The VA Tech Massacre and one news editor’s erroneous conclusion

clipped from mail.google.com However it is dressed up, the Virginia campus massacre was only possible because the killer, Cho Seung-hui, had access to a gun. Remove the access to guns and some of the threat disappears too. Of course serious criminals will always be able to lay their hands on weapons. Criminals don’t pay attention to bans, but many of these youngsters responsible for the 19 shootings in the last decade have not been from criminal backgrounds. If guns weren’t so freely accessible, some of them at least would not have been able to carry out the atrocities that they did. Guns need to be removed from society entirely, not, as Mr Pratt suggests, integrated into all parts of it. Even if a ban on guns had prevented just one of those shooting incidents in the last 10 years, then surely it would have been worth it, as the community at Virginia Tech would no doubt agree.

The above clip is taken from an article posted on April 17th on the http://uk.msn.com website and is written by their news editor, Tom Reed. What follows below is my response.

With yesterday’s VA Tech Massacre, lots of blogs and newspapers will renew the call for a ban on guns, or at least a more stringent background check before guns are issued. As the MSN News Editor concludes above, the “Virginia campus massacre was only possible because the killer…had access to a gun.” In my opinion, that’s completely missing the point here – all of the emerging news reports are talking about how friends, family, acquaintances, and the VA Tech community missed warning signs and the opportunity to help Cho Seung-hui when complaints were registered against him.

Let me be very clear here: I’m not advocating for or against guns here. I’m simply refuting the MSN News Editor’s argument above that it’s the access to guns that caused the massacre. Again, what caused the massacre is that many people who had the power – the chance – to help Mr. Cho Seung-hui ignored his troubles. As an educator, I’d argue that ignoring warning signs in a student such as the one Mr. Cho Seung-hui has been described is failing one’s primary professional responsibility.

We need to be more proactive, not reactive, and that means helping our students not just with their academic needs but also their emotional and psychological needs.