Everyone knows that on April sixteenth, 2007, a brand new Day That Shall Stay in Infamy was tragically born when a 23-year-old South Korean man who had lived within the US since he was eight and was attending a great American college within the state of Virginia shot to demise 32 college students and school earlier than committing suicide. 33 mindless deaths by guns–the worst non-gang associated gun incident in fashionable American historical past, and a chilling encore to the Columbine Excessive Faculty bloodbath of 1999 which claimed 13 lives.
For sure there have been some very robust reactions among the many American citizenry, to not point out the South Koreans who really feel a collective sense of guilt (needlessly). The anticipated requires stricter laws and the finger-pointing emerged instantly whereas kin, mates, and fellow college students grieved for his or her misplaced ones.
However who’s providing actual options? Are most individuals pondering rationally, contemplating the info, at this stage? There are 10 myths rising relating to the Virginia Tech Bloodbath that have to be intently analyzed, with info thought of, earlier than we find yourself compounding the tragedy.
Fantasy #1. Tighter gun management legal guidelines would have prevented that bloodbath.
It occurs on a regular basis: somebody does one thing improper with one thing and other people need the one thing taken away…from all people. Does it work for the betterment of society? No.
Think about what we discovered at Fast Intelligence’s Factbites. “Germany established gun management in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally unwell, and others, who had been unable to defend themselves, had been rounded up and exterminated….That locations whole victims who misplaced their lives due to gun management at roughly 56 million within the final century.” “Gun-control legal guidelines have noticeably decreased gun possession in some states, with the end result that for every 1% discount in gun possession there was a 3% improve in violent crime…with no educational proof that gun laws stop crime, and loads of indications that they really encourage it, we nonetheless at the moment are debating which new gun management legal guidelines to go.”
Fantasy #2. Virginia’s gun legal guidelines are too unfastened.
Is that so? We discovered one thing very fascinating once we searched at Factbites. “The fatuity of gun-control legal guidelines is nowhere higher illustrated than in Virginia, the place high-school college students in rural areas have an extended custom of going looking within the morning.” Moreover, in accordance with the FBI, Virginia’s background test laws for getting weapons are probably the most rigorous and the very best of any of the 50 states.
Fantasy #3. That is precisely the form of factor that occurs in “gun-toter” states like Virginia.
With all these youngsters in Virginia bearing arms, that is certainly the case, proper? Not precisely. Fast Intelligence’s StateMaster statistics service tells us that Virginia solely ranks twenty fifth amongst states with reference to the variety of gun-related deaths per 100,000 individuals within the state.
Fantasy #4. The US Structure’s Second Modification encourages gun crimes to flourish in America.
At first, there appears to be one thing to this. Fast Intelligence’s NationMaster statistics service reveals that america ranks fourth amongst all nations for probably the most murders dedicated with weapons yearly. The US additionally ranks eighth amongst all nations on the planet for many murders per capita yearly with weapons.
However on this context, the stats are deceiving–because there may be extra data.
In accordance with ‘The Armed Citizen’, “Research point out that firearms are used greater than two million instances a yr for private safety, and that the presence of a firearm, with no shot being fired, prevents crime in lots of cases. Capturing often could be justified solely the place crime constitutes an instantaneous, imminent risk to life, limb, or, in some circumstances, property.” Latest cases of this noble use of guns–made out there to residents by the Second Modification to the US Structure–include Topeka, Kansas fuel station proprietor Dean Yee utilizing his gun to guard himself in opposition to two armed robbers who demanded cash from him at gunpoint. Yee shot one robber and that triggered the opposite one to flee. Had Yee not had his hid weapon allow and his gun, he would very doubtless have been shot by the robbers–perhaps to demise. These cases additionally embody Las Vegas house owner Raymond Hill, who was woke up within the evening by his 12-year-old daughter and advised by her that two armed males had been breaking into their home. Hill loaded his weapon, referred to as the police, then went downstairs and killed one of many burglars, who was coming into Hill’s home by means of a window from which he had eliminated the display screen. The opposite burglar fled on a bicycle, however police nabbed him.
It’s most reasonable to conclude that what the statistics about US gun murders actually reveals is that if extra People took benefit of their Second Modification rights, violent crime charges would go down–not up.
Fantasy #5. The US must observe the lead of different Western nations just like the UK and Australia and make nearly each gun unlawful to personal residents.
That may at the least principally rid the nation of all of the Seung-Hui Cho threats, would not it? That is what a Factbites search got here up with: “Satirically, each [Trent] Lott and Handgun Management acknowledge that the reams of gun management legal guidelines on the books in Washington and in all 50 states have been ineffective in eradicating mass shootings or stopping kids from bringing weapons to highschool…Since Australia banned personal possession of most weapons in 1996, crime has risen dramatically on that continent, prompting critics of U.S. gun management efforts to difficulty new warnings of what life in America could possibly be like if Congress ever bans firearms.”
There may be additionally one thing else to contemplate. America shouldn’t be even positioned among the many high 48 nations of the world when it comes to police per capita. It’s way more logical to conclude that we want extra cops to implement the legal guidelines which are already on the books, no more legal guidelines. Extra police with weapons, actually.
Fantasy #6. “Mass shootings have come to outline our nation”, clearly due to the “easy accessibility to more and more deadly firearms that make mass killings doable.”
Josh Sugarmann’s irresponsible quote, which he said as direct reflection on the Virginia Tech bloodbath, shouldn’t be solely void of statistical proof, it doesn’t match the info as they’ve been noticed. Whereas it is true that mass shootings started occurring extra incessantly than beforehand within the US within the Nineteen Sixties, if such issues have “come to outline our nation”, then so have automotive accidents and aircraft crashes, and that will simply must be as a result of far too many individuals are privileged to have the ability to drive or fly. Sugarmann’s quote is toxically emotional.
