Digging Deeper
Guns, Politics, and the Virginia Tech Tragedy
By Joan Opyr, 4-18-07
I have been watching the mounting death toll at Virginia Tech with that mixture of horror and sadness that has become so familiar. I have friends in Virginia, friends in and around Blacksburg, and I have known many graduates of Virginia Tech. That this tragedy—a mass school shooting—has happened once again in this country is worse than shocking. It’s a temptation to surrender to hopelessness and despair. The fact is that a school shooting can happen anywhere in the United States at any time.
Columbine, Colorado. Red Lake, Minnesota. Bath, Michigan. Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Santana High School. Poe Elementary. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Where do we start? With Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966? And where do we end? Never. Not in the foreseeable future if we continue to walk our present path.
As a parent, I must constantly fight the desire to keep my children under glass, to keep them at home, protected, where I can watch over them. At the same time, I don’t want to smother them. I want them to live rich, full lives, and life entails risk. I forget who first observed that to have children is to offer hostages to fate, but I know that’s right. Having kids is like ripping your heart from your body and letting it go out walking. It’s a terrifying thing, and what has happened this week in Blacksburg, Virginia has driven this fact home for every parent, every teacher, every friend, godparent or relative.
I wish that I could believe Virginia Tech’s tragedy might mark the beginning of a serious, intentional, and action-oriented national conversation about what we can do to prevent this from happening again, but every shooting that has preceded this one has led only to hand-wringing. There has been no discernible change in our culture, and I wonder, again, what it will take before we make the legal and social changes necessary to make our people safer and saner.
I don’t know what the solution is or how we can change our culture so that we value life more than we desire revenge. One of the more salient points made in Bowling for Columbine is that per capita gun ownership in Canada is virtually the same as it is in the United States, and yet we don’t see Canadians killing one another on anything akin to the scale of gun murders in the United States. One notable exception was the Montreal Massacre, when Marc Lepine killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechinique. Lepine separated the men from the women in an engineering classroom, sent the men outside, and shot the women while screaming “I hate feminists.” It was a horrible hate crime – the final stop on the end road of misogyny.
No one yet knows the motive or motives for Cho Seung-Hui’s attack on his fellow students at Virginia Tech. Reports have surfaced that Cho harassed two female students, and that they reported his behavior to campus police. Professor Lucinda Roy has also told various news outlets that she reported her concerns about Cho’s behavior and violent writings to the Virginia Tech administration, campus police, and the school’s counseling center back in 2005. As Cho made no specific threats, not much could be done.
It is not too soon, however, for us to begin asking questions of ourselves. One of the most important—and most basic—is who, exactly, is responsible for all of the school shootings in the United States? People with guns is one answer, but it would be more accurate to say men with guns. Before we can even begin to assess what’s wrong, we need to face this fact. Who is responsible for most of the domestic violence in the United States? Men. And who comprise the majority of the victims? Women and children. This leads to a second question: what are we doing wrong as we raise our male children? Is it the sense of entitlement we instill in them? Is it the pressure we place on them never to show any emotion except anger, to always be tough, to not be one of Ann Coulter’s faggots? Is it a combination of all of the above?
Whatever the sources of this problem, they run deep, and we haven’t even begun to address them. As we begin yet another conversation about the causes of school violence, it is my profound hope that the ensuing debate won’t devolve into another episode of he said, she said, with Jim Brady’s wife, Sarah, duking it out on cable news with Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. We’ve been there and done that. It’s time to dig deeper.
But will we? The New York Times reports that John McCain has already come out with a statement reaffirming his support for an unfettered Second Amendment right to bear arms. No surprises there. McCain has been sucking hind tit on far right ever since he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. And, ever-sensitive, Idaho Senator Larry Craig observed on Tuesday that, “There are several [Democratic] gun control advocates who have behind their name today, r-e-t, retired . . . . [s]ome of it was voluntary. Some of it was involuntary.”
That’s our man in Washington: making partisan hay while the sun is obscured by a hurricane.
