Given the weight of the tragedy at Virginia Tech that is upon us, as well as the fact that this will be my final article for this newspaper, I am at a loss for words. All of the talking heads, the pundits and the commentators have left me without much to say because they are talking all of our heads off dissecting this situation. We've spent the past few days and will spend the next few weeks discussing how lonely and deranged Cho Seung-Hui apparently was, how security officials might have been able to respond faster and how the warning signs for tragedies like this should have been more apparent. We will parse, catalogue and indict the feelings of a troubled dead man whose true sentiments we'll never really know. We will honor those who gave their lives to protect other students and those who continue to provide comfort to the victims. We will think twice about the nature of campus security and counseling services at our colleges. All of this, rightfully so.
But what is missing in all of this is discussion about the overarching themes that we should be gleaning from this horror. It's been said that, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I'd submit that given how rigidly we cling to our guns and therefore inherent violence in our culture, we live in a profoundly sick society. Public opinion, depending on the issue, can often be the worst opinion. The public would have never voted to abolish slavery, give women the right to vote, sign the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. And now the public (that's us), will not vote to get rid of the guns.
Much like the issue of the death penalty, our country has the most backwards laws regarding gun control when compared to our fellow industrialized democracies. And the folks who perished at Columbine, the Amish school in Lancaster, Pa., Virginia Tech and in our cities are paying the price. We should be startled by the fact that nearly three times the number of those murdered in Blacksburg on Monday have been slaughtered by gun violence in this country's most violent city this year: Philadelphia.
We are rightly shocked by the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech but we hardly bat an eye at the deaths of 166 Iraqis on Wednesday in various car bombings and attacks, facilitated by our ill-advised occupation of that country. With all of this going on, our leaders, liberal and conservative, refuse to tackle the issue of gun control as our allies have. They refuse to end a war that should have never been started in the first place. They are paving the way to hell for this country through their utter lack of moral backbone. God forbid they stand on principle and endanger their prospects for the next election!
Not only do we tolerate this, but we demand it. In the wake of vicious murders involving guns, the first thing that comes to the minds of Americans is, "I hope they don't take my guns away because of this." Which clearly indicates that they know the appropriate response to rampant gun violence - gun control - yet they are simply too afraid to comply. We reward those leaders who realize that guns are a threat to our national security more than al-Qaida with a one-way ticket out of elected office. We can hardly blame them for their failures on the issue. We get the leadership that we deserve. We are sadly too busy electing our leaders on the basis of whether or not we would enjoy grabbing a beer with them to realize that maybe we should have hired the wise and sober designated driver to steer our country forward. No wonder we as a country keep careening into light posts (47 million without healthcare), trees (gun violence) and other people's front yards (Iraq).
During my freshman year, I had a roommate much like Cho Seung-Hui. Socially inept, quiet to a fault and prone to random outbursts of aggressive behavior in conversations - but not completely out of reach. I watched as friends of mine extended their hands in initial friendship only to yank it away quickly when they realized that he might be more of a challenge than they were up for. "This person needs more help than I am willing to give them," they would think to themselves as they talked behind his back to me. My roommate eventually left this school, of course without incident.
But far too many people gave Cho Seung-Hui the same treatment at Virginia Tech. He railed against deceitful, rich kids who were so wrapped up in the overexaggerated, hackneyed debauchery involving drugs and alcohol that we sadly come to expect on college campuses while they exacerbated the feelings of social ostracism residing within this young man. His community failed him so he responded in the most abhorrent way possible. Now everyone there is coming together as a family as they should have done with this young man in order to prevent such a tragedy.
If this tragic story tells us anything, it is that we need to take better care of each other. And that is the theme around which I have tried to focus my columns while writing for this newspaper for the past few years. I was once told that politics and public policy are about "closing the gap between what is . and what ought to be." We ought not conceptualize college as a reckless pursuit of who can live most dangerously without getting killed. We ought not have so many guns in our society that end in the deaths of thousands each year. We ought not do a lot of things that we continue to do as a society.
Looking back on that dark Monday at Virginia Tech, we have seen what is. We now know what ought to be. We ought to live in a country where gun violence is not an issue. That means no guns. Let's say "never again" and mean it this time, before another socially ostracized student finds it within himself to trump the scope of Monday's tragedy. Let's close that gap.
Paul Perry is a senior in the
School of International Service
and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
