Today I had to take Breanna to the dentist and George’s dad picked us up to take us downtown. In the car, while Breanna slept, he and I inevitably ended up talking about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday (I watched ten minutes of the coverage on CNN and then turned it off because I couldn’t take it anymore). After discussing what could have caused the shooter to do what he did, I mentioned how your perspectives on issues can change over the course of time.
I grew up with guns. Not automatics, not 9 mm guns, but rifles. At my grandmother’s house, we had several different types of rifles and we occasionally went shooting them at our friend’s farm, using targets. We even shot them at the annual turkey shoot on occasion (not shooting AT turkeys, shooting paper targets to WIN a turkey). I was taught to respect them, that they weren’t toys, and I never feared that anyone would use them maliciously. As a result, I grew up thinking that while they could be bad in certain hands, they were okay.
Years later, I don’t feel the same way anymore. I would never have a gun in this home. Never, not in a million years. I would love to be able to go to a gun club and fire someone else’s gun and I would enjoy it, but I will never own one. I grew up to discover that I believe the gun laws are not tight enough, not even up here in Canada where our gun registry is a bit of a joke and even that might fall apart with our current government. I am completely in favor of the various advocacy groups who are trying to appeal to governments for tighter gun laws.
I see things like the shooting here last year at Dawson College, and now at VT, and I wonder why these young kids are getting guns so easily. And then I look at my kids and know they’ll be at school some day too soon, and I worry about who will be sitting behind them in math class, and will that person have a gun at home in a box under the bed. I know you can’t live your life in constant fear and I know that restricted access to guns is not the perfect band aid to the problem but if young civilians weren’t able to get their hands on semi-automatic guns, that would certainly be a starting point.
I hated high school, but for all the crap that went on in those hallways and behind your back, no one shot anyone else. There was one year where a guy one grade ahead of me had bullied a student and eventually ended up in the hospital because his target broke into his house and stabbed him multiple times but that was back in a time when it was shocking to hear about things like that happening. Now it’s still shocking and horrible, but we don’t react the same way – now we react with a response of “not again” because it’s happened so many times in recent years.
I don’t know what the solution is but I do know that I can’t stand up and say guns are okay like I did when I was 16 years old and years away from seeing the same school violence loop over and over again on the nightly news.
Most of the crazies who kill with guns would probably find a way to do it regardless of any laws. Like you my family enjoyed shooting rifles, shotguns and pistols at targets … although some looked more like coffee cans filled with holes from being previously used as targets. This particular shooter had started a dorm fire, stalked girls, refused to answer in class, signed his name as a question mark and wrote papers in his creative writing class that were so horrid the teacher recommended him for counseling. In short, he should have been expelled LONG before this particular incident … but the school administration turned their backs on each and every incident including the criminal ones. I have to wonder if the deaths would have occurred if each of the above problems had been competently dealt with. Wishful thinking though … we’ll never know.
I agree that gun control laws don’t fix everything, but it does make it harder to kill large groups of people.
I wish we could make it so the shootings never happened. I’m cuddling my kids extra tight.
Hi, it’s me again. I don’t know what the answer is either, but I do know that it is a right and a privilage to own a gun and I wouldn’t want that taken away. I only have one gun now and don’t want to lose it.It’s a semi-automatic and fires 16 shots in less than 10 seconds but I would not go out and shoot people just because I can and for the “hell of it” and the only way I would kill someone is if my life or someone in my family was in harms way.
Yes I own a gun and I’m happy to own a gun. It’s unloaded now and it wil stay that way to avoid accidents. Talk to you later.
I am so damn grateful to live in Australia where the gun laws are so tight. It took Martin Bryant killing 35 people to do it but it’s the only mass shooting we’ve had. Although I understand America’s love for their constitution, their love of guns absolutely bewilders me.
I am not sure that more strict gun laws are the answer. If a person wants to obtain a gun bad enough they will find a way to get one. For situations like VT, I think educating school staff members on what warning signs to look for and how to address them, as well as providing better screening of students, are good places to start. It is a sad reality that we have to even think about things like this.
Jess – the problem is that there is nothing the authorities can do until it is almost to late. I heard an interview on NPR this morning with the VT shooter’s creative writing teacher. She went to every authority figure she could find – her bosses, the deans and even the police – because his writings were so distrurbing. They all told her there was nothing legally they could do because he had not directly threatened anyone. All the university could do is send him to counseling which they did. I don’t know what the answer is because we can be as careful as possible and things still slip through the cracks.
I am very anti-gun, and my husband is an ex-army man so you can imagine the combat that goes on here…
” ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ …Well, I think the gun helps! You’re not going to kill many people standing around shouting ‘bang!'”
-Eddie Izzard
…sorry, had to.
Yikes, the story about the teacher is scary–on the one hand, yeah, thought control = BAD. On the other, when handed THIS DAMN MANY WARNING SIGNS, teachers, staff, etc. should be able to DO something about it, you know? There are almost always glaringly obvious warning signs!