Virginia Tech Massacre thoughts

I came across an article that mentioned how Christians all over America comdamn Cho for his actions (understandably) and saying that he will burn in hell for all eternity, and that he's unforgivable etc etc etc,

I was actually interested in how Atheists see this, 'cause when my mom told me of this, my feelings were this shouldn've happened (again) and that instead of hating Cho, we should focus on why and how he did what he did.

So do you guys feel he is "forgivable" (not necessarily in the sense that need to do any sort of justification of what he did) or not?

He was an evil, sociapathic, twisted, but very sick puppy. He was ill in a society that makes little provision for treating that sort of illness or keeping anyone safe from this type of lunatic. (As I learned about his behaviour problems at the school, one of my thoughts was, "What does it take to get expelled from university these days?")

Forgiveness has nothing to do with it. He's dead. What possible point would there be to "forgiveness." If he'd killed MY child, I'd wish him alive so I could kill him myself. And I would not hesitate. Having said that, the anguish I feel for HIS parents is huge. Their pain must be beyond imagining. And what I CAN imagine is simply terrifying.

So, essentially, I agree with you, Annie. We need to focus on why it happened and how to fix that kind of sickness so no one has to experience this kind of suffering - both his and his victims' - ever again.

I agree, I feel when someone is dead, he's dead, there's no use dwelling on hating the person, death is the only thing that's equal :)

The thing is, I feel strongly about people simply label psychopaths as just "evil" period. He was a human being after all, I feel if we just put a period mark on "he's evil", then it would limit our desire to figure out WHY he became a psychopath, which could be something wrong with his brain, or environmental factors etc etc etc.

However, I feel that even though the need for revenge is very understandable, it doesn't really DO anything, he killed your loved one, you kill him, I mean, both lives were ended, period. You only gained temporary satisfaction from taking revenge, nothing more to it,
it's how I feel about the death penalty.

I agree. He's dead, that places him beyond forgiveness. If he were alive, I would not forgive him. I am appalled at his senseless slaughter.

The only bit of sympathy that I can find for him is that I regret that his need for help was not fully recognized before he did what he did, and that he did not receive the help that he needed. In this respect, our society did fail him.

Unfortunately, we are too busy fighting senseless wars in far away lands. We don't spend money on treating our mentally disturbed citizens. We've got bombs to buy.

As I feel like stirring the pot a bit I was just wondering about forgiveness to those who provided him with the guns?

Any thoughts?

Understanding 'evilness' sure as hell is not forgiving a crime. I find it ridiculous that when these kinds of events happen, and sociologists attempt to explain it, there are people who think the sociologists are only attempting to 'free' the 'evil doer' of responsibility. That is wrong. It is about working to avoid these things in the future.

I understand and agree with your final point in your last paragraph, Annie. I am opposed to the death penalty. My statement was a purely emotional reaction to the death of those young people and it arose from the part of me (HUGE part, obviously) that is a parent. I say again, deliberately, if he had killed my child, I would wish him alive so I could kill him myself. There is no greater loss than the death of a child and I don't think there would be anything temporary about the satisfaction I would feel in being permitted to execute the person who killed my child. I don't believe I would say the same with regard to the murder of anyone else in my life. I love my husband beyond description, and I love my siblings and my friends with profound feeling, but my love for my children (as is true, I believe, for most parents) is different from and beyond any other sort of bond. I could kill him easily and with no trace of remorse.

Having said that, I would not support the death penalty, even for him. I realize that is a contradiction, but one statement is based on emotion and one is based on reason. I freely admit the cognitive disconnect and I understand it because I'm a parent.

I can't think how they require forgiveness unless he went into the gun store and said, "I think I'll shoot up Virginia Tech. I'll take one of those and one of those."

I hate, hate, hate the gun-obsessed culture we've become and I would GLADLY see all non-hunting guns BANNED! But they're not, so to blame the gun seller for the crime of the gun user is as pointless as blaming the car manufacturers and highway builders for the 50,000 people who die in cars in America each year. I don't blame the drug industry for overdose deaths. I don't blame the alcohol industry for alcoholism. I don't blame McDonalds for obesity.

As Jen says, we can't be bothered treating the mentally ill (or other ill, for that matter.) We've got bombs to buy. Now that is some blame we can talk about.

actually according to some experts on the incident they claim that there should be MORE gun rights because it doesn't really matter if we ban guns, the people who wanna kill people would get them regardless (they pointed out the 18th amendament), but if we had MORE gun rights, then people would defend themselves MORE; they claim that if any of the students in VT had a gun, this would've turned out much different.

any thoughts?

