Re: Virginia Tech Shootings
Ok... as someone who is from the US and still living here, I feel I must comment.
Yes, these tragedies are horrible; however, the general US population is not to blame. Not everyone is bad here. There are still bad people everywhere. They are not only in America. Making rules against people bearing arms isn't going to necessarily change that. I think it may be a little bit too late for our generation in American society to change what makes people choose to use weapons in this way. Look at Canada. Practically every family in Canada owns a gun... everyone in the United States does not. Have they ever had school shooting or massacres similar to those in the United States? No... The percentage of people owning and carrying weapons is higher; however, they do not use them for the purpose of killing their fellow citizens.
I believe something is seriously messed up in American society. I think people have been conditioned on a large-scale level to be almost immune and apathetic to situations like this. Some people in our country, as evident from this incident, have had their visions of reality so distorted that things like this can happen. I don't think the problem comes with people carrying weapons. If somebody wants a gun here, or anything else, they are usually able to obtain it. For most legal weapons, all you do is go to a store and tell them you want a gun, wait for a few days, then it is ready to be picked up. Most automatic weapons, being illegal, can be obtained fairly easily from any illegal arms dealer. If someone is motivated enough, they are not that hard to find.
There are bad or troubled people everywhere in the world. Maybe our society is to blame for this incident, but you have to remember how dense the US population is with a variety of different cultures and social settings. Our reality is a process that has been underway for years and I cannot fathom what our government will be able to do in order to reverse the monster it has made out of many people's minds. This perception has become many people's reality and in every country in the world you will find a different perception of reality, no matter how slight it may be. We are not a bad country, but still everyone else sees all the horrible stuff that comes out of our country every day. I have to admit, this is definitely the worst massacre we have seen in United States history. Still, there is no need to generalize one person's troubles onto the rest of our nation. We are as appalled as everyone else that this has happened and we wish that something could be done to stop tragedies like this. Still, we know that controlling guns is not necessarily going to help anything. The only thing that can help stop incidents like this is long term conditioning. If a sick person sees his only way out is through reenacting some violent video game and killing a bunch of people, is it possible that his sociopathic qualities are beyond his control and something his nation made him into? If it is not the nation's fault, then maybe there is nothing we can do to stop this besides greater security and reaction time to incidents like this. I really don't see the possibility of us eliminating all of our vulnerabilities; however, this may be our only option at this point. Fixing people's outlets and the way they approach emotional trouble is something that takes a lot of time and it cannot be accomplished in one generation when it has been done on such a widespread level. Not everyone is obviously affected; however, it is almost impossible to determine who is at high risk. We just have lots of work to do and I doubt this will be the last time something like this happens.
-Whit
