Vultures In Blacksburg

There's no point in posting a link to any of the articles, since you'd have to have been living under a rock to not have heard about the Virginia Tech Shootings that took place yesterday.

This hits home for me because D.C. is a town full of Hokies.  When I was a kid, I used to joke that Blacksburg was so far away that the Washington papers should not cover them as if they were a local school.  Now that I live here, I know that's bullshit.  Tons of VT students and alums are from the DC area; many of their alums live and work in DC; and some of the people I hang out with regularly went to VT.  The first thing I did when I heard about this was e-mail two of my buddies wo went there to find out how they  (and their loved ones) were doing.

Sadly, this has already become the media circus I knew it would be.  The 40-point headlines, the round-the-clock coverage even when there was nothing new to report, the gun-control and pro-gun lobbies spinning away, the other political action groups blaming everything from video games to music.  The comparisons (some of them valid) between what happened in Blacksburg yesterday and what is happening at schools in Iraq and Afghanistan every week.  It's all so predictable and sad. 

To me, the worst part is the fact that the media makes these people famous...and we enable it.  We lap this shit up like starved animals.  I was really depressed about the whole thing yesterday, so what did I do?  I went on Wikipedia and looked up all the school shooting incidents, just to see if I could make sense of any of it.  It kinda helped, but not really.  The thing that most struck me was that there was a ton more information about the murderers than there was about their victims.  The perpetrators seemed like celebrities, given the fatuous level of detail of their entries.  The victims were footnotes.  I'm not about to go all Nancy Grace on you, but there's something seriously fucked up about that. 

All these shooters seemed to have a couple of things in common: they all wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.  They all wanted to be remembered for what they did.  That's why they don't simply commit suicide, or just kill one person, or go to jail - they want to make a 'statement.'  In my opinion, we shouldn't even publicize these murderers names at this point; they should be treated like alleged victims of sexual assault.  There's no need to inspire other lunatics into becoming copycats.

Which brings me to my next point.  As Chris Rock said when describing people's reactions to Columbine, "Whatever happened to crazy?"  These people are fucked up.  That's the core of the problem, no matter what anyone tells you. 

Believe it or not, the crime isn't that we allow people to buy guns.  Everyone in Switzerland has a gun, yet their shooting rates are absurdly low.  You know what else they have?  Training.  Even the formerly-funny Dennis Miller has recently said, "It should be at least as hard to get a gun license as it is to get a pilot's license."  We should be a lot more careful about who we allow to carry weapons, and make sure they not only receive physical training on usage but psychological training on responsibility.  Sort of like driving school, but hopefully more effective.  In any case, this won't completely solve the problem.  Nutbags who want guns will find a way to get them. 

Nor will allowing everyone to carry guns solve the problem.  Proliferation usually means a relaxing of standards of ownership, not a stiffening.  It's technically true that people are a lot less likely to pull a gun if they think someone will fire back.  But there are two problems with this argument: 1) it assumes the mental stability/rationality of the criminal -- in the case of school shooters, it's doubtful they are concerned with self-preservation; and 2) it assumes that the extra gun owners are themelves well-trained, competent and mentally sound.  Personally, I don't want to live in a Wild West scenario where lots of people are packing heat at all times.  I don't want to have to worry that some undisciplined idiot will pull on me in a fit of road rage (which happens all-too-often right now in America). 

If you think campus safety should be increased, you're living a pipe dream.  Only city universities are built to withstand the invasion and assault of a lone gunman, or have rapid-response security on duty.  Plus, how do you stop a student from doing this?  They are allowed free access into buildings.  American universities aren't built like fortresses. They are sprawling, free areas of travel, where students are welcome to come and go as they please.  You simply can't lock down a place the size of thousands of acres and several buildings in a short time.  You can't stop a student with a pass from going into any building, or piggybacking with someone who does.   If campuses shut down for every shooting attack or murder, they would shut down pretty often.  All VT could have done differently was cancel classes...which might have limited the death toll to whichever dorms the gunman had access to.

No trait links these school shooters that we know of, other than being crazy and wanting to go down in infamy.  Sometimes the perp is rich, sometimes poor, sometimes a loner, sometimes has lots of friends.  Mostly they are male, but females have been involved.  Sometimes they live in the city, sometimes in the boonies.  They can be of any race or religion. 

But wait -- I forgot one other common link: mass-murderers tend to plan these crimes months -- if not years -- in advance.  There are always warning signs.  And this is where society comes in.

For better or worse, the United States is a very individualized place.  We spend a lot of time focused on  vapid shit, and we tend to pride our privacy, independence and freedom.  On the face of it, that doesn't sound like such a horrible way to live.  However, that freedom comes with a price.  One of my neighbors could be beating his wife every night, and I would have no idea.  We have been conditioned not to be nosy -- whereas in many other societies, people make it their business to know almost everything that's going on with those around them. 

We have been conditioned to depend on the police...but the police often don't respond to our concerns unless they judge them as pressing, leaving us feeling like we are paranoid and overreacting.  We figure someone else can deal with it, that it's someone else's problem. 

Maybe talking about guns or campus safety misses the point: by the time the criminal plan is being executed, it's already too late.

So what can we do?  I'm not sure.  Maybe we have to be more nosy as a people.  Maybe we should snoop around, and report anything we find suspicious to people who we think might be in a position to stop it.  Maybe we should be more sensitive and nurturing to people with psychological problems, instead of simply trying to medicate them to numbness.  Maybe there's a way to stop them before they ever reach their homicidal peak. 

If there isn't, this is probably a vulnerability we're just going to have to accept.   

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