Victims at Virginia Tech and us

The NY Times has a good resource for information on the students who were killed at Virginia Tech. I recommend checking it out if you're tired of listening to his pyscho-babble manifesto which he sent to NBC. For me, his rant was a cathartic terminus of this whole tragedy, because after seeing it there's no doubt that he was some screwed up kid who thought that taping his hateful rhetoric before killing people was going to make him...who knows. I didn't watch the whole thing. After hearing him spout off self-righteous blame on others for his actions I changed the channel. I heart changing the channel.

The Times piece has short to relatively thorough descriptions of all the victims. I read some of the synopses, and thought about what motivated Seung-Hui to think that his only choice was to take a handgun and shoot them.

What caused him to do this? Are we as a society more violent these days? Is it because of our information era, which by nature fosters a sense of immediacy? Do we need to be constantly double-clicking a mouse button, typing on a keyboard, or texting on our phones in order to feel like we're part of the larger picture? Did he play too many shooters? Do we need to revisit gun control laws? Did this kid just need more hugs and attention when he was growing up? Did mom and dad not play with him enough, or support his development?

I think I just want to be able to wrap this up in a neat little package, and it's not going to happen.

They say "things happen in three's": we had the Imus blow-out, the Seung-Hui shooting, what's going to be the third? Do I count the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the partial-birth abortion ban?

Hey, here's something: had Seung-Hui's mom had an abortion all those people would still be alive. I guess hindsight is always 20-20...the Earth is round and revolves around the sun, we shouldn't have burned women as witches in Salem, etc.

This whole thing is just so senseless and I'm tired of hearing about the sensational details about this maniac, and wanted to devote some energy to remembering and acknowledging these people who were robbed of continuing this wonderful, brief, and challenging journey we call life.

For me, as a parent, this just cements my philosophy of remaining active in my child's life. When I came home today and saw my son, I spent extra time holding him, playing with him, making him an active part of preparing the salmon before baking it, and selecting spices to add to the hummus we made. Every little thing counts.

All laws must be followed [it's ok! i'm not going to take them away from you!]

Virginia Tech. Holy Mary Mother of Insanity. What a tragedy. It doesn't seem clear what the motives were, but regardless, what a tragic loss of life. The question now is, of course, how could this happen, and how do we make sure that it doesn't happen again?

I'm sure the media will be milking the details for weeks to come, and we'll have all the info soon enough, but I just wanted to say how pleased I was that Dubya took the time to address the American people and allayed my fears in his very first response to the horrible chain of events:

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," [Presidential] spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Man, does this guy know how to spend his political capital. And the warmth he exudes! As an owner of a .50 cal sniper rifle I brought back from Operation Faceshoot, as well as several other handguns I stash around the house in the event that I have to smoke some fool who's trying to rob me of my old school, pre-component video/HDMI television set, I was thrilled to hear Dubya tell me that my guns are safe.

I thought it was totally appropriate that in light of a massacre on a college campus, with hundreds, if not thousands of students and their parents worried about their safety, he went ahead to address his NRA-abiding constituents that he wasn't about to pursue any kind of restrictions on their firearms.

Stunned I was. I was stunned. First from the horror after imagining what it must've been like on that campus yesterday, then to hear the President of the United States tell me that he wasn't going to take my guns away in his initial press release to the American people.

What?

So, Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old legal South Korean immigrant acquired the weapons illegally? No. He bought them at a store. Still had the receipts in his backpack. He followed all the laws, and from outwards appearances, all looks to be nice, neat, and tidy. Just like the viewing room at funeral homes, which will probably be seeing some increased traffic in the Virgina state area.

Am I lobbying for more gun control? No, I'm not soapboxing that here. I think what troubles me the most, other than the fact that we also have our boys and girls getting shot or blown up every day in Iraq in a war that Americans don't support, and that the President messages Congress' passing of recent spending bills as "undermining the troops", are these 2 issues:

1. that Dubya framed the massacre within a Second Amendment context in a way that panders to the NRA bloc of voters.
2. that the campus officials didn't take more preventative actions after the first shooting, which allowed the shooter free access on campus for TWO HOURS, thereby allowing him to kill what sounds to be a classroom full of people.