Cho Seung-Hui’s evil actions
Our hearts and prayers truly go out to all of those affected by Cho Seung-Hui’s evil actions. But not even senseless, brutal murder justifies taking away the God-given rights of the law-abiding.
It is also worthwhile to note that Virginia Tech is — because of deliberate policies set by its administration — a victim disarmament zone, where even those with a state-issued concealed carry permit are denied their right of self-defense.
In fact, pro-gun forces just last year tried to get the Virginia legislature to address the problem. The bill to allow permit holders
to carry on state-supported college campuses died, due in no small part to rabid opposition from Virginia Tech itself.
VT spokesman Larry Hincker put it this way after it became obvious that the bill would not pass: “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
The unfortunate irony continues when one recalls that not long ago, two students at nearby Appalachian School of Law managed to stop a gunman at that institution. Happily, they were able to dash off-campus to retrieve their guns from their vehicles.
Four GOA spokesmen (one based in downtown D.C. and three at our Springfield, VA office just outside the Beltway) are working non-stop — doing literally interview after interview — making certain that the above points reach the public.
GOA has appeared on Fox News, ABC, CNN, BBC — lots of alphabet soup networks — as well as countless talk shows like Michael Reagan and Lars Larson. GOA spokesmen have been heard in every major radio market around the country and have done interviews with large print media outlets, such as the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report.
The overall message that GOA is delivering is that gun prohibitions are part of the problem, not the solution.
We can expect some forms of new gun control to be pushed in the U.S. Congress. The Democrats control Congress, but more importantly, anti-gun politicians control the Democrat party. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — certainly no friend of gun owners — gives free rein to virulently anti-gun House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), literally anything can make it to the floor of the full House.
Conyers’ counterpart in the Senate is Judiciary Chairman Patrick
Leahy (D-VT), whose GOA rating of “F” is well-deserved. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has also earned an F. Gun owners will have to be especially vigilant in the coming weeks to block any new attempts to infringe upon the Second Amendment.
And whereas the predictable media stampede to give voice to the possibility of such new gun control is certainly there, it does not seem to have the same “this simply must happen now” tone that it did after the Columbine tragedy in 1999. Indeed, the idea of firearms for self-defense in schools is gaining serious traction. Which should not be all that surprising, given a Research 2000 poll which showed that 85% of Americans find it appropriate for a principal or teacher to use “a gun at school to defend the lives of students” in stopping a massacre.
ACTION: For now, stay tuned for future alerts. (If any anti-gun bills start moving on Capitol Hill, GOA will be counting on you to contact your legislators in record numbers.) And pray for all of those whose loved ones were injured or killed at Virginia Tech.
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What if the college peers of Cho Seung-Hui sincerely embraced the shy or quite boy with love and patiently encouraged him to be more social and start bridging healthy relationships, would this situation occurred today? I am not pointing fingers at anyone, but it’s a thought.
What if Cho developed a genuine trust in some good campus mentors that could school him about relationships and people in America and of course he applied the suggestions daily with patient support, I wonder if this horrific incident could have been stopped.
What if Cho learned to make himself more approachable and others accepted him as the shy quite guy on campus, would we be having this discussion about Cho? Instead of campus students laughing or making fun of Cho, what if they gave him the support to become more socially inclined, would that be more help than what a Psychologist and drugs could offer?
Now I am NOT placing the blame of Cho’s actions in the hands of his fellow classmates or campus students, I am just asking questions with the intent of offering solutions. Perhaps there could be a collective effort from college students from around the country to help anti-social types to be more social and have fun eliminating the snow balling anger.
Now I know most people are going to be too angry to think about the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, but we must deal with it. Scary fact, there are many Cho’s here in America working in other destructive manners against our country and or people. We must find ways to break the resistance of these type of individuals early. Medication is NOT the solution. And most of the Cho types will slip through the cracks of a variety of profile test, so that is not the answer either.
So, what can we do today as a people? — Pall Stanley
As a concealed weapons permit holder, I can agree totally with allowing students who possess these permits to carry on campus. A concealed weapons permit holder has gone through many tests and background checks, one of which is a check into their mental health.
There is a theme running through many if not most of these school killings that bothers me very much, and that is the repeated statements by the killers that they kill because they have been ostrasized, verbally and physically abused, insulted, ganged up on and generally abused physically as well as mentally. Most of the time these transgressions were known to the the administration and the other students. We all know how school kids behave and how insensitive they are to their fellow man. It is something they see on TV every day and probably at home. They are behaving in a manner they have been taught. If we are to ever solve this problem we must change this behavior. Many will disagree with this saying the killer brought this on himself by “weird” behavior, but I believe that the mistreatment by his fellow students is what causes the “mental” problems of the killer. People need to learn how simple human kindness works. Remember, “Do Unto Others as you would have them do unto you”… There is another sacred lesson that is very, very true: “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger”////
The Number One comment on this site by Pall Stanley, I agree with totally. He also probably said it better than I ever could. There is just one thing I would like to add.
Those students in Cho’s High School and any of the students at VT that participated in belittleling, laughing at, physically abuseing or making derogatory remarks toward Cho must look at their conscience and ask themselves how much responsibility they bear for what happened at VT. AS I know the type of students that behave like that, I doubt any would come forward, but it could truly be the beginning of a great movement in America to modify behavior of students and population toward each other.
The question is who really is to blame? Why did this young man become so violent? I see a very troubled young man with very poor social skills. Reading his plays I would suspect some childhood abuse in his past. This young man had a very fragile ego to start with. I agree with a commenter on CNN that something busted his bubble. What was that?
