Only in America? A comment on the Virginia Tech shooting
On April 16th, a bitter and twisted student waltzed into Virginia Tech University in the USA and killed 32 of his fellow students, before taking his own life.The attacker’s name was Cho Seung Hui. From all accounts and reconstructions, his life over the years preceding the attack indicates that he was a very psychiatrically disturbed individual. He was taken to a mental health clinic in 2005, after a judge ruled that me might be dangerous. This occurred due to unwanted messages that he was sending to female students. However a medical examination found he denied any suicidal feelings and posed no immediate harm to anybody.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Not surprising.The US has alot of Karma to pay off especially after killing all the native Indians and all the other problems they’re causing around the world.There’s plenty of other nutters in the cue in the US..
April 29th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
^^^ isn’t karma applied individually as opposed to it being applied to a whole nation and/or community (correct if I’m wrong) ?. I don’t think any of the victims were somehow responsible for the near extinction of the native Americans.
Maybe it’s more of case “if you’re gonna have gun laws like the US does, then this what you’re gonna end up with.” So probably it’s karma in that sense.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:43 am
Whilst I personally do think that gun laws in the US are ridiculous, it should be pointed out that there are more guns per head of population in Canada than in the US, yet Canada does not tend to see this kind of occurrence. Is this perhaps a slightly over-simplistic analysis?
May 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
One reason could be that handguns in US are not registered and licensed as far as I know unlike in Canada where there are strict background checks and registration which means that there is more accountability.
May 8th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Unlike what the media likes to portray, and this article suggests, the mental health system of the developed world is doing well. There will always be demons in our midsts (and our minds). There will always be harm to the innocent. Yes, if the demon gets a shakti of say an AK47, the slaughter is greater; and yes the person who grants the demon such an arsenal is creating harm. But mental health has come a long way to improve the world. Medications have made many people’s lives better and more free. (No question that pharma is in it for the money.)
Human freedom also went dramatically down hill from Jesus to 1500 in the west and an improvement in that is a good thing (even at cost).
But there are demons everywhere. In the developing world (Africa) this is obvious. In the societies with only partially open media (China and say Saudi Arabia) this is not going to be discussed. In India there are so many demons its hard to report just a killing of 30 people in the international news.
(I would like to point out that this kid was trying to be christlike. You better believe that if he had been a muslim or hindu that would have been his motive as far as the press goes)
hariaum
May 16th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
“Whilst I personally do think that gun laws in the US are ridiculous,”
What laws are you talking about? Brady law? Gun control laws that restrict freedom? Personally I think owning weapons (not high firepower ones) should be legal and the second amendment (right to bear arms) is a great personal freedom.
In the US, we have never trusted our govt, the forefathers didn’t either, which is why they made it legal to have guns and militias.
If you look at the gun crime statistics in the US, the areas which had NO gun control laws had the least crime, and the areas that banned guns had an increase in crime after they banned guns.
Countries that have severe gun control like UK, Australia, and Canada also have violent gun crime.
Kimveer Gill anyone?
People will get guns if they want to. No matter what.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:09 am
vig, before getting so carried away and indignant, please read the rest of my post that you part-quoted; you will see that I was actually making exactly the same point as you. Gun control laws and gun ownership are not the only issues at stake here; the problem is considerably more complex.
Having said that, like the vast majority of British people, I am uncomfortable with ‘the right to bear arms’. Incidentally, it should be pointed out that the “right of the People to keep and bear arms” in the Second Amendment is given within the context of a “well regulated militia”. I think it not unreasonable to assert that this is not how this amendment is currently practised in the USA; a more accurate statement of the actual implementation of the second amendment in the USA today would be to quote the de-facto motto of the NRA - Heston’s five chilling words, “From my cold, dead hands!”
May 17th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Incidentally, surely you don’t propose to compare the level of gun crime in the UK, Canada and Australia to that of the US?!