May-June 2007

Virginia Tech - Lessons Learned

Our family here at Shade's Landing Inc. grieve with the nation over the senseless deaths of 32 people at Virginia Tech on April 16th.

What causes a person to snap to the point that they want to end their own life? And more deplorable, that they want to take innocent others with them? Most of the time we never get a glimpse into the aftermath psyche of the killer. The cowards as did the shooter at Virginia Tech, kill themselves.

What we do know is that a system that can adjudicate a person as a mental health risk capable of causing substantial harm to themselves or others needs to be fixed. Apparently the adjudication of being a serious safety risk to others was not enough to get Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui into a database that would have prevented him from purchasing the two firearms he used in his rampage.

Cho was deranged plain and simple. He was a madman. He's been referred to as a loner, having no friends, and someone who was so scary that one look would make the hairs on your neck stand up.

He was reprimanded at the University for taking photos of girl students with a camera he held beneath his desk. Two professors voiced their concerns about Cho and that something was wrong. One professor gave the college and Cho and ultimatum: Leave my classroom or I'll resign. The plays he wrote for class went beyond anything one could call creative, and rather portrayed nothing but a troubled mind. Still this apparently was not enough to get Cho off campus and out of school.

Surprisingly, there has been little talk or discussion of gun control in the aftermath. Most thinking people realize Cho was a madman and it would be very difficult if not impossible to stop a madman bent on his own destruction and that of others.

What is certain is that Virginia Tech was and remains a "gun-free zone" where helplessness is celebrated and those who believe in self-defense are shunned.

An armed teacher or student could have made a difference. It happened in Pearl Mississippi when a Principal retrieved his own firearm from his car to stop a sure mass killing by a student. In a CNN news article penned by Ted Nugent, he states: "At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun."

So why do we continue to allow these brain-dead zero-tolerance policies to exist? It's time to let civilians trained to arms carry in our schools and universities.

Gary Shade

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