Turning to a search at Fast Intelligence’s Factbites reveals the very fact is that “Mass shootings basically disappear in States that go legal guidelines permitting certified residents to hold hid handguns…So, to conclude, the info are clear–more firearms within the palms of sincere, accountable Americans means the thugs on the streets commit much less violent crimes, and the thugs within the authorities are much less more likely to assault the citizenry with storm trooper police state techniques of homicide and genocide… it’s lamentable that 30,000 People die yearly from firearms.”
Fantasy #7. This bloodbath proves that People have too many liberties and must have their rights curtailed.
Cho was South Korean, not American, though he clearly had assimilated into American tradition. Past that truth, let us take a look at a few statistics at NationMaster.
Do you get pleasure from having the liberty to decide on your individual way of life (offered that you simply work for what you need)? Most individuals do. Let’s notice that South Korea, the nation from which Cho got here initially, shouldn’t be among the many main nations for providing freedom of way of life alternative; the US ranks second on the planet, simply barely behind Finland. In different phrases, the one who got here from the extra suppressive tradition was the one who abused the liberty of determination making that US residents get pleasure from. One other statistic at NationMaster exhibits forth that the worst mass capturing by a person in American historical past was carried out by somebody who had a background of serious cultural and financial suppression of freedom in comparison with what People get pleasure from. And consider, he raged in opposition to “wealthy youngsters”–those with the privileges that he clearly coveted (and would have been capable of get pleasure from for the remainder of his life had he peacefully graduated from the American college he attended). Cho murdered as a result of, in his darkened thoughts at the least, he was prevented from having freedom–not as a result of he had an excessive amount of of it. Whereas Cho was having fun with a lifetime of higher center class privilege, he clearly had the suppression and poverty of his boyhood years imprinted on his psyche–he thought of himself a “haven’t” amongst “haves”.
Fantasy #8. Cho solely did what he did as a result of he was bullied by the privileged American wealthy youngsters who surrounded him; it was not likely his fault, however the fault of the People who carry these items on themselves.
Virginia Tech is an effective faculty, however it’s not the Ivy League faculty that so many Korean mother and father covet for his or her kids; and the scholars at Virginia Tech don’t come from significantly prosperous households. Cho’s mother and father had been the house owners of a $400,000 home that Cho grew up in later years; he must have been stretching his creativeness an extended strategy to consider that he was surrounded by super-wealthy white youngsters who had been someway unfairly advantaged or maintaining him down. Cho had acquaintances among the many white American college students who went out of their strategy to attempt to embody him in enjoyable, college-student-type actions. Cho actually accompanied them typically once they went out, and he would drink beer with them and interact in a recreation of tossing ping-pong balls into glasses of beer; he was apparently fairly adept at it, too. However he performed the video games with out expression.
Even earlier than he went to the college, Cho was recognized to be sullen and quiet amongst his household. One factor he loved quite a bit was taking part in video games–something he had in widespread with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the pair of killers on the Columbine highschool massacre-shooting in 1999 whom Cho cited in his twisted manifesto as one in all his inspirations. Cho had no historical past of being picked on besides when he set himself as much as be checked out strangely–such as by writing the disgusting performs he wrote for English class, or intentionally studying aloud English literature passes in a darkish, guttural accent. Or writing down his title as “?”. Cho was mentally diseased lengthy earlier than he went to Virginia Tech. His outgoing older sister got here out simply fine–at an Ivy League faculty referred to as Princeton, the place she would have been surrounded by the little children of millionaires. If Cho had been so abused and scarred by America, then how come she hadn’t?
Fantasy #9. The gun outlets that offered Cho his weapons ought to have recognized higher and must be held legally accountable and maybe compelled to close down.
The FBI and the Virginia State Police concur that the native gun store, Roanoke Firearms, acted in full compliance with the state and the federal legislation. A background test was carried out and Seung-Hui Cho was discovered clear. Though Cho did have psychological issues, he was not listed as a doable hazard as a result of he had by no means been involuntarily dedicated to a psychological hospital. When he was taken to a psychological ward as soon as, he was solely held in a single day, didn’t resist, and was deemed of sound (even when bleak) thoughts by knowledgeable psychiatrist. This was regardless of the truth that a particular justice had, in 2005, discovered Cho mentally unwell.
The opposite gun store, which offered Cho one in all his weapons by way of the Web, was in Inexperienced Bay, Wisconsin, and it, too, stuffed out the correct paperwork and did the background test that it was alleged to do.
Whereas it’s completely cheap to contemplate revising the legislation in order that it’s extra complete (which means Cho’s go to to the psychological ward would have proven up in his report as would his having been discovered “mentally unwell”), it’s utterly absurd to level a blaming finger on the gun outlets. The companies did precisely what the legislation says they’re to do. Suing them or shutting them down will accomplish nothing besides to hurt the enterprise house owners and their staff.
Fantasy #10. Poor Seung-Hui Cho was deeply troubled. Anyone ought to have helped him when he was crying out for assist, after which this could by no means have occurred. We introduced it on ourselves with our detached society.
There may be nothing evidential to again up the notion that Cho was deeply troubled by something aside from his personal self-centeredness. Cho was not a sufferer of something or anybody. Within the phrases of one in all his former poetry and inventive writing professors, Cho “was simply imply”. She goes on to say, “We’re speaking about [his being a victim] and crap like that, however troubled kids get drunk and leap off buildings; troubled kids drink and drive…I’ve taught loopy individuals…It was the meanness that bothered me…[In his writings] the threats gave the impression to be beneath the floor.”
