troubling indeed.

The gun debate

The undignified haste with which the pro- and anti-gun lobby weighed into the situation was, frankly, quite disgusting. The bodies of the victims were barely cold and, in many cases, victims' families were yet to be notified. Instead of taking the honourable course of action and allowing for a period of mourning people rushed to be first to spout forth the same old arguments that there are after every shooting. A plague on both their houses for their insensitivity and indecency, as far as I'm concerned.

I have mixed feelings about allowing gun ownership. It is certainly true that jurisdictions in which guns have been available that then institute harsh gun laws see a marked rise in crime rates and, especially, what's known as 'hot entry' - breaking into people's homes when there are people inside. This is the case in Washington DC, Mexico, London and Brussels, for example. Japan is held up as a county with a large population that does not have a gun problem at anywhere near the same level as Western countries. This misses the point that Japan managed to avoid guns and they're only available to the criminal classes. Just yesterday, the mayor of a Japanese city was gunned down by the Yakuza and in the media report they stated that the Yakuza were among those that had access to weapons.

It should also be noted that a country that already had tough gun laws at the time - Australia - was the scene of the Port Arthur Massacre in which Martin Bryant killed 35 and wounded another 37 people before being captured. Like Cho, it appears Bryant's desire for attention as well as mounting frustration at his social isolation, had made him unbearably angry. He allegedly told a next door neighbour, "I'll do something that will make everyone remember me." Also like Cho, he had been diagnosed with a mental illness many years before.

There are more guns in the United States than people. It is therefore thought that banning the sale of guns will have little effect and that 'bad' people will always get guns.

I think that this misses an important point. In the cases of Cho and Bryant, they were not considered 'bad' until they went on their murderous rampages. Up until that time they were still considered 'good' albeit troubled. The 'bad people' referred to in this case are those that are already criminals, gang members and other assorted violent low lifes with police records. The 'bad people' do not include the yet-to-be-diagnosed criminally insane and so, to me, that argument doesn't wash.

Equally, there's not much for the anti-gun lobby to hold onto, either. Cho's weapons were a 9mm handgun and a 0.22 calibre handgun. Seriously, if someone had you tied up and said they were going to shoot you and that you could choose your weapon then you'd pick a 0.22. The anti-gun lobby has been mainly concerned with banning assault weapons lately and it's hard to argue with that although the legislation they're trying to get through is aimed at all weapons.

In saying all of that, in the US there is still the Second Amendment to consider. The famous line, which most can repeat from memory is "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What the Founding Fathers were referring to was the situation in which the government was overthrown by forces against the will of the people. In that circumstance, the people would be allowed to take up arms and restore order. It's hard to imagine that the security of the State will be at risk any time soon but I guess that the Founding Fathers didn't put a time frame or conditions on the Amendment and therefore it stands as written.

Would it be better if there were no guns? Of course. Unfortunately, we live on Earth, not Utopia, and there are no easy answers. What's clear, though, is that there are certain steps we can take to minimise the likelihood of future atrocities by ensuring that guns are not sold to those taking any form of anti-depressant medication let alone having a diagnosed mental illness and by not giving the perpetrator their fifteen minutes of fame via the mainstream media.

UPDATE: Commenter Faye has sent through a link to the form you need to fill out to obtain a gun. As Faye points out:

...here's the retarded background check form. Scroll down to #11. It is the most laughed at part of the form by gun owners.

It's even worse than I thought!