Alright, now that the media has sensationalized every aspect of the Virginia Tech school shooting, and the dust is beginning to settle, let me just vent a little, and I'll lay the issue to rest.
First and foremost, if you haven't already I would encourge you to read some of the biographies of the students and faculty whose lives ended prematurely that morning. Of the thirty-two in all, there were young, old, people of different countries, and diverse backgrounds, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, a comletely random and indiscriminate massacre of bright, ambitions and learned persons intended for great things. There were tales of extraordinary heros in those final minutes, including that of Liviu Librescu, a 75-year-old Romanian aeronautics expert and surivor of the Holocaust who was reportedly shot through the door of his classroom as he used his body to barricade the door; only one of his students died in that room. Brian Bluhm was a 25-year-old graduate student auditing a class in Advanced Hydrology during the shooting. Jarrett Lane, a 22-year-old senior graduated as valedictorian in my old neighboring town of Narrows, Va. In these 4 classrooms, many of the 27 students and 5 teachers would have gone on to do extraordinary research in their field of study and would have truly made the world a better place with their achievements in medicine, engineering, and foreign affairs had they not been taken from us.
With that said...of all the many angles from which the media has probed this "story," sometimes tactfully, sometimes disrespectfully, the one that infuriates me the most is the fact that the media focus was never on the victims or the families but instead the incessant plastering of the shooter's face and his self-martyring photos and videos. SICK of it I am. At first I belived NBC when they said they thought it necessary that we see pictures and portions of the video in order to get an idea of "why," but it soon became clear that their use was excessive and that there was no understanding why. Four days after the shooting the families are still reeling from the trauma and his face was everywhere. His name had become very commonly used on TV. But as for me, I refused, and I still refuse to call him anything but "the shooter" but more often than not it comes out in anger with "deranged" or "despicable" in front. I went to NBC's website one day, and it made me ILL the number of times that psycho's name was used and his scrunched face all over my screen. Every story had his picture in it, not the terrified students nor the weeping parents clutching their surviving sons and daughters, but his angry face. There was even an appauling slideshow of his photos posted and I'm guessing a more lengthy video than was posted on TV. I couldn't tell you; I was too sick of him to watch. I give CNN credit for having the most reverent coverage, but otherwise I think the media has again failed us miserably in their tactless, insensitive, and sensationalist coverage of this whole ordeal
Secondly, the issue of gun control. I couldn't believe how quickly this one sprang up. I turned on the radio just hours after the shooting and they were debating it already. I was absolutely dumbfounded to hear that our monkey-brained President Bush used his 4:15pm live television, first-time statement on the massacre of 32 students to defiantly defend his stance on gun control! That was NOT the time nor the proper forum for that statement. Once again, he has topped all the idiotic things he has said during his years in office with this statement. He is a disgrace to our country, and the worst president in history according to many sources. Thank God he's gone in January 2009! But watching these horrible events unfold on the tv that morning with my dad, he turns to me and says, and get this: he believes that every man and woman should be required to carry a gun.....
!!!
I had to ask if he was completely insane and if he wanted to live in fear each day with the knowledge that this kind of thing would happen every day in a country that mandated that every adult carry a gun! He argued that everyone would know that everyone else had a gun, and hence less crime. I pleaded, More Murders!! More crazy people to go on rampages like this guy! More kids who find their parents' guns and kill themselves or their friends. More drunk people killing each other. More angry employees killing each other. More people using their guns to get what they want. Sure, everyone would have a gun, but your ability to get to it the second you need it mean the difference between life and death, not to mention it would make a murderer of you, too!
Something someone on the radio said one night made me say, "well, duh!" He said that buying a gun in New York is more difficult that any other state and that 5 hours away in Virginia they have the slackest gun laws in the country. And here's the kicker: "Getting a gun in this country should be at least as difficult as getting a driver's license." I couldn't agree more! A 5-day waiting period, a criminal background, and the gun's yours in most states. Meanwhile we've got 16-year-olds taking their written and driving tests 2 or 3 times over just to be able to drive a car! Something is seriously wrong in a country with this logic, and you don't have to go far to find people screaming in agreement. Countries around the world have spoken out about how blind this country is to the fact that our gun laws are so loose and that we shouldn't be so suprised every time something like this happens. It's our own fault for not doing anything about it! There's a great article on the Guardian's website about American gun control from a Brit's point of view.
Of the countless dozens of families and hundreds of individuals whose lives were ireversibly changed that day, I'm sure that most are still leaning on their family for support. But we can support those who are suffering, too with our compassion during the traumatic events, respect for their loss during their long healing process, and by reminding ourselves when we begin to talk about these events that we think before we speak, we remember that though this massacre may have happened long ago in our mind, their family members are still gone and they will never forget.
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