I have mixed feelings about this. I am a gun owner myself. I have a license to carry my weapon. I am a mature and sane person. I am very well trained with my weapon. I regard it as a basic civil right that I have a gun and a permit to carry it. I also think that it's a basic civil responsibility to know how to use it competently and appropriately.

I do feel that a single licensed handgun carrier at the campus that day would have put an end to the madness. I also feel that people are a little too conditioned to 'let the authorities handle this'. Terrorism takes advantage of this. That's why half a dozen guys with box cutters can take control of a jetliner.

On the other hand, there are a lot of dumbasses out there. Just the other day, one of my co-workers brought a bunch of pictures to work. The pictures were of her and her boyfriend posing with assault rifles. I didn't approve. I felt that their attitudes toward the weapons was extremely immature. I told her that I didn't care to look at these pictures, and that I felt she should put them away. She was childishly offended. I told her that these pictures weren't appropriate in the work place. I told her that she needed to understand that the standards of appropriateness in the work place are no different for her than for anyone else. I pointed to one of our larger, more aggressive male co-workers and asked her how she would feel about him coming to work with pictures of himself in aggressive poses with semi-automatic assault rifles. She didn't get it.

I was at the firing range with one of my friends and his 21 year old son. I allowed his son to try out my gun. The idiot grabbed it and immediately started firing with the gun held over sideways like you see the gangbangers do in the movies. It pissed me off. I didn't let him touch my weapon, again. Gun ownership and responsibility need to go together. I fear that people aren't getting the responsibility part.

Regards,

Jen

Jen,

You produced a very interesting and well-balanced post. My knee-jerk reaction to guns and violence in America is, "Well, outlaw guns then." Your point and a dollop of introspection on my part suggest that perhaps the issue is more complicated. Maybe my mind would change if I, a close friend, or a relative was the victim of an assault? Would I then desire "security?" Would a gun satisfy that sense of security? I don't know--perhaps it would, were my mental picture of my own vulnerability shaken.

I suppose it is a "big government, small government" question, ultimately. If we assume that people cannot be relied upon to be "responsible" (not commit mass murder, hold-ups, suicides, crimes of passion, etc.), then maybe the government should allow gun regulation a wider reach. If we grant that humans are beings with a certain degree of unpredictability about them, what--as far as gun ownership is concerned--can be done to reduce the uncertainty to acceptable levels? How does the government reduce the intrinsic risk that enters the game when someone has 24-hour access to a lethal instrument?

You mentioned that you are responsible, and I believe that you are. Perhaps it is now time to demand that gun-owners prove how responsible they are. How? Darned if I know. Never having owned a gun, I am amazingly naive to the process one must endure to own a gun, much less the hoops one must jump through in order to carry one legally.

I absolutely agree with you about gun responsibility; maybe I'm changing my tune regarding firearms in general, too. How to guarantee gun responsibility, though? In the wake of the VT massacre, and all the ripples from Columbine all the way to UT, I think we must take a closer gander at this. Not to reduce the horrors of Virginia, but this almost-totally-uniquely American problem is now silly. Something has got to change: whether it is gun availability, "gun-responsibility-proving tests," or mass lobotomies.

Which is best, I wonder? I have no idea.

Cheers,

MK

Well, we trust the military to have guns. We trust the police to have guns. Traditionally, the military and police do not have a good track record in regard to the rights of citizens. I really think it is sort of silly to hand an 18 year old kid an assault rifle and send him off to fight with it, yet not allow citizens to possess guns.

We all have access to lethal instruments, all of the time. I could bash someone over the head with my laptop, right now. The 9/11 hijackers took control of those jets with box cutters. A bomb can be made with a bag of flour. How do you disarm violent people? You can't, really.

We do have a problem with violence in America. I don't think that guns are at the heart of it. We have virtually no system at all in place for dealing with the mentally disturbed. We basically wait for them to cross the line, and then throw them in prison or the morgue, and bury their victims. To make matters worse, we socially ostracise disturbed individuals (since we have no system to help them) which disturbs them further. That's what I heard Cho saying, in his irrational rant. He was disturbed. He knew he was disturbed. He knew that no one ever seemed to care that he was disturbed, except for those who laughed at him for being disturbed. I'm not making excuses for him. But, I'm not making excuses for us, either. He was plainly identified as a very disturbed individual, long before he killed those people. In a society that does nothing to help disturbed individuals, he was tossed into an environment that couldn't possibly do anything but make his condition even worse.

