No Safe Place

Every now and then we get our mortality brought home to us in particularly horrible ways. The news is full of traffic accidents, hit-and-runs, Darwin Award-winning bad judgment, the lethalness of trans fats, and just bad luck. Then there's something like the Virginia Tech shootings, which not only make no sense to anyone, but are horrifying in their violation of our assumptions of safety. We tend to think of our homes, our schools, our workplaces as being islands of safety in a pretty chaotic world. Even so, most of us don't go around thinking how dangerous the world is, and for most people in the First World, it's not. You're more likely to die of age-related disease than violence in most First World Countries. So when violence happens on a scale like this, in a place we tend to think of as largely safe, it's somehow more shocking to us.

The most immediate point to be made out of this incident is a desperate need for stricter gun control. There is no good use for the weapons—a 9 millimeter semiautomatic and a .22 caliber handgun, two of the most popular guns in violent crime—used in this incident other than to kill people. It's time to stop linking the right to bear arms with the right to own weapons that are not used for hunting or the minimum of self defense, and to make it much harder for everyone to purchase handguns, especially more than one. Nobody needs an arsenal. The sad truth is that far too many people who own a gun for self-defense don't really know how to use it. They don't go to firing ranges, they don't learn gun safety, and they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if they were in it, without sheer scattershot luck (which is the attraction of semi-automatics, by the way). In a moment of extreme stress, this is going to protect you how?

But I have some thoughts about the shooter too, and about placing this incident in a global perspective. Despite the horrific nature of this act, it's clear from the materials sent to NBC and from people who knew him that this kid was in a lot of pain himself. That fact doesn't excuse his actions, but it makes the rest of us a little responsible, too, especially our leaders, who have failed to care for our weakest and most vulnerable. Face it: not only is our health care system a shambles, but finding affordable mental health care is harder in many ways because of the stigma still attached to mental illness. And while you can't make people go to counseling, you can make it a less awful idea to contemplate, and provide emotional (and financial) support for those who do. This is where we failed as a society.

Again, this doesn't excuse the actions of the individual, as David Brooks seems to feel in his editorial in the Times. "It should be possible to reconstruct some self-confident explanation for what happened at Virginia Tech that puts individual choice and moral responsibility closer to the center," he says, though it seems clear that the shooter was mentally ill in some fashion. The question here is not one of morality, but of the capacity for personal responsibility. If you have no emotional connection with your fellow human beings, it's awfully easy to kill them. That disconnect is one of the things that makes it possible for soldiers to function in war. And yet we're appalled when we see it in an individual in civilian life.

It's useful and necessary to put this kind of an incident in perspective as well, say, in the context of what's currently happening in Darfur. How different is the violence, rage, and pain that sparked Cho's assault against people he felt (rightly or not) persecuted him (“You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience.”) from the systematic, dispassionate rape and murder of an entire group of people? Which seems more incomprehensible to you?

Comments

[Brian]

There is no good use for the weapons—a 9 millimeter semiautomatic and a .22 caliber handgun, two of the most popular guns in violent crime—used in this incident other than to kill people.

Sure there is - a .22 makes a dandy target shooting pistol.

[Lee]

Brian, that can be said of any handgun (or gun, period), but you hardly need a semi-automatic to enjoy target shooting. My objection isn't to guns for people with a legitimate interest in them: people who enjoy target shooting as a hobby, hunters, cops, armed forces personnel, homeowners in dangerous or isolated areas. But we ought to at least make it a requirement that people take gun safety classes (like drivers ed), increase the waiting period and thoroughness of background checks, and stop making some of the armor piercing ammo available to civilians. We don't let just anybody behind the wheel of a car, which can be an equally deadly weapon. Why are we making truly deadly weapons so easily available? (Rhetorical question. . . .)

[Brian]

I have no problem with obtaining a gun being on par with operating / owning a vehicle.

I'm also not a die-hard gun owner; I feel about that like a New Yorker might feel about car ownership - I don't need one in my daily life.

My real problem with gun control is practicality and handing power to the State. Ain't no sense passing a law if you can't enforce it, and we should all know that we can't give any power to the State without them wanting more.

[Lee]

There has to be a model in Europe for gun control that we can use as a starting point. And like you, I'm not keen on handing over a lot of power to the state either (especially this one, which is already power-mad). That's one of the reasons for the right to bear arms clause to begin with. But it's completely out of hand in this country, so we need to start somewhere. Not a perfect solution, but at least a start to a conversation, perhaps.

I grew up with hunters and Air Force people, so I'm not unfamiliar with guns. But I wouldn't have one in my house. The thing about guns is that once there's one around, the only two things you can do with it are use it or break it. And it's way too tempting to use it.

[Brian]

There has to be a model in Europe for gun control that we can use as a starting point.

Maybe. But by the time you get done bashing and painting what you've got will be heavily modified for local conditions.

[Lee]

That's true even if we start from scratch, states' rights being what they are here. But we need to start somewhere.

[Brian]

But we need to start somewhere.

Or do we? I think the guys (and I except you from this*) yapping about 'more gun control' or 'more guns' miss the point. Stuff happens. If this mutt had been unable to obtain guns he might have blown up a building. Or used his car to mow down pedestrians. Whatever; assume he was one disturbed individual. He would have gone off the rails - it could have been worse and it should have been better.

Bad cases make bad laws, they say.

*because you're asking and looking for conversation. Zealotry is a vice.

[Lee Kottner]

Brian, I agree that bad stuff happens, but I think we should make it as difficult for that stuff to happen as possible, in the case of obtaining weapons. And I do think we need a dialogue on it. You're right that extremism in either case does no one any good. It would be nice if the NRA could take a step back from their "Any gun for anyone" stance and if the other side would make some concessions too. We need a reasonable policy on gun ownership that's compatible with the Constitutional right to bear arms. There's no other way to get one that to sit down and hash it out. I'm not saying this is a good case for making new laws with. It's the perfect opportunity to put gun control on the table in a serious fashion though. That's all I'm asking.