Reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings: Part I
April 16, 2007 at 17:13 (Written as the news was breaking...)
My nephew is currently a student at Virginia Tech. My niece is a grad. So many thoughts rushing through my head. I don't know if my nephew is safe though I have no reason to believe he isn't. Virginia Tech is an enormous school, he doesn't live on campus, he isn't an engineering student...
But the horror of it all. I actually knew someone who was present at the 1966 University of Texas massacre, which until today was the worst school shooting in U.S. history. If I remember his story correctly, he was crossing the street with a friend, part of a knot of students going to or leaving the post office. Shots rang out and people died--including the friend he was walking with. He wasn't shot but the life he'd lived up until that moment was irrevocably altered.
Why does America have school shootings? What is it in our culture that spurs people to arm themselves and slaughter students at school? Even the Amish have had their tiny schoolhouses bathed in blood. Why in the richest nation in the world are there people so desperate, bereft, isolated, and deranged that shootings like this are becoming increasingly common?
In the fall of 2001, when a sniper was terrorizing Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland, my children were locked down in their school. The sniper struck in a mall parking lot less than a half mile from campus. I can't tell you what it was like to drive by the scene of the shooting not knowing where the shooter was and attempt to retrieve my children from the school. For months, they didn't have recess, children were dropped off at the door of the school one by one and escorted in by police. A child was shot at a school in Maryland. The sniper struck at a gas station in our town as well. We never felt safe.
Here I am in Europe, watching this story unfold in Virginia, thinking hard about how the current administration has focused the nation's attention on the Other, the foreigner, the Muslim extremist. Talk to a European about visiting the U.S. and you'll hear their horror stories--having to provide bank account numbers, fill out paperwork, wait in long lines, have their laptops accessed, be fingerprinted and treated like criminals.
But who's doing the killing in America? Who's slaughtering innocents? Who's commiting domestic "acts of terrorism"? None other than our own citizens. It's laughable to think Bush was ready to pour millions of dollars into fencing the border with Mexico, as if people trying to snag low-paying jobs was our biggest domestic threat. It's a great diversionary tactic to keep us from looking at ourselves, our economy, our way of life, our thinking, and what we find acceptable.
Maybe it's time we stop demonizing the enemy without and pay attention to the enemy within.
After an event like this, the focus is always on security and emergency response; it isn't on our national mind set, our culture, our social values, support systems, or mental health and social services.
The question that needs to be answered isn't simply "Why couldn't the police stop this shooter more quickly?" but "What might have stopped this person from shooting in the first place?"
April 16, 2007
Reader Comments (24)
V, I'm hoping and praying that your nephew is safe. Please keep us posted.
Whether or not the current approach to homeland security is appropriate/effective, there is an enemy without, who has vowed to do whatever they can to Israel and the United States and any other country who runs afoul of them. They take to the streets in joyous celebration when they are successful in their attempts to hurt us. We have to find a way to keep us safe from all who would threaten us, whether they come from our country or another.
I agree with your take, we have become so used to terror...foreign or domestic. Suicides now want to take people with them. The ultimate sign of cowardess.
Please know I will keep you, your family...and for that matter all of us..in my prayers tonight.
I remember the sniper incident so well and still think of it often when I pass by the sites of the shootings and even occasionally my son's high school and the place I regularly get gas. Those were some very scary and dark days. My son could not have any after school activities either and his high school dances were all postponed until after the snipers were caught. DH always took my car to get gas as, like you said, several of the shootings happened at gas stations. While I was grateful and relieved, I felt guilty, wondering how I would live with myself if anything happened to him while he was pumping my gas. I remember when they had an expert on CNN who mapped out where he thought the sniper would go next and it was right through our county. We prayed the snipers weren't watching and following his path. I think the terror we felt during that time was actually worse than the aftermath of 9/11.
And, now all the finger pointing starts about the Tech tragedy ... and it's so sad because if the first shooting had been it (and God knows that would have been way too much), and the authorities had put people in lockdown, then people would have been saying the administration overreacted, that it was ridiculous to disrupt people's lives to that degree for a "domestic" situation ... there are just never any easy answers. The question remains unanswered on how we can live in a free society and protect our citizens from this type of lunacy without the big brother/1984 element.
Here's what I've been pondering: when, and why, did it become commonplace to take one's anger, or hurt, and want to spread it to so many people? Killing oneself is one thing; killing one's girlfriend or professor another; but killing 30 strangers?
It's just sociopathic, and it demands a cultural explanation.
I agree with you: given the information the police had after the first shooting, I don't consider their decision not to shut down the campus or sound an alarm unreasonable.
We're talking about a student body of 25,000 and a campus sprawling over 2,500 acres. You can't just shut it down. Cancelling classes wouldn't have prevented this guy from shooting a bunch of students in another dorm or gathering place.
While I am saddened by yesterdays events, I am equally disturbed at how we as a society are reacting. We are disgusted by the deaths of young students on an american campus, yet we seem to be indifferent to the deaths that occur every day in Iraq and Afganistan. Men and women who should be in school are instead fighting a war for oil. For our consumptive wants...
V's question requires an answer. But don't give it right away - spend some time to really think about it:
"What might have stopped this person from shooting in the first place?"
The answer might have implications far beyond the killings at VT.
I will not write my own, I will put a link to yours on my page, with your permission.
I don't know what the answer is. I support gun control, but we have suffered a number of school shootings here, in Canada, and we have very strict gun laws. I think it's more than just controlling the flow or the ownership of weapons. I wish I knew what it was.
This was a very thoughtful, interesting post. Thank you.