I’ll admit it. I am a gun owner. In fact, I own a 9 mm semi-automatic much like the one used by Cho Seung-Hui. As I’ve already said, I dread this discussion turning into another tired and tiresome argument over Second Amendment gun rights. What has happened in all of these school shootings is about far more than that. Many of us worry about the amount of televised and video game violence our kids are exposed to. I also worry about the amount of pressure we place on our kids – high-stakes testing, ever tougher college admissions, too little free time and too much study.
Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. When I went to work for the YWCA at Washington State University, I was shocked to see some of the course loads my students were taking. I often took 16 or more hours when I was in college, and I worked a motley assortment of part-time jobs, but the stress my students face today is far worse than anything I endured twenty years ago. They’re expected to take more classes in fewer years, to pay more in tuition, to work more, and to rack up volunteer hours in organizations like mine. The world is more competitive now, and it’s harder to get into college and graduate school. I have students who despair that their four-point won’t be enough—and in some cases, it may not.
In our schools, teachers struggle to ensure that their classrooms remain rich and expansive learning environments while being obliged to teach to a high-stakes test. In Idaho we have the ISATs; in Washington, it’s the WASL. What do these tests actually measure? Like the SAT and the GRE, they measure the students ability to take the test—not his or her actual knowledge.
We have no respect for teachers; we belittle, denigrate and under-fund public education; we put stress on our kids that we never experienced ourselves, and we wonder why the teen depression rate is so high. Add to that a culture of bullying, and some students snap. They go postal. I’m not excusing violent kids, but I am suggesting that we take a long, hard look at ourselves. What are we offering our kids? Less one-on-one time with us, their parents. Less quality time in school, reading, learning, and enjoying. We’re putting college out of reach for too many kids, and those who do get in graduate with the kind of debt most of us associate with a house payment. The Pell Grants I relied on have dwindled to bupkes.
More support for our kids; more support for our teachers; less selfishness on our part as spoiled-rotten baby boomers—maybe this would help. This is a complex problem and there are no simple answers. Why would a college kid turn into a version of William Calley and conduct his own My Lai Massacre on the Virginia Tech campus? I don’t believe that a generation of “bad seeds” has sprung up out of nowhere or leapt unbidden from the pixels on a video screen. We—the adults—have gone wrong, and we’ve dragged our kids down with us. How do we right ourselves and save our kids?
Now, we mourn. Soon, we’ll begin talking about this and what it means. Let us hope and pray that it’s not empty talk.
I don't often get the chance to go out of my way and read up on current events. However, I'm glad I did. I'm currently a junior at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and it doesn't seem possible to prepare myself enough to enter a graduate program of my choice. I would like to write more, but I need to get to bed. I hope this issue is addressed and the society in the United States changes for the better.
Comment By Tom Hansen, 4-19-07Excellent article, Joan.
Yes. Measures must be taken to prevent this type of atrocity from ever happening again. However, in pursuing this goal, we must become a proactive society versus a reactive society.
A short glimpse into the soul of Cho Seung-Hui was revealed back in April of 2005 when he wrote "Richard McBeef", an extremely disturbing one-act play:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0417071vtech1.html
In December 2005 two female students complained to campus police about Cho Seung-Hui's threatening behavior. He was escorted to the hospital where he underwent prolonged evaluation. He was characterized as "depressively mentally ill", yet released on out-patient status.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0419071cho1.html
Since Cho Seung-Hui was released and not legally committed, he was permitted to purchase a gun in the state of Virginia.
The behavior detailed above must be identified and treated at the earliest conceivable point in a person's life. School staff, faculty and students must not be afraid to approach counselors concerning behavior they consider threatening. Subsequently, school administrators must respond to such reports in such a manner as to ensure campus safety.
Could this have been avoided had Cho Seung-Hui's "anguish" been discovered at the grade school or junior high level? Could this have been prevented had Cho Seung-Hui been willing to approach his high school counselor? A rapport must be established as to encourage students to approach their school counselor when they feel at odds internally. If not . . .
Wonderful exploration here, Joan. I'll read it again, and hope that others will write in with some responses to the points you've raised here.
