As you read these words, Virginia Tech students are once again picking up their backpacks. They’re resuming where they left off, completing the Monday routines that were interrupted without warning seven mornings ago. One week: It’s more than enough time for the news to be cycled off the headlines, but not nearly enough for healing or forgiving.
As far as sympathy has taken us, from here on out, the pain is to be endured by those impacted alone. Beyond the show of solidarity through Facebook profile pictures, there’s nothing most of us can do for them personally but forget and move on.
What we can do is to figure out how to prevent such catastrophes from ever happening again.
It’s ludicrous that neither the media nor the politicians have begun to engage in a frank discussion about gun control, aside from its proponents accusing opponents of politicizing tragedy, and vice versa. Such rhetoric is useful in rallying and riling supporters, but is itself politically divisive and counterproductive.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of those who insist that ordinary citizens remain armed. But the idea that upright individuals should be able to take the law into their own hands with guns is misguided. From what we’ve seen in this case, the system that distributes guns can’t distinguish the mentally stable from the unstable, let alone the upright from the crooked. Had the commonwealth of Virginia enforced the relevant federal laws more stringently, deadly weapons would have stayed safely away from the likes of Cho Seung-Hui. Gun control advocates need to be less apologetic about their stance if the currently lax enforcement of gun control laws is ever to be tightened.
More importantly, preventing another Cho requires an expansion of our collective attitude toward the socially marginalized. Much of the discussion in the media has surrounded how he could have been quarantined from mainstream society. But Cho himself was a victim of circumstances at least partially outside of his control. While it would be grossly inappropriate to group him together with those he ruthlessly murdered, it’s clear he was suffering tremendously in his own way. As revolting as it may seem, we must attempt to understand the pain that plagued him rather than dismiss him as evil beyond comprehension.
The racial dimension of Cho’s story is perhaps the most telling. After he emigrated from South Korea, he was often teased for his mumbling speech. He was once reportedly pushed to the ground and told to “go back to China.” Pundits and commentators have repeatedly emphasized his alien status, as if non-Americans pose an automatic danger. Such an “us versus them” mentality – American versus non-American, sane versus insane – may have served as a sufficient barrier to keep the marginalized at bay in the recent past. But unless this cultural penchant for intolerance is stemmed, then we have learned nothing from this painful episode.
