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About Virginia Tech
Apr. 17th, 2007 01:08 pmThis morning, while driving my grandmother into town for her grocery shopping, I heard something on ESPN that FINALLY said about this massacre that has not been said (or not loudly enough) about previous massacres.
Put simply: you can't prevent lone nuts from killing people. That's one of the costs of living in a free society. Y'see, murderous lunatics, or more accurately potential murderous lunatics look and act just like everybody else... until they don't. Scientists and profilers have studied mass murderers and spree killers for decades, even centuries now, and they still don't have a clue what causes a normal individual to suddenly change into a killer. They understand how a killer's mind works- total absence of empathy for others being the main unifying factor- but they can't predict when a person's going to snap, they can't say what causes a person to snap, and thus they can't prevent a person from snapping.
I know that the urge is strong to find something to do to prevent things like Virginia Tech, or the Killeen Luby's, or the UT Tower sniper from happening again. The thing is, the one thing that can be done has been done. This particular killer will never kill anyone again. As for future killers, no scientific test exists that can tell a potential killer apart from a normal human being. The only way to provide any real security against such an unknown, unpredictable threat is to eradicate all freedom of action, property and choice and mandate the daily activities of all citizens down to the second- and that's not a society any of us wants to live in.
As for gun control... well, I put it to you this way. Virginia Tech had a firm and inflexible no-firearms, no-knives, no-weapons-of-any-kind law. It didn't help the 32 innocent victims. I do not say that, had any or all of those victims been armed, that they would be alive today- nobody can know that, and considering they were all taken by surprise it's doubtful. They would, however, have had at least a chance to fight back... and since the ban did no good whatever, there's no good reason to maintain it. Gun bans are, as a general rule, ineffective in deterring violent crime or reducing the violence of crime, and they're certainly ineffective at preventing shootings of this kind.
But even if you don't buy that, consider: massacres of this kind happen no more often than once every five years on average. Even in this country, with three hundred million people and four firearms for each man, woman and child in the USA, only one person listens to the evil little voices in his head every five years or so. You are more at risk from drowning with your head in a paint bucket than from somebody going postal. Don't base your actions, or the actions of government, on the sensationalism of one incredible tragedy; base it on the actual risks involved, plus the proven past effectiveness of the proposed remedy.
My prayers go out to the families of the dead, especially the family of the shooter. What happened at Virginia Tech was a senseless tragedy.
But don't give this one tragedy more importance than it's worth.
After all, the next tragedy is just around the corner, and odds are very good it will have nothing to do with guns, colleges, or anything else associated with yesterday.
It'll be unpredicted, unpredictable, and unstoppable... just like yesterday was.
Put simply: you can't prevent lone nuts from killing people. That's one of the costs of living in a free society. Y'see, murderous lunatics, or more accurately potential murderous lunatics look and act just like everybody else... until they don't. Scientists and profilers have studied mass murderers and spree killers for decades, even centuries now, and they still don't have a clue what causes a normal individual to suddenly change into a killer. They understand how a killer's mind works- total absence of empathy for others being the main unifying factor- but they can't predict when a person's going to snap, they can't say what causes a person to snap, and thus they can't prevent a person from snapping.
I know that the urge is strong to find something to do to prevent things like Virginia Tech, or the Killeen Luby's, or the UT Tower sniper from happening again. The thing is, the one thing that can be done has been done. This particular killer will never kill anyone again. As for future killers, no scientific test exists that can tell a potential killer apart from a normal human being. The only way to provide any real security against such an unknown, unpredictable threat is to eradicate all freedom of action, property and choice and mandate the daily activities of all citizens down to the second- and that's not a society any of us wants to live in.
As for gun control... well, I put it to you this way. Virginia Tech had a firm and inflexible no-firearms, no-knives, no-weapons-of-any-kind law. It didn't help the 32 innocent victims. I do not say that, had any or all of those victims been armed, that they would be alive today- nobody can know that, and considering they were all taken by surprise it's doubtful. They would, however, have had at least a chance to fight back... and since the ban did no good whatever, there's no good reason to maintain it. Gun bans are, as a general rule, ineffective in deterring violent crime or reducing the violence of crime, and they're certainly ineffective at preventing shootings of this kind.
But even if you don't buy that, consider: massacres of this kind happen no more often than once every five years on average. Even in this country, with three hundred million people and four firearms for each man, woman and child in the USA, only one person listens to the evil little voices in his head every five years or so. You are more at risk from drowning with your head in a paint bucket than from somebody going postal. Don't base your actions, or the actions of government, on the sensationalism of one incredible tragedy; base it on the actual risks involved, plus the proven past effectiveness of the proposed remedy.
My prayers go out to the families of the dead, especially the family of the shooter. What happened at Virginia Tech was a senseless tragedy.
But don't give this one tragedy more importance than it's worth.
After all, the next tragedy is just around the corner, and odds are very good it will have nothing to do with guns, colleges, or anything else associated with yesterday.
It'll be unpredicted, unpredictable, and unstoppable... just like yesterday was.