I just read the Washington Post's beautifully written and brutal (I really can't find the words to describe it) account, "I chose this desk to die under.."
I wonder if we as a nation, or as individuals, can ever break free of the paralysis caused by terror, the natural inclination to seek shelter when none is available...there will always be armed homicidal maniacs to menace us and our children...the sheltering impulse that you describe, so necessary and pure and good, is like a Zen koan...somewhere, the sheltering that nurtures also can harm..somewhere, we have to prepare our children for the world as it is..that desks don't stop bullets, that cruelty and insanity exist where ever there are human beings, even while sustaining that sense of wonder at life--that IS life, that IS the human experience, so much of the time. I don't have the answers. I much appreciate the skill and passion with which you are asking the questions in this piece.
Hal
Joan,
Thank you for the excellent article. It was well researched and beautifully written from the heart and mind. I agree that this is a very complex subject. I am hopeful that we as a society, can get this issue on the table and fix this most horrific of modern evils.
Thanks again for your post.
Excellent, excellent article. Thank you, Joan, for saying tough things that need to be said. I would encourage folks to read Derrick Jensen's "Walking on Water" to dig deeper into our culture of schooling, pressures on kids, where our culture places priorities, and the positive alternatives that do exist. And, being originally from Virginia this tragedy has hit me on a personal level; ten years ago I would have known some of those people who were killed. What's the source of all the anger and depression? Mirror, mirror in the land. In Virginia, like in many places across the country, the land is being raped and murdered - this is having a tremendous effect on the well-being of people's mental states. I see it ripping apart my family and friends. It cannot be ignored. Priorities are being based on money and the trappings that go with it. But, it's the land that unites us and keeps us healthy and whole; but only if we afford the land her sovereignty. What becomes of the land becomes of the people of the land... "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Let's hope we figure it out before it's too late. The ugly side of being human is all too evident, yet our capacity for beauty, compassion and nurturing is astounding - we must exercise it in every aspect of life.
Comment By NuclearShadows, 4-19-07When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm
Because happiness is a warm gun." - Lennon/McCartney
“This is too cool,” said Joseph Damian, 14, as he walked into the Adventure Van. “All the games, especially shooting the gun in the vehicle.”
Why should we be surprised by this shooting? We are a gun culture. The U.S. Army Adventure Vans go around the country into Jr. High, High schools and colleges and let kids shoot these guns, the 9mm pistol, in simulators inside these vans. They have 19 of these vans stalking our kids. This is the gun of choice for Cho Seung-Hui to use on his killing spree. Was he introduced to it in high school?.
“Firing the Adventure Van's 9 mm simulator produces a minor kick to the weapon and a small red dot is projected on a bull's eye target about 20 feet away. It's an exhilarating experience that rivals some of the most violent interactive games, like "Grand Theft Auto." And teenagers agree. It sure beats Geometry class!”
I'm just surprised that the army recruiters didn't have him walking a street in Baghdad by now. We could start curbing gun violence by banning recuiters on school grounds.
What amazes me is that, on average, we have between 50-100 gun-related deaths a day in this country and nobody notices, unless most of them happen in one place.
Comment By Monty, 4-20-07Excellent article. The above story is just another example, among many, of the state of our culture. Major issues like automoblie highway deaths, increasing use of drugs, over flowing prisons, increasing uncivility, the threat of global climate change, homelessness, the shrinking middle class and the immerging energy crisis, to just list a few, are ignored by the general public. Passions and irrationality rule our society.
Comment By Rose Mary, 4-20-07Thank you, Joan, for presenting us with one of the best articles ever posted on the New West Network.
Hopefully it will be read far and wide and will cause people to think with more depth, address this entire matter by encompassing all of the possible contributing causes, and seek solutions beyond the knee-jerk reaction to only create more restrictive gun legislation.
According to an Editorial in the Washington Post, Friday, April 20, 2007, Page A30, "It now appears that Cho Seung Hui was able to buy the handguns he used in his murderous rampage Monday because Virginia failed to comply with its own procedures. The state has a policy of submitting mental health information to the federal background checks system, which should have flagged Mr. Cho as ineligible to purchase firearms based on a state magistrate's finding in December 2005 that he posed a threat to himself. But for reasons that remain obscure, the state apparently exempted records such as the magistrate's determination."
