From last night's News Hour discussion with Democrat Mark Shields Republican David Brooks on the "Virginia Tech shootings and gun law." Seems like they agree on more than they disagree. Interesting. Also, note that neither points to "evil" as a cause, but to definite factors like mental illness, firearms availability, "sensible restrictions," etc. I think the main difference between Shields and Brooks relates to whether or not disasters like this can be prevented, or at least the chances of one taking place reduced. I agree with Mark Shields that there are "sensible" things we can do on this, particularly on the mental health front. How about you? What would you have said if you had been on the panel with Mark Shields and David Brooks?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Virginia Tech, it's been a horrible week. The country is in mourning today and will continue to be in mourning. David, what does it is say? What are you thinking right now?DAVID BROOKS: Well, I'm thinking about the randomness of it. It's hard to hold this kid responsible for it. I mean, we want to say, you know, there's great forces of evil, Satan acted through him. But when you lack at that young man, he's someone who was mad, who was insane.
And who knows the trivial reason that caused it, whether there was a virus that affected his brain, whether there was isolation, a whole chain of events? But it's the absurdity of it all. Some virus affects his brain. He becomes schizophrenic, whatever he was, and then 32 people die.
And I think it's that absurdity between cause and effect and the sort of amorality of it that is undermining a lot of people's morale, who say there's nothing to be gained from this. Thirty-two people are dead because of who knows what.
JUDY WOODRUFF: When you say virus infected his brain, you mean at birth?DAVID BROOKS: I mean, when you look at -- we now know a lot about why madness is caused. And for schizophrenia, sometimes there's a virus that gets into a fetal brain, and then it leads to lifelong effects. Sometimes there's an injury to the frontal lobe that leads to hyper-aggression and depression. Sometimes it's inability to process serotonin.
It's all this stuff that can create these horrible effects, and it's trivial little biological and chemical stuff. It's not a great clash of morality or anything.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Where are we left?
MARK SHIELDS: I don't disagree with David. I have a little different take on it, Judy. In all the wars that the United States fought in the 20th century, World War I, II, Vietnam, Korea, the first Persian Gulf, 659,763 Americans died. Since Ronald Reagan became president of the United States until George Bush was re-elected, 768,000 more people [than] in all those wars died by firearms in the United States. Of the 26 developed nations in the world, 83 percent of all the people who died by firearms die in this country.
And the idea that we can't do something, that this man that David has described, with a 9-millimeter Glock semiautomatic pistol, and other countries, only police officers have them. I mean, the fact that he could buy this, and with no check really made of him, you know, is disturbing.
Are we this great, pitiable, helpless giant in dealing with this problem? I mean, you know, I think that we lack will; we lack imagination; we lack commitment to do something about it.
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't disagree. I mean, the fact that he had the access to firearms meant that, instead of killing himself, he could kill 32 people. I think there's no question.
Nonetheless, when you start thinking about practically, what are there, 280 million guns in this country? The kid is smart. He has access to the Internet. If he wants to kill people, which he clearly did, he's going to get the stuff.
And I'm not sure gun control is going to affect his ability to kill a lot of people. He could do it with bombings. He'll find a weapon.
Politics of gun control
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the background question?
MARK SHIELDS: We don't have background. We don't have real background checks. We have never beefed that up. I mean, we've shown no will. We've cowered in front of the gun lobby in this country.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that going to continue?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, I think the Democrats were hardly Captains Courageous this week. I mean, I didn't see them knocking each other over to get into the well of the House or the Senate to introduce tough legislation, any of the presidential candidates. They were far more vocal on the Supreme Court decision on abortion than they were elbowing their way in front of cameras to emphasize their position, commitment and all the rest of it.
But, you know, they're scared. They're timid. They feel that they lost the Congress in 1994 because of the assault weapon ban.
But, I mean, it's just unthinkable. There is a majority in this country who want sensible restrictions. I'm not talking about taking away guns. A waiting period, a real check, some weapons should just -- there's no need to have magazines that can shoot 30 bullets...
DAVID BROOKS: I agree with you on the substance. I just don't think it will be that effective. I think people who want to kill, in this country, with all these weapons, will find a way to kill. And politically, Mark's right. There's just no way the Democrats are going to do this.
You look at the key swing states, those Midwestern states, those are pro-gun states. There's no way a national Democrat is going to put this on the agenda.
Alleged pundits have written tomes on mental health and gun control without addressing the role played by the whole "man up" "cowboy up" culture of violence-as-solution in which we expect these unstable or mentally ill individuals to embed themselves in one way or another.
And this silence - this denial - is an enormous part of this problem. We take it for granted and we bring it to the table as an accepted assumption and a fact of life that young men are almost always the perpetrators of these slaughters. God forbid that a child blubber when a gang of kids cream him repeatedly in the head with a ball and call him names. He needs to toughen up and kick some ass.
Thanks to Rob Bell (R) for passing anti-bullying legislation in 2005. Maybe we'll have less of this going on. And maybe there will be a few less guys going off the deep end in the future.
I volunteer at an elementary school and find it a rewarding opportunity to try to help to show children (young) that bullying is wrong, that there are people that are different from you in many ways but that it makes no difference, and that being kind and respectful is a paramount requirement to being part of a civil society.
