It is so sad thinking about what had happened over there in Blacksburg, Virginia and seeing how those who have lost their loved ones in the tragedy poured their excessive grief on international television. Reporters were asking how some of them feel about their dead brother or friend and it struck me that these sort of things still have to be queried upon publicly; it shouldn’t have to be asked anymore I must say. We all should know the answer in the first place, those reporters included.
Now numerous questions arose about what had actually happened there when 23 year-old South Korean Cho Seung-Hui took up a semi-automatic and went on a killing rampage inside the Virginia Tech University, killing 30 students and three professors as a result, becoming the deadliest incident of such kind in U.S. history. This of course reminds us of the 1999 Columbine massacres where 12 students were killed in the now very notorious incident.
Immediate reactions have focused on the personality of Cho and many have described him to be a loner and have been taking medications for depression. An Australian news agency had given details where Cho had previously argued with his girlfriend and had killed her and a man before proceeding with the shooting rampage. These reported facts have not yet been examined by other international news network like CNN or Fox News and it couldn’t be confirmed as facts just as yet. This could be a crime of passion rather than a loner’s let-off of personal resentments.
I see this focus to be inordinately inclined towards the personality of the assailant whenever this kind of thing happens in America, as this has become a kind of urban phenomenon over there, where over the decades a number of maladjusted individuals have resorted to the unthinkable and most unreasonable act, like embarking on a killing spree on people they barely know, and who are apparently unrelated to whatever personal debacles they have.
In my mind, maladjusted individuals are a fact of society that could never be hidden or denied anywhere in the world. Even in the Philippines, a portion of the population---very small as it may---could be identified as maladjusted. It’s a fact of life anywhere in the world and not only in America.
But in America, loners become mass killers and everybody is pointing at the kid’s personality and whose grownup years were noticeably unusual and forlorn. However in Europe or in Asia, lonely kids are everywhere yet they don’t go massacring just to set-off their resentments.
International media should instead focus on a long-standing issue that have haunted America and Abaniko have also noticed this. I did too. It is only in America where guns can be purchased on arms-length deal, like taking on a grocery basket and selecting the items from the racks---just like purchasing peanut butters and can goods. Limitations there is so unbelievably slack where those only under 21 years old could not be allowed to buy firearms and any old guy over that age could go ahead and imagine himself as Rambo and get armed to the teeth.
Apparently, the loose guns law in America emanates fundamentally from their very constitution itself, where there is this Second Amendment provision which guarantees every citizen’s right “to bear arms”, probably as a consequence of the civil war circumstance or the American Revolution there centuries ago, where in order to maintain a strong militia arm, the citizens are allowed to own guns in their personal capacity. Apparently towards this day, even after more than a century from the civil war, the legal tradition lives on and Americans are still allowed to purchase guns in a very unrestrictive manner. Consider this, in 1997 alone firearms claimed the lives of 32,436 in the United States, including 17,566 suicides, 13,252 homicides, 981 unintentional shootings, and 367 undetermined.(Gun Industry Watch)
Whether or not there is a scientific basis to this, I personally see that the high accessibility of guns over there had contributed greatly to the occurrence of such incident as the massacres in Blacksburg, Virginia and in Columbine five years ago. Even Australian Prime Minister John Howard had noticed this. Many in fact have noticed this before but U.S. lawmakers always keep a blind eye and deaf ears to this screaming issue.
Maybe it’s the lucrative firearms industry in America that’s holds sway over legislation for arms control over there. We should remember that America is the largest arms manufacturer in the world (second only to Russia in terms of export) and arms company there can easily lobby before U.S. Congress with billions of dollars as token of their regards---and get the desired result.
Whether they like it or not, firearms control or even firearms ban should be high on the list for U.S. Congress to tackle and should even be an issue in upcoming elections over there.
In my years as a law student, way way back into the nineties, I once imagined in my head a situation wherein a witness to a case failed to show up before the court that summoned him and got himself arrested as a result of this. The judge bellowed at him in a thundering voice about why he failed to respond to his order in the most convenient way, and thereby delaying the case that was at hand. 