Blue Collar Muse

Everywhere I went today, people were talking about the evil that decided to visit Virginia Tech (VPI) yesterday.  Predictably, fingers are being pointed and blame assessed.  Parents, still numbed by their loss or at what could have been their loss are calling for the heads of the heads of VPI.

Larry King played ghoul all evening, interviewing any student that had stopped running trying to find someone to say something salacious or gory.  Today there was a convocation to begin the healing process.  I have to agree with Dennis Prager on this one.  Healing process??  We haven’t even begun the GRIEVING process yet, it’s a bit premature to be talking about healing. Again, predictably, we’ll all yearn for closure together and awash in ‘Kum Ba Yah’ we’ll go on about our lives.

I have a problem with this. Because the issue here isn’t what to do about the survivors. It’s about deciding what to do about the dead. It’s about deciding what we’ll do to make sure there aren’t more of them. As long as we only televise our mourning and refuse to give our justifiable and understandable anger and outrage an outlet, the best we can hope for is a weak, victim mentality response to what ought to be a real wake up call.

Horrified people around the country are asking, “How can we stop this from happening again?” as if there was some magic, ‘Psychopath Stopping Pixie Dust’ they can sprinkle on their schools and businesses to protect themselves. The truth of the matter is blunt and distasteful. There will be more incidents like this one in the future. It is inevitable. We cannot stop it from happening again. We can only decide what we’ll do when it does.

Some attacks may be prevented by persons recognizing warning signs and intervening. But that safeguard failed in the VPI case. World Net Daily reports a VPI professor warned about the killer to no avail. And while we may be able to point to successful interventions, we must ask the honest question, ‘Successful at doing what?’

If we intervene in a person’s life and they never grab a gun and kill 30 people did we stop a murderer? Or did we merely help a troubled person through a difficult period in their life? It is impossible to say. But that seems to be the extent of our official response to these sorts of incidents. Counseling, intervention, diversity training, understanding and so on. Surprisingly, I agree. We should do all those things. We may very well stop a killer before he starts.

But we didn’t stop this one and we won’t stop all future ones either. So we have to stop asking “How can we stop this from happening again?” and start asking “What do we do when it does?”

It’s a two part answer. #1) Be aware of your surroundings. Understand the next store, school, church, bus, ballpark or office building you enter could be the scene of the next guy we didn’t catch. #2) Decide NOW what you are going to do THEN should you be so statistically unfortunate.

Be prepared! Think about these things. We get emails warning our women about parking lot security. Emails advise them not to answer the door if they think hear a baby crying outside. We’re told NEVER get into a bad guy’s vehicle regardless of what he threatens you with. But we stop short of advising the women and men in our lives to think about what they’d do if an armed psychopath with murder on his mind stands up at the next table over in Denny’s. But we’d better start.

A wise response to the question ‘What will I do then?’ would be, “I’d pull my own gun out and defend myself and those around me. The bad guy may get me but at least I go out giving myself and those around me the BEST chance to survive.”

That’s another unpleasant truth we must face. We can ask, “But what about the police? Won’t they protect us?” Unfortunately, the answer is, “No, they won’t.” Not because they don’t want to. Cops are first responders. They ran INTO the WTC while others ran out. But they never confronted a 9/11 hijacker and they never confronted the shooters at Columbine or VPI or most other mass killings. By the time cops got to the VPI killer, he was already dead. And he’d invited 32 others along for the ride. While this was happening, the cops were OUTSIDE following procedures that have been tested and proven wise. If anyone was going to stop the madness, it was going to be someone INSIDE with the killer.

Don’t believe me? Check out the opening paragraph of my post ‘A Tale of Two Atrocities’ It was an ARMED, OFF-DUTY police officer that contained the killer until the on-duty cops got there. His chief guaranteed he saved lives. If he could do it, why not an armed citizen?

So what if, for the sake of argument, there had been an armed student in the dorm when the killer started his spree? What if there had been an armed professor in the Engineering building? Is it not possible that the killer might have been stopped after killing only 2 people? What about after 5? 10? 15? And wouldn’t that have been a better outcome than 32?

We know some on the inside were brave enough in the face of evil. WND links to a London Times article about a 76 year old professor, a holocaust survivor, who blocked the door to his classroom with his body allowing students to escape out a window. It cost him his life. What if he had been armed as well and able to do more than just defend his students passively?

Perhaps he found guns distasteful. I have no idea. But if he did, I would not have insisted that he carry one. However, others might not share that distaste. One VPI student a year ago did not. He applied to be able to carry his weapon on campus. He had a concealed carry permit. But the Virginia State Legislature chose to deny him, not his 2nd Ammendment right to carry a weapon, but his God given right to defend himself that is recognized BY the 2nd Ammendment.

If VPI instituted a concealed carry program, would it have stopped yesterday’s carnage. I cannot say that it would have. But neither can I say it would not have. I can say it would have given VPI a better chance to minimize its loss. Because instead of focusing on making VPI staff, faculty, students and visitors FEEL safe. They would have been doing something to help them actually BE safe. That’s the only thing that matters.

Thinking we’ve all got some thinking to do in the days ahead …

Blue Collar Muse

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 8:37 pm and is filed under 2nd Ammendment, Blogroll, Individual Responsibility, Law Enforcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.