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April 2007
Musings after Virginia Tech
The headline “Gunman kills 32 at Va. Tech” read more like another sad entry from Iraq listing the toll of civilians slaughtered that day. But this was just a few hundred miles away in an area of southwestern Virginia where I worked 19 years ago. Mass murder there two decades ago was just as unthinkable as it was in the public schools I attended in rural Alamance County.
Most people will reflexively think school shootings started with the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. They didn’t. Calling it “recent history”, Google lists 47 school shootings worldwide beginning February 2, 1996 when a 14-year-old boy killed two students and a teacher in his Moses Lake, WA, algebra class. Of those 47 shootings, 36 were in the United States. The next highest countries were Germany with three and Canada with two acts of violence.
What does that tell us? Obviously, there is something different in our country to spur 10 times as many shootings as in Germany. Do American students suffer more from mental disorders than foreign students? I’d bet that there are as many German, British and Swedish students with depression problems as their American counterparts.
That leaves the violent culture we live in where guns are readily accessible. In England where handguns are prohibited, there were no school shootings, according to the Infoplease Web site.
Why do we need to buy AK-47 semi-automatic rifles or Glock 9mm pistols? I’ve never seen a hunter with either weapon. Guns that can’t be used for hunting or marksmanship competition should be beyond public reach. If the gun lobby sidetracks that idea, then Congress ought to look at a federal permitting process that would at least tighten up lax state gun laws like those in Virginia that allowed the deranged Cho Seung-Hui to buy weapons without any background check or waiting period.
Strictly interpreted, the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans the right to bear arms. There’s a significant difference, however, between keeping Granddaddy’s 12 gauge in the closet at home and carrying a 15-shot Glock in a bookbag.
I remember a cowboy movie I saw one Saturday afternoon as a kid. In an effort to stop all the gunfights, the sheriff of Tombstone made all the cowboys turn in their six-guns as they rode into town. If our government doesn’t take action, then the real Tombstone of 2007 will have more kids’ names carved in granite.
