Shooting Incidents on the Virginia Tech Campus Left 33 Dead

Filed in archive Latina Musings on April 17, 2007

Update: Law enforcement authorities said the gunman was Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a South Korean who was a legal permanent resident in the United States and in his senior year as an English major at Virginia Tech.
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By now, everybody knows what happened yesterday: Two shooting incidents on the Virginia Tech campus Monday left 33 dead. The deadliest mass shooting rampage in U.S. history.

The gunman responsible for the massacre was an Asian male student residing in a campus dormitory, President Charles Steger said today. Authorities are investigating whether the shooter was a 24- year-old Chinese national who arrived in San Francisco on a United Airlines flight on August 7 on a student visa issued in Shanghai, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper reported on its Web site, citing an unidentified official.

Jennifer Galt, a spokeswoman for the U.S. consulate in Shanghai, declined to comment.

This tragedy is horrifying beyond words. Once again, we have to watch, powerless and discouraged, so many lives being ended for no reason at all. One can only wonder why do such horrible things happen. In a world so violent, so full of crime and hate, the United States is almost the only country where this shootings take place.

People should think about this, and try to figure out what drives a person to take a gun and start killing people at random. Why this kind of thing happens is the US? What could cause that a Chinese student, a 24-year-old boy, decides to kill any number of his colleagues and kill himself afterwards? Do you think he would have done the same, if he was in China?

Tom Mauser, father of one of the columbine's victims, says:

"I am not going to just say gun laws are going to take care of this. I think my primary thought is about anger. Anger and suicide. Why do we have so many people who think they have to take others' (lives) with them when they take their own?"

Other Columbine victims and school violence experts expressed similar thoughts about the Virginia killings. Brooks Brown, a former Columbine student who knew the gunmen, and repeatedly tried to warn authorities about threats they had made, said the Virginia slayings didn't surprise him.

"Once you've reached the point where you have lost everything it is not hard to be pushed in any direction," he said of campus shooters.

Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, 15, also died at Columbine, blames school shootings on a society that tolerates, even glorifies, violence.

"We teach students that anything you want to do is up to you and you can decide whether anything is right or wrong," he said.

If the Asian student really is the shooter, do you think this will cause a backlash against both legal and illegal immigrants? Unfortunately, I believe the answer is probably yes. And that's not fair. The Virginia Tech massacre is a tragedy, and I'm really sad and upset. I feel so sorry for the victims and their families.

But we should be trying to figure out the causes of these shootings, to prevent such tragedies from happening again in the future. To blame this on the immigrants not only would be unfair, but also useless. Sure, it's far easier to think "let's get rid of immigrants, they are responsible for all of our problems" then face the painful truth: we don't have the answers; we are far away from a solution.

Sources and more info:

Massacre at Virginia Tech Leaves 33 Dead
U.S. Police May Have Identity of Virginia Tech Gunman (Update4)
Virginia Tech Shootings Stir Anger Among Those Touched By Columbine