Virginia Tech Shooting
I know that it’s old news now, but I keep thinking about the Virginia tech shooting. Every time something like this happens there is a lot of clamor about what we should do, and one of the loudest cries is that we need more/better gun control laws. I have always thought that is a fallacious stand, and I think this shooting confirms that.
The thing that really upsets me is that Cho Seung-Hui wasn’t well armed. The 9mm Glock is a formidable gun, but his other gun was a 22 pistol–a pea shooter. In columbine, the attackers had shotguns, rifles, pistols, and bags full of bombs. In the recent Trolley square shooting the gunman had a 12 gauge shotgun.
The problem is that with all of the recent gun laws, Cho knew that he would be the only person there with a weapon. There was no one to stop him. One commentator was talking about when/why he committed suicide. According to them, he was always planning on killing himself–as a control thing. The timing was decided, not because he was satiated, but because the cops got there. Someone arrived who could challenge him.
At first glance, gun control laws seem like they would be the solution. But when you think about it more, you realize that GUN LAWS DON’T STOP GUN CRIMES. They punish them. If someone is willing to kill, they don’t care what laws they break. Especially people like Cho Seung-Hui, they have nothing to fear, fines, imprisonment, death sentence, they all mean nothing…Cho wasn’t planning on living out the day.
People like that will always exist, so we can’t stop it from happening. If we destroyed every gun on the planet, they would make their own guns or use explosives. All we can do is deter them, or stop them quickly in the act.
So the solution is to have more guns in school. I think every public educator should have mandatory gun handling classes. And I think that schools should pay for teachers to get concealed weapons permits if they are interested.
In a crisis like that, we need the teachers be in control of themselves, so that they can help the students. If they had some gun training, they would at the very least have some familiarity, and have an idea of the capabilities and weaknesses of guns. The would have an idea of how long it takes to reload a gun, how far a shotgun is effective, or the likelihood of hitting anything with a Walther p22 beyond a few hundred feet.
These kinds of crimes are meticulously planned, strategized, and executed. They prey on fear and dominance. If I were planning an attack, and I knew that there were armed security guards, that the vice principle had a gun, and there were a couple of dare cops in the building, that would seriously limit the options I had. If two additional teachers had concealed weapons, there wouldn’t be much I could do without being ‘challenged’. (obviously this is related to a high school/middle school setting–a college campus would be on a larger scale) I think in most cases it would not be worth it. If it was, within seconds of a shooting there would be someone there to try to stop it.
I think it is horrifying that an entire university can be held at bay with a 22 pistol. If we make it harder for our would-be protectors to be armed. We will only empower the next shooter with more time, less resistance, and more fear to feed on.