I'm sure everyone everywhere has seen and heard most of the details about the Virginia Tech shootings. the posts and comments are some of the largest and most viewed of anything on MSNBC.com, even higher than alot of the polls i've seen on gun control.
This tragedy has touched everyone, from young to old, inducing outrage to sorrow to confusion in everyone. anyone you talk to has an opinion on this, yet too many overlook so many things that are just as important as gun control and the bureaucratic mess this caused.
It goes without saying these things.
How planned was this?
Very planned. Even to the point of making a diversion to distract police from the real thing that was happening. The first 2 victims in the dorm, the RA and the girl, neither of which seemed to have had direct connection with the killer, but who's boyfriend owned a gun. Is it possible Cho had seen the boyfriend practicing at the shooting range? or even the couple and the roommate? perhaps that was why they were first.
As for those shot in their foreign language classes in the technology building? perhaps he wanted to spare the rest of the world from American bigotry, which undoubtedly these students were planning on going out of country, or were from another country. perhaps he targeted especially those from other countries because he himself was a socially rejected immigrant.
As for the Heroes who came out of this, i give Kudos to you. you acted the way we all would have wanted to act in the face of extreme danger.
Was he mentally unstable?
Yes. though as an adult, no one could force him to seek professional help. We make it so easy to go get help, but as a society, those that seek help are ridiculed and looked down upon as weak and not normal.
Why did he do it?
While we may never really know, NBC, MSNBC and any other networks that aired the video he sent them gave us as close a reason as we can get. I thank the news networks for airing that, it gave me peace of mind to know what he was probably thinking and it gave me a way to cope with my own feelings on the matter.
Was he bullied, ridiculed, and made an outcast of society?
While much of it was his own doing and in his own mind, we as a society did mark him as such and do irreparable things to him. as the quotes from an interview of a former high school classmate of him said, he was ridiculed in from of his entire class for speaking. when you already don't talk much for whatever reason, something like that will build the wall even higher so others can never reach you.
His roommates in 2005 were probably the only ones that had a chance of reaching him. his facebook shows as much. but they did not know what to do once they established that link... and gave up.
While allot of reaching out to someone like that is making the original effort, if they don't make the effort back, you can't stop. keep trying, eventually, maybe they will reach out to you. i think it's very possible no one tried to prove to him that he could trust them, as a brother, an equal and a person, only offer for him to come along with them. and it was that that probably left him in the corner with no alternative.
Cho has reached me in a way columbine didn't. I am only 1 year Cho's senior, and all i can do is sit back and speculate "That could very well have been me if i didn't have my few close friends reach out to me."
I sit back now and look at my life and see me as a success story of someone like Cho, bullied, outcast with a me against the world type of grudge and a mental illness. I am now a computer tech making 40k a year my first time at a corporation.
And this is where i bring my true thoughts as to how this might have been avoided. We as a society need to change. i don't mean throw away all your money and stuff and live in poverty, but definitely be more accepting of not just others, but of everyone. Just because you don't have a problem getting up in front of hundreds, even thousands of people and talking normally doesn't mean everyone can, in fact, most can barely muster up the courage to get up there in the first place. I'm talking about the 12 pots of coffee and the energy drinks and the pep talks before you go up just in front of your class of 30.
One of the biggest changes that can be made is the teaching system. I have friends across the country in all sorts of schools and they always tell me the same thing. every day they see a teacher throw someone out just because they don't like the person. for a stupid reason like they don't like how they styled their hair, or wear cute pink Winne the Pooh socks that their 5 year old wanted but they couldn't find, etc. All too often we want to ignore the problem, not reach out and fix it. we'd rather not have to deal with it. This time, a few people's mistakes came back and bit the entire world in the ass.
Before we blame others, maybe we should look at ourselves and see where we went wrong. while there is nothing wrong with protecting ourselves from harm, maybe there could have been a better, more resolute way to fix it.
Gun control and Bureaucratic BS is not what we should be pointing our fingers at. even if he couldn't get a gun, what's to say he wouldn't have done the same with a different, more deadly weapon like a hammer, a knife or sword? there is no control on these objects, even swords other than they need to be a easily displayed after a certain length and you need a permit to carry them in secure public places like an airport out in the open. How many people reading this could see him doing the same thing with a blade of some sort? I could see him do it, and do it easier that way and kill more people with a sword than he did with a gun.
I say to you, if we want to prevent this, we, a society as a whole, need to change.
Thereal Deal
Advocate for Social change
I apologize for how segmented this is, i'm doing this amid distractions.