Also, according to this same Editorial, "Overall, an estimated 40 percent of guns that change hands in this country are bought and sold privately -- face to face, through classified ads and at gun shows. A determined purchaser need not buy from a gun store."
What this seems to confirm, if this information is accurate, is that no matter how restrictive gun laws may be now or in the future, and even if they are enforced as intended, they will only have a material effect on "the good guys" who walk in the front door of a gun store and will have no material effect whatsoever on "the bad guys" who are bound and determined to purchase a gun elsewhere.
I have no personal experience in this regard, but I suspect that if any one of us were highly motivated to do so we could locate, purchase and use a gun without any law or regulation "giving us permission" to do so.
Therefore, in my opinion, it would be a dastardly deed to erode our right to bear arms. Should that happen it is probable that only the law-abiding "good guys" would feel the burden ... a burden that our founders found unacceptable ~ with good cause.
As you have so thoughtfully pointed out, Joan, we all need to be "DIGGING DEEPER" ~ MUCH deeper.
I hope and pray that we will.
Thanks again, Joan; ya done GOOD! VERY good!!!
... or so it seems to me ...
Clearly, we have gaping holes in our mental health system. You raise all of the right issues, Joan. Now, what are we going to do about it?
Comment By Drover, 4-20-07Thank you Joan. Sane people like you give us hope.
A little stream o'consciousness rambling here:
Cho Seung Hui's writings were disturbing in many ways. What I've seen so far made me wonder what he was even doing in the English Department. I know this isn't the time for literary criticism, but, wow, it was bad!
The two Cho plays posted on the web could be revealing: they are written from a point of view sympathizing/identifying with oppressed teenagers -- one 13, the others 17. In both plays, the teenagers either accuse someone of molesting them, or reveal that they have been molested. Was Cho abused?
Why was a 22-23 year old English major writing from this point of view? Back in my salad days, English majors typically wrote in mimicry/ homage/emulation of some recognized literary figure. People seemed to have Hemingway phases, Kerouac phases, ornate Victorian phases . . . never saw anyone go through an "I write in the authentic voice of semi-articulate, unbelievable, oppressed teenagers" phase before.
If anything, English majors I knew always seemed to be, well, a little pretentious (but who isn't when they're 21?) and would affect a voice "wise beyond their years." I know I did that, even in high school. (Now, my years are beyond my wisdom.)
This may sound strange and irrelevant, but I would find his writings a lot less disturbing (still shocking and adolescent, though) if Cho had NOT been an English major.
I guess if he had been majoring in something else, I could partly contextualize his writing as such: "well, he's a political science major forced to take this playwriting course to fulfill distribution requirements, and he's bored with it, so he just cranked out this ridiculous, puerile rot the morning it was due."
To think that he actually chose English as his major, then proceeded to crank out this sort of thing (and, based on the descriptions of classmates and Dr. Giovanni, I think we'll have to take the two plays as at least somewhat representative of his corpus) is, well, heartbreaking.
I can't quite put my finger on WHY it's so heartbreaking, but I just imagine an extremely tortured, hidebound person, full of rage, animated by grievances real or imagined. And to really put the nail in his coffin, a strong desire (hence his choice of majors) coupled with very little talent for, self expression.
Joan...you are on the right track. Having one whacko nut case out of 40 million peers in this country can be just one unlucky number in the reverse lottery. Or is it we, as a nation, have taken a wrong turn in raising boys? This shooting problem is, we know, a boy problem. It about boys, insecurities, esteem, and those murderous, self-centered, woe-is-me years from 12-18.....
My wife, an only child raised by a single mom, and the mother of a daughter from a long ago bad experience at marriage, is very smart, and a constant source of insightful gems about our world.
She says boys are boys, and girls are girls, and our public education establishment is trying to treat them both the same, and has failed boys. Really failed boys.
