Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech Shootings- Comment if you feel the need:

Given what has happened the last few days with the shootings and bomb threats at the Virginia Tech Campus I have found myself perplexed with a lot of unanswered questions. First of all, generally speaking, when is enough… just simply enough. When are we as a human race going to learn the valuable lessons that can come from these tragedies, find the good in the bad, come together, and do our part to encourage one another to prevent these cowardly acts of violence against innocent bystanders? A campus sits in shock after the worst shooting in American history and some callous dimwits are calling in bomb threats the next day all over the nation. Is it that the students aren’t already scared enough? Seriously, show some respect for the people who had their lives, hopes, and dreams, all ended short because of one person’s senseless display of bloodshed. There is no need for copycats, what we need is for everyone to open their eyes, because if we don’t these kinds of things will keep happening until we do.

Planes mysteriously crash, ships sink, cars lose control, day in and day out people die from cancer, disease, even the most absurd of accidents that you couldn’t think of if you tried. Accidents are random and could happen to anyone, today you could be sitting here, and tomorrow a group of your friends could be sitting around with your family wondering how this could have happened to you. Perfectly healthy people get sick all the time, and all of this is hard enough to deal with. Hard enough to be more than enough without some loner, with psychological problems, who should be reaching out for help, but instead pushes people away his entire life, who showed signs long before his malicious run through campus that murderous ideas like this were played out like a screenplay in his head, kills 33 people along with injuring almost as many on some violent campus rampage. How this person can do what he did… I will never know or understand. To fight for your country or in the name of religious beliefs and kill a man is something some men/women never let go of but carry with them in perspective; however, to just not say one word, have absolutely no basis for your actions, walk into a class room, and assassinate people like this guy did is beyond me. I can only pray the victims are in a better place, and this lunatic is standing before the only person who can judge him now getting what he deserves.

Whether it be a gutless sniper on top of a tower at the University of Texas, trench coat murderers with a small arsenal terrorizing Columbine High School, a madman blowing up a building in Oklahoma City to pieces without remorse, or terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers filled with thousands of people, we have had so many chances to learn from these disasters that life cannot be taken for granted… yet we walk blind in the same direction as before once the dust seems to settle. For a week or a month we talk about what happened, its all over the news, people set up memorials, gather and light candles, some even write blogs like this, but the most important thing we seem to let go of as time passes. Sure we can only do so much, and you can never prevent things like this from happening, but the mentality most of the time is I’m sorry it happened but the effects of it aren’t lived out by me since it didn’t directly affect me. This is where we are wrong because it affects all of us as a nation, as a people, and as a human race.

What I am trying to say, and it’s mostly out of frustration watching the coverage of the events Monday, is that we can do so much more afterwards. Watching a shocked police chief who could have never been prepared for what happened have to defend himself on a podium to a group of reporters made me sick to my stomach. These reporters are ruthless and only want a story; they don’t realize “their story” is what is leading the people in the wrong direction. The public reads what they write in the aftermath of all these people being killed and their focus is turned away from what’s important to blaming others for their actions. Do you know whose fault it is… it’s the maniac strolling around campus with a 9mm’s fault. Do something to make light of the situation instead of point fingers. We always want to point the finger like that will solve something. That doesn’t bring these people back; it just adds fuel to the fire.

Why don’t we spend more time focusing on the heroes of the day instead of questioning a chain of events that at the time can’t even be released due to an investigation? What about the students who barricaded the door to a classroom so the shooter couldn’t come back into the room and kill or injure more of their fellow classmates. Or what about the professor who took bullets and lost his life so his students could potentially get out of the class room. Then there is always the emergency room where the students were all taken. The ER in this small town had never experienced anything like this and the students coming in according to one report had a minimum of three bullet wounds each. These people, along with police, SWAT, EMT’s, all saved lives, and did what they could during a horrific chain of events.

Our society today is always focused on the “what if.” After the fact, hind sight view, “what should we have done.” You can train and prepare for the worst, but plans are made to be a broad course of action that only gets better as experiences prove them to be effective or ineffective. That doesn’t make anyone wrong. And the people who sit back and judge how ineffective the plans were didn’t have bullets flying at their head. Sure there is always a time to sit back and talk about what you could have done better, what you did right, but not a few hours after the guns go off when they are still carrying bodies out of classrooms. I mean come on, do we really need to put the police chief up at a podium and interrogate him or should be maybe just let him make his statement and continue doing his job. These idiot reporters asked the same 10 questions over and over he could not answer at the time.

Lots of times we talk about how many were killed or injured in a catastrophe like this like that number is how we judge the severity. It goes so much farther than that. Imagine the total losses/pain, their hurt for missing family, friends, and significant others, or the poor people who have to witness these hateful acts. This never goes away, it stays with them always.

So what can we do? Really I don’t know… I just think each person has a responsibility, to his/her self, and to the other billions of people on this planet, to act with some sort of respect for one another. I may not like you, you may not like me, maybe we don’t agree on the same things and that is all fine. What gives one person the divine right to take another person’s life is not for me to decide. But, to live is to fight another day, to live is to dispute with one another and learn from one another. I think we are all living to learn from one another. Remember your ways of thinking 5 years ago and just think about how they will change as society and the people around you gyrate in this tail spin of life. Someone like this eccentric student at Virginia Tech might think twice about killing innocent people if he had to see the faces of the families he has damaged. He might sit down and talk to these “rich students” and “women” he despised and see there was more to them than their social status and his preconceived notions. Violence is never an answer, it’s an expression, and for the life of me I will never understand how this student could express himself this way. It will be on everyone’s mind for a while, but once we let our guard down… another senseless act will slap us across the face and show us the reality of things and the world we live in today.