The obvious solution is to place people like Cho into asylums where they can get the care that they need. This requires funding, though. Funding our military seems to be a higher priority. Probably just one percent of the military's budget would get all of the Chos off of our streets and into a care program.

Abk, Jen, MK and Annie,

The slogan about "Guns don't kill people, it's the person who pull the trigger who kills" sounds a bit simplistic to me. Applying that logic we could let everyone put up tactical warheads in their back yard as it is not the war head that kills but the person who push the button, right?

First let me say to Jen that I do understand the need you feel to protect yourself after the attack you have been victim of. In general however I have never really understood the American need for guns? For protection? Statistics show that during incidents of home invasion etc the person who has a gun in the house actually runs a higher risk of being killed than the ones who don't. (Something about the felon knowing how to use the guns while the average Joe Public don't to the same degree).

Second question: If it is for protection why not be happy with a small handgun? What purpose can the man on the street have to buy Uzi's and keep them at home?

Cheers

Joel

Joel,

In theory, it could be argued that our constitution does say we have the right to put up tactical warheads in our back yard. Even I think this would be pushing our right to bear arms much too far.

To be honest, I was a gun owner and licensed to carry, long before I was attacked. Not really because I was a big gun fanatic, but because I lived a pretty active outdoors kind of life. Unfortunately, I was not armed on the evening that the lunatic tried to kill me.

I have heard the statistic about gun owners being more likely to be killed with their gun, than the robbers. I have never been able to identify the source of this statistic, and suspect it of being an urban myth. It might be true, though. I am aware of quit a few people who are inept with their guns. This is a violation of the responsibility that goes hand in hand with gun ownership.

I don't know why people buy Uzis. I'm a tad uncomfortable about it myself. It's hard for me to support a ban on them, though. In this regard, I guess I'm very American.

Regards,

Jen

Jen,

I read somewhere that the reason why the gun culture in America is so wide spread is due to intense advertising and lobbying by the gun manufacturers. After the civil war the Smith & Wesson's out there saw a drastic fall in revenue and started to lobby hard for the "right" for everyone to carry guns so to increase their revenue. Any ideas on this?

I'm inclined to think that the reason the gun culture in America is so wide spread (and the culture of violence is REALLY our problem) is that we are saturated with it by the media. Children start watching it and participating in it almost from the time they can talk. And we see so much of it we accept it as normal.

My children were furious with me when they were younger because I absolutely forbade things like the slasher movies in my house. I realized I wasn't going to keep them from seeing it, but they sure as hell knew I didn't think it was OK or "entertainment." I was talking with an acquaintance recently and was appalled to learn she rented "Saw 2" to watch with her 15 and 13 year old sons. "Pretty good movie" was her comment,"but a little raw."

This horribly violent, cruel, vicious movie is "entertainment." We are desensitizing our children to it, AND letting them know that is OK.

In Japan films are even more violent than those in the West, and they have very low levels of violence.

There are alienated teenagers everywhere that fantasize about gunning down their class-mates.

If you need a licence to drive a car, then maybe you should need a licence to own a gun?

[Well, we trust the military to have guns. We trust the police to have guns. Traditionally, the military and police do not have a good track record in regard to the rights of citizens. I really think it is sort of silly to hand an 18 year old kid an assault rifle and send him off to fight with it, yet not allow citizens to possess guns.]

There are several details which complicate your statement: soldiers and policemen are not civilians, and have thus been trained extensively in the use, respect, maintenance, etc., of their weapon. As such, it is an oversimplification to argue that "they have guns, and we trust them to have guns, and therefore civilians should also be trusted to have guns, since occasionally things like Rodney King and My Lai happen." Soldiers are immersed in a culture of discipline--which often permeates even their personal lives--and actually have a "creed to their personal weapon," meant to succinctly imprint in the mind the importance of the weapon as tool, defender, and war-waging implement. I would argue that this extensive training constitutes sufficient oversight prior to an assault rifle being placed in a teenager's hands.

