In the Wake of Violence
It has been my impression so far that because Monday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech hit us so close to home, the reaction has been more disjointed and numb than if it were second-hand information like the shootings at Columbine and Kent State. Students on the 5th floor of Ambler Johnston Hall did not even know what was taking place just one floor below them until they watched it unfold on TV, and different figures aired throughout the day with the first report looking like a relatively smaller calamity. It is out-of-state sources and media that are drawing the first conclusions telling us where to go from here. I believe we as a state won't be doing so until it is some distance in our memory.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League responded immediately with "Gun-Control Claims Lives at Virginia Tech", while the alternative health community I quoted in my last piece published "Another School Shooter, Another Psychiatric Drug?", and the UK site Telegraph released "Questions Film-Makers Must Ask Themselves After Virginia Tech". These are all valid points, the VCDL did push for a bill to allow students to carry defensive weapons on campus just this year, a high percentage of school shooters were on psychiatric medication at the time of the shooting, and indeed there is cause for concern over the violent images we are exposed to. There is more to all of these discussions however. More handguns on campus might incite further incidents, violent offenders may naturally require medication and questioning violence on film intrudes on free speech. As an antiacademic I could just write "Students Pay Ultimate Price For Enrollment", but bad things don't happen to fuel our own private ambitions. Like the war in Iraq, they only keep us from the civic platforms that we would choose.
As for the question of what's next, aside from shutting down all schools it's hard to see this not repeating itself anywhere that isn't a maximum security prison. If advocates of gun control get a union of college towns in their pocket after this they could pass sweeping legislation. If the shooter's classmates and teachers are blamed for not acting on the warning signs it could end privacy in schools and censor all writing and conversation. The reason he was able to do what he did and plot it unnoticed is personal freedom, the same thing that enables us to do good. So how then will we defend freedom? The First and Second Amendments are matters of principle, to be discussed without violence emerging once again, each time striking a blow to the side that wants freedom.
No political considerations must be so important to us that tragedy does not unite us as a people. God be with all Virginia Tech students and their families on this day of mourning.