Today's WaPo has a very sad and moving story about the young man who shot the victims at VT. http://www.washingto...
Herman Melville said it well --
"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
The paper points out over multiple articles that part of the problem is gaps in Virginia law. When Cho was released from the mental facility, he was under a "court order that demanded adherence to a treatment plan." However the law does not have a mechanism that mandates followup. Also, since Cho "was assessed as an imminent threat to himself and others" he should have been listed in the federal database on firearms. However, no one ever sent the info to the federal government.
Nearly every kid gets bullied and many become angry and despondent, and suicidal. But they find a way to overcome, relate to others, seek the company of family, or move to a new life. In other words they adapt themselves to the human condition through humility and dialog.
Not this one. He wallowed in his self pity, blamed others, sought models in other sick murderers. He likened himself to a persecuted Jesus, and Moses. He was mentally ill, but he wasn't insane. No, he set about planning the murder and mayhem he unleashed with grim order.
What "hell" did he endure? People didn't like him? He didn't get the girl? F his problems, being lonely doesn't make you more important, it makes you human.
You could beat this little shit for 3 weeks and it still wouldn't justify or explain what he did. He was a loser and demanded that others take the blame. But he was not insane. He wasn't a poor misunderstood kid.
He prepared a press-kit mid-massacre for chrissakes! As someone said yesterday, thank god he wasn't taking flying lessons at Virginia Tech.
We've learned so much about the brain in the last few years, it is time our laws for dealing with the mentally ill caught up. If we want to be safer we have to get beyond telling people with these kinds of brian problems to just stop being so violent and anti-social. Instead we need to develop treatments for these issues, and sometimes this treatment will be locking them up.
I agee with you wholeheartedly but it's not as easy as saying "lock him up." The number of psychiatric beds in the entire state of VA is something like 75 and I don't think there are ANY at all in NVA! I believe the closest ones are in Fredericksburg. And we liberals must admit that one of the reasons why there are so few inpatient psych beds throughtout the country is because of the civil rights notion of "least restrictive environment". It's a very fine line between respecting the rights of the individual and protecting others and I don't think as a society we have yet decided what side of caution to err on. I totally agree with you, however, that now is the time to put all of the options on the table and come to some consensus. We can never let this happen again!
Cho stalked two women who did not know him, photographed and frightened them, set a fire, intimidated his professor and department head, wrote obscenely violent theses, and threatened suicide. He was a danger to himself and to others. He should have been involuntarily committed, not released after the TDO. We HAVE laws to solve this; those laws must be applied.
Cho wasn't committed, as many violent individuals are not committed these days, because of a lack of beds in the state psychiatric hospitals. Last year, about the time Cho began his long slide downward, Dr. Richard Kaye predicted that disaster would result from this misguided policy:
The involuntary commitment process exists not only to restore severely mentally ill individuals like Cho to their full potential, but to protect the rest of us from their potentially dangerous, irrational acts. Involuntary commitment should be available ANYTIME it is necessary, not just on those rare occasions when the short-sighted officials in charge of this disastrous policy deign to provide an urgently needed service. The severely mentally ill have a right to treatment, including in-patient treatment. It's that simple.
I have another question. When the little shit got himself detained in 2005, was his family notified? What did they do about their child's problem? If they weren't notified, why not because it would be simple courtesy to call the folks and tell that sonny-boy was menacing the campus. I would want to know. This family appears to have been completely disassociated.
Wasn't there are case just recently in Virginia where a university tried to have a kid booted for mental problems but he sued the school (and won)?
I agree something's got to be done but the lawyers for these kids will win every time. Don't ya just love those guys?
This guy gave plenty of indications that he didn't belong at the university. And we use many of those same criteria to determine whether someone should be accepted to join the community. There is no reason not to keep "participation" and "sound character" as a continuing criteria for enrollment.
Shape up, or ship out of the Hokie Nation. Love it, or leave it.
Anyway today I have been thinking about all of our young people who have - and still are - losing their lives in Iraq.
He wouldn't have lasted two weeks in the area with that chip-on-his-shoulder, where what passes for acceptable behavior is different than the university administration's. Disappearing into the anonymity of NOVA would have fit his style; he would have stood out like a sore thumb in SW. Where, judging by the talk, the outcome of a gun confrontation would have been far different.
A democracy where two people can debate an issue intelligently without insulting one another
In the end the voters always have the power. Sure sometimes there is some lag especially with the senate but take any issue like this or Iraq or taxes or the economy and the majority always get what they want.
33 for the R 33 for the D and the 33 in the middle that make the difference steering both sides.
Now I am going to exercise my democratic right to go outside
Have a great day everyone :-)
Australia had a spate of mass public shooting in the 1980s and '90s, culminating in 1996, when Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people.http://news.yahoo.co...Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since.
Also, this one:
Even so, the small-town America of yesteryear wasn't completely immune. On March 6, 1915, businessman Monroe Phillips, who had lived in Brunswick, Ga., for 12 years, killed six people and wounded 32 before being shot dead by a local attorney. Phillips' weapon: an automatic shotgun.