Reflections on Virginia Tech tragedy

No one with an ounce of human decency could fail to be heartbroken at the tragic massacre on campus at Virginia Tech last week. A deeply disturbed, indeed deranged, student, a South Korean resident alien named Cho Seung-Hui, killed 32 students and professors before turning his gun on himself, making this the largest mass shooting in American history.

Students and professors alike demonstrated true courage and even heroism, blocking the murderer with closed doors, piled-up desks, and sometimes even their own bodies. The first victim was a freshman girl, the second her RA (Resident Assistant), who tried to come to her aid. A 76-year-old engineering professor and Holocaust survivor, Liviu Librescu, was killed holding his classroom door closed so that his students could escape.

In the midst of this tragedy and heroism, it is all the more saddening, although predictable, that elements of the gun-ban lobby, in the media and elsewhere, would try to use this horrific event to bolster their agenda. But then, many of the same people attempted to do the same thing after 9/11, in which no firearms were even used. Ideology bows to neither human tragedy nor reason, apparently.

Far from being a showpiece for what is euphemistically called gun "control," this incident clearly demonstrates the futility of expecting laws to stop criminals, who by their very nature transgress laws. Guns are banned on college and university campuses -- but that did not keep Cho from bringing his onto the campus at Virginia Tech. Granted, a person with his psychological profile ought to have been barred from purchasing a firearm. Somebody dropped the ball, somewhere.

Still, I recall thinking sadly, as I received news of this incident, "oh no, guns are prohibited on campus: those students were defenseless, no way to fight back." At least some VT students felt the same: one member of the campus shooting club, interviewed by ABC's Good Morning America, expressed frustration that if concealed carry of a handgun were allowed on campus, he or someone else might have been able to stop the shooter before he'd killed so many.

I am reminded of the woman, some years ago, who watched her mother gunned down in a fast-food restaurant, unable to intervene because she had left her handgun legally locked in her car in the parking lot. Or again, of the high school vice principal who retrieved his handgun from his car parked legally off-campus and was, in fact, able to subdue a shooter who was rampaging through his school.

In fact, as Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt accurately points out, according to UPI, "all the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun." Yet the gun-ban crowd would like to further restrict legal access to firearms. This makes no sense at all.

I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: criminals may be crazed, they may be deranged, but they are not stupid. They are far more likely to pick "soft" targets, places where they know no one is going to be shooting back at them, for their rampages. Would not knowing whether a given victim or bystander would be able to return fire absolutely dissuade all violent crime, all the time? No, of course not. Would it help the situation? I believe it would, and there are statistics to back up this view: see John Lott, "More Guns, Less Crime."

More productive is trying to figure out why so many signals were missed in the case of Cho: an individual who had twice been accused of stalking, who had been examined and found to be mentally unstable, who had frightened classmates and professors alike with his graphically violent and twisted poetry and plays, who was so distant and sullen his tutor said that attempting to communicate with him "was almost like talking to a hole,” according to an AP report. Yet neither the university administration nor law enforcement authorities proved willing or able to step in and prevent the tragedy.

As a hunting safety instructor, and a certified range officer, I will proudly admit my bias: that ordinary, law-abiding citizens clearly have the Constitutional right, and ought to have the means, to protect themselves from deranged, murderous psychopaths like Cho. If this incident at Virginia Tech makes one thing clear, it is that citizens who count only on the authorities to protect them are in for a grievous, and perhaps lethal, disappointment.