Boys rough house, poke each other in the nose, scuffle and compete and run and kick and spit. They showoff, cry, yell, have a mean streak for small critters, and really, really want to be hugged by mom or teacher. They are boys. Not boyzandgirlz..Boys. Not students. Boys. Not perfect little angels. Boys. We should celebrate that! And if one boy is not in that mold, it should be noted. We see the Hokie shooter was never, in his whole life, anything but an outsider to all, from his grandparents to his victims. But when we spend an inordinate amount of precious time trying to make boys and girls indentical in behavior, there is no time to observe and note his kind of abnormal behavior. If it was evident early on to grandparents in Korea, and noted during his college career, that the shooter was bad-ass weird, violent in thought, and isolated, the failure is society's ability to note, address, and try to modify that behavior. He was NOT BEING A NORMAL BOY!!! All the red flags, but no way to make provident use of them.
In the schools of today, a boy is forbidden to be a boy. Rules are for boys. Behavior restraints are for boys. If two boys get in a beef, which is a normal state for boys, and try to poke the other in the nose, both get expelled. For God's sake, they are boys! They do that stuff. It is the relief valve. It is the ordering of the social standing. I see all this stuff about bullying. My life experience with bullying is that the bully gets his comeupance, sometime sooner than later, at the hand of another boy. A re-ordering of a snot locker, and some hard hits and the bully discovers a tougher dude. Actions have consequences, and boys need to learn that the hard way. Boys learn things the hard way. They are boys.
Boys who don't act like boys need to be noticed. They might require special treatment, understanding, counseling, and a way to express their needs. But if we don't let them be boys, how would we ever know which ones need special attention?
Take time to read about the "Heroes of the Virginia Tech massacre":
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/23/vatech.heroes/index.html
We can only hope, I guess, that on the anniversaries of this horror story it will be these Heroes who are remembered, not the gunman ... but I suppose that is only wishful thinking based on the reoccurring anniversaries of Columbine. Unfortunately, heroes and victims are seldom the glory of press reports so expectations to the contrary seem naive.
Apparently every year from now until the end of time we are going to "remember" the Columbine killings as the anniversaries of that tradegy roll around.
But by doing so every year are we not reminding every potential killer just how much fame awaits those who are willing to murder to get it?
If you doubt that truth make a list of all the names of the victims or the heroes. I doubt you can list many, if any, of either.
But you can remember the names of the killers, can you not?
Does it all start with the video games played by kids throughout our nation?
Are they winning because they did not fire the shots ~ or because they did?
But for this day, at least, take time to remember the Heroes.
Perhaps they will be the ones remembered in the years to come?
Doubtful ...
... but possible ...
... if YOU remember and spread the word ... year after year after year ...
I am in my 50's now and I can remember capital punishment, the pleage of allegiance and school prayer. I can also remember the presidents fitness program and after school training. My point is that there is not enough positive activities for kids today. Too many are latch-key kids with nothing better to do than play Doom or any of the other graphic games. They have been desensitised to the fact that death is exactly that , death. You don't have 5 lives to live if you die and I think that our parents, school councellors and mostly psychiatrists are missing the fact that our society is being pulled toward the violent. Look at kids that have no other way to get ahead in this world than join the military, how many kids own their fathers gun and know how to properly use it? I was taught that if I aim a gun at a living thing, I better want to suffer the consequences of it dying. The answers here are simple. closer monitoring by school councellors and most of all parents teaching the right things to their kids, wrong from right, godliness and the sanctity of life altogether. All life, people, wolves, dogs, cats etc have a right to exist and in the grand scheme of things ultimately have a place and purpose for being here. Let's stop promoting death games and promote life for what it's worth. Let's also get out of Iraq, as the advertizements for the military make it look oh, so cool to kill people. May god have mercy on our souls as our planet warms, our children die in senseless war and Bush And Haliburtan get rich at our childrens expenses. P.S. try to watch an inconvenient truth by Al Gore. Sure wish he would run again. As a closing note: my prayers go out to the victims and their families of the senseless tragedy at virginia state. Peace be with you in your hour on need.
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