This young man with a fragile ego suffered one upset after another. The first was the rejection by the two females. It was natural for this young man to follow up on the urging of his fellow classmates to become more social, which means girls in our society. He however had an extreme lack of social skills. He however had a lot of pride and pressure from his culture to be someone. He therefore felt suicidal after the rejections and an encounter with the police. Patient was then taken in for observation by the police and introduced to our mental health system with the entire stigma involved. This was too much.
I proposed what caused the tragedy is our present trend towards a non-caring and greed based society. The laws passed by congress over the last few administration have been disastrous to freedom loving people. Our kids see it and our acting out, hence the shootings in schools.
I ask when did Cho’s violent behavior start? When did he buy a gun? After he was introduced to the mental health system. This is because of the taboo that our society has for people diagnosed with a mental illness. A taboo created by the neo-caste system of our present system. I propose the crisis was created by own callous system, which has strayed far away from the best intentions of our founding fathers.
Can’t people see the pattern? Every time democrats get into office, the powers that be try to erode our rights as citizens with new laws like the Brady bill or the newly considered bills by congress to require states to give information on citizen’s private lives for gun control. When republicans get into office, they fleece the country and enact laws like the Patriot act which further restrict our freedom.
Few see that what happened in Virginia is due to a general trend of hard heartedness pervasive in this country. Hardheartedness based on greed of those that run the press, big business and the government. Hard heartedness manifested in the Brady bill which gives no second chances. That assumes that a judicial system designed and run by men is so perfect that rights given by the constitution and the wisdom of our fore fathers can be taken away permanently without even the seven year forgiveness that the past writers of law tried to write in the law. A forgiveness based on the bible.
As for the mental health system, psychiatry is a science which even many practitioners, which I am one, realize lacks validity. We may have reproducible results in that you can get two psychiatrists to agree, but we lack validity in that there is usually no objective test that really determines rather a person in mentally ill. As is well documented, psychiatry is known for its abuses.
In addition what is the wisdom in using the civil case level of proof, as committing someone for mental reasons requires, counteracting the highest law, which the second amendment of the constitution is. Civil court does not require that you prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. On this basis I think most of the gun control laws involving mentally ill should be unconstitutional.
It all comes to the definition of freedom. Freedom is being defined by those who have wealth and power as their freedom to do and take as they please. How dare we interfere with this? We must be punished for our insolence. The new wave of punishment will come from there exploitation of this present situation. Many will feel okay to remain acquiescent because they do not feel threatened. But injustice is like a cancer. Although it is growing quietly, only a fool does not fear that it will not latter metastasize to affect the whole organism.
My problem is not that there should be no gun control, just that the existing laws are not a good balance between protecting the civil liberties of individuals and projecting the public. It is a fact that mentally ill people are not more prone to violence then those not mentally ill. The biggest predictor of violence is previous violence. I think thought controls action, so the actually the best predictor of violence is the level of malevolence .Cho’s poetry teacher documented that he was “just mean”,so Cho met this criteria. The problem is you cannot judge the whole population by a few individuals. Any way to me there should be a special court procedure, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt for judging people unable to bare arms. This should be separate from normal civil commitment. And there should always be a way out if the person regains their sanity. And all restrictions on gun purchase should have a statue of limitation.So that the person can purchase a gun,lets say, 7 years after either being released from a prison or a hospital.
My problem is not that there should be no gun control just that the existing laws are not a good balance between protecting the civil liberties of individuals and projecting the public. It is a fact that mentally ill people are not more prone to violence then those not mentally ill. The biggest predictor of violence is previous violence. I think thought controls action, so the actually the best predictor of violence is the level of malevolence .Cho’s poetry teacher documented that he was “just mean”.,
so Cho met this criteria. The problem is you cannot judge the whole population by a few individuals. Any way to me there should be a special court procedure, that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt for judging people unable to bare arms. This should be separate from normal civil commitment. And there should always be a way out if the person regains their sanity. In addition, I also believe there should always be a statute of limitations where if the person has been released form prison or out of the hospital for 7 seven years they would have there rights back. Or at the very least the seven year rule should apply to those who have been judged mentally unable to bare weapons without a appropriate level of proof and prisoners as before.
I would like to expand on that thought. I will give you an analogy. In medicine there are several different kinds of shock. It could be cardiac, septic or hypo-volemic shock. In latter stages of all three the blood pressure falls drastically. In septic and cardiac shock the patient is actual has a fluid overload; only in hypo-volemic shock does the patient have a deficit in fluids. For cardiac shock you treat the cardiac problem and give diuretics to eliminate fluids, in septic shock you give antibiotics, only in hypo-volemic shock do you give fluids.
So you have three situations with same symptoms each requiring different treatment. In analogy, let’s consider the tragedy at VT as a body in shock. There would be three treatments based on what is the origin of the shock was. Given the present propensity of this society to make more punitive or punishing laws to fight crime, let’s consider that solution an analogy to giving fluids. Treating the heart would be analogist to growing in empathy and understanding to treat the shock. Antibiotics would be used to fight parasites infecting the body. If you give fluids when the problem is in cardiac or septic shock you kill the patient. In analogy, making harsher laws when empathy, compassion or neutralizing parasites are needed, will kill the society.
Now the question becomes who are the parasites? Could the parasites be defined as those groups in society who take a lot more then they give? This is almost the definition of greedy. Who are the greedy in our society? Is it the poor welfare worker who has very little, the street person who has nothing, or maybe the convict who makes 2 dollars a day pressing license plates? God forbid considering the super rich as the most deserving of that epitaph.
Michael Franklin M.D.
Psychiatry
The APA has also denounced the bill being proposed in congress. Go to Gun Owners of America site and they will email a letter to your congressman.
this psychos actions remind me of Australias murderer Martin Bryant who cooly gunned down 35 people in Port Arthur back in 1996.
http://massmurder.zyns.com/martin_bryant.html
Take a look and see for yourself.