[We all have access to lethal instruments, all of the time. I could bash someone over the head with my laptop, right now. The 9/11 hijackers took control of those jets with box cutters. A bomb can be made with a bag of flour. How do you disarm violent people? You can't, really.]

This perhaps may be a "manufactured intent" issue: box cutters, laptops, and flour can surely be fashioned into objects of death by persistent individuals. However, a handgun's express purpose is singular--the killing of human beings ("stopping power" is an interesting euphemism describing the ability of a particular weapon or caliber of bullet to kill a hostile individual in police circles). It is not fair to compare laptops and box cutters to guns: consider, by the time I got done braining someone with my Dell, someone else with a handgun could have executed 10-20 people, and that is assuming (sorry, this is morbid) that I was able to overpower that person, trap them somewhere, and then bash their brains to mush! Guns make for easy, convenient, and artless killing of anyone by anyone should there exist enough motivation on the part of the killer.

I, in my youth, achieved a very high ranking in a particular martial art, and, at my peak, probably could have killed a human being with my bare hands with only minimal difficulty. Martial arts, like soldiery or the police, is steeped in esprit-de-corps, respect for life, emphasis on defense, protection of the innocent, etc. One could argue that the temperance required of death-dealing power (in this case, bare hand killing ability) has been well-programmed into an adept's brain via years of indoctrination.

Compare this to an insane-with-anger ex-husband who has to only:

1. Wait three days (or less!) to purchase a handgun, plus clips.
2. Wait for his ex-wife outside her home.
3. Point, pull the trigger, and gun her down.

Responsible oversight of those who would own guns is not only desirable, it is essential.

MK

[edited because I, in my infinite idiocy, did not spell "My Lai" correctly...*mumble, grumble*]

Many theories regarding the ultimate reason for America's propensity towards mass-murder have been submitted over the years.

1. Violence glorification in the media.

Japan is only one example of a country where, although the media glorifies violence, the homicide rate remains extremely low.

2. Cultural diversity encourages gun homicides/mass-murder.

Canada, Germany, the UK, Australia, and many other European countries have equivalent, or higher, levels of racial diversity than the United States, yet have low homicide rates.

3. Availability of guns.

This was my personal belief, until I viewed Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" "documentary" and, interest piqued, did some further reading on my own. It seems that the "gun availability" argument MAY be overly simplistic, but the jury is still out.

If it's none of these three reasons, maybe it's the water? I've got nothing, yet the issue remains--something has to change.

MK

MK,

I don't know if rates of violence in the US are as unique as all that. There are many countries with higher murder rates - for example South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Estonia, Litunania, Jamaica, Russia, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Thailand and so on.

High homicide rates seem to be caused by a combination of
1) criminal gangs (generally living in slums or ghettos) and
2) easy availability of guns

EEL,

You posted a nice comment, and thanks for the information. According to "Nationmaster," the US ranks only 24th in the "murders per capita" realm. Please see http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita if you are curious. Also, the "murder-via-firearm per capita" ranking of the US is listed on the same site at an impressive 8th place.

However, I wasn't talking about simple homicide numbers--I was talking about America's love affair with mass-murder, and "random" mass-murder in particular. Guns, drugs, organized gangs, widespread corruption, and poverty, are of course factors which contribute to homicide rates (and perhaps even to the occasional "spree-killing," although I doubt it). With extremely rare exception, though, America seems to stand alone with regards to disaffected-loner-on-colleague/fellow student spree-killing violence. Wrong or not?

If you examine the above link where America is ranked #24, you will notice something interesting: most of the countries which boast higher per-capita-murder-rate numbers than the US can arguably be demonstrated countries which yet have some "developing" (economic- and human rights-wise) to do. Mafia influence and effect is ingrained deep into the criminal motivation of many of the murders plaguing Slavic/Baltic countries. Russia and Poland, although developed, modern countries, are riddled with organized crime elements which influence many tiers of civilized life. Thailand and South Africa could also be argued as "industrialized" nations, although Thailand's recent military pseudo-coup and the South African government's reluctance to admit that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus muddies the waters a tad in this regard (although South Africa seems to be reversing course yet again, and for the better, regarding AIDS in recent months).

This organized-crime element probably contributes substantially to the murder rate in these countries--in the US, the various Mafia organizations have lost much of their power, and, although various ethnic organized gangs exert influence, many more homicides are being committed simply by disaffected--for whatever reason--individuals.

The United States rates very high among "developed" countries with regards to murders per capita, firearm murders per capita, murders committed by youths per capita, and firearm murders committed by youths per capita. What explains our apparent disconnect from the rest of the developed world? I really do not know the answer.

MK

Well, I'd try to explain it as follows:

An obvious explanation is the uniquely easy availability of guns in the US - this increases both gang violence and mass-murder. Possessing guns is regarded by many Americans as an inalienable constitutional right, and this is unlikely to change.

Although other developed countries have ethnic diversity, the scale of immigration and the size of the ethnic minority communities in the US dwarf anything that any other developed country faces - many of these immigrants and minorities live in large "no-go" areas. The violence in these areas does not impact much on Americans who do not live in them. Other developed countries have similar areas, but the scale is much smaller. In this respect I think the US is somewhat unique amongst developed countries. And this also explains the higher levels of gang violence.

Mass-murder sprees from disaffected loners are terrible, but they are actually a very small proportion of homicides - they are covered in high-profile by the media. Mass-murders do happen in Europe and the Far East. Are there slightly more disaffected loners in the US? Possibly. The US is a huge country, people move around a lot from city to city, it may be somewhat easier for "loners" to become anonymous, to become isolated, to become disassociated from family and community. And again, it's easier for such people to get guns.

Of course, the high levels of immigration and high levels of mobility are part of what makes the US so dynamic and creative, so these characteristics can't be said to be negative - they have an upside and a downside.

M. Krysztofiak,

I approve of discipline. Devoloping discipline is probably the primary function of the martial arts. You spend years developing it. The discipline of the military and police isn't like that. Their training is more of a crash course. Military, ex-military, police, and ex-police who gun down their ex-wives occupy their fair share of the ex-wife gunning down demographic.

You view police and military as being different from other people. You shouldn't.

Joel,

That's a pretty good observation about the civil war. Gun technology advanced a lot during the war. Weapons manufacturers became industrial giants, thanks to the war. Poverty like we had never seen before afflicted us because of the rapid transition from war economy to a peace time economy. This drove a desperate expansion into the West. Guns were needed by these frontier folk. Weapons manufacturers capitalized on it. No doubt, weapons manufacturers were very active in promoting the gun culture.

I am skeptical about this being the primary source of our fascination with guns and violence, though. The anti-gun lobbyist have been far, far louder than gun rights lobbyists for several decades, now. Major gun rights associations, such as the NRA have lost credibility and popularity. The NRA is generally regarded as a joke, now. Yet, the popularity of assault style rifles and carbines continues to grow. I don't get it. I have known people who own these things and never use them at all. They would take it to a place where they could shoot it, just once. After that, it was just a trophy that they showed off to friends and neighbors and posed in pictures with. Very bizarre. Manufacturers aren't advertising them. No one's promoting them. Yet, people are buying them for some unfathomable reason. I don't get it.

To comment on the America fixation with guns. I (as a european) take a fairly sanguine view of gun availability in the US, as well as their use of the death penalty. To me they are evidence that the US is closer to true democracy, the american people want guns and the death penalty and so they have them. My fellow europeans can pontificate awfully on these issues and ignore the obvious fact that if you had a referendum on the execution of (say) child murderers tomorrow the whole of europe would get it (for the record i am opposed to both in the UK).
In the UK it used to be relatively easy to get a licence for guns, then we had two notorious gun spree killings that first saw an assault rifle used to kill 16 people (assault rifles were banned) and then finally a man who killed 18 5-6 year old children in a school with hand guns. After this the govt blanket banned guns, I was a gun owner and a shooting club member but to be honest I accepted the ban. To me it was obviously unacceptable that one man should be allowed by the govt to own guns and murder in this way.
Of course drugs dealers have guns and in the city I live in (Manchester) they regularly shoot each other. BUT we have not had any spree killings in 10 years now, insane people have attacked crowded buildings (e.g. recently a church) armed with knives etc but have been rapidly overpowered. Of course you can get a gun in the UK or indeed make an improvised explosive device but in reality most of the mentally ill people who do these acts have not got the mental resources to acquire such things. So to my mind if nothing else gun bans achieve this
To answer the original question, I find the fact that he apparently celebrated previous spree killers deeply worrying. Our cultures ( I would say the US more than here) idolise celebrity to a ridiculous extent. I have always worried that serial and spree killers actually get some kind of fix out of the notoriety they will achieve, even in death.