Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough. What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.
The Virginia Tech tragedy reminds me, sadly, of what John Lott said in his article that I posted a few days ago. He said students were sitting ducks because of college gun laws. If only one student had been carrying a gun — and guys in Blacksburg know how to handle guns — it might have been very different.
The simple truth is that Americans themselves remain unwilling to take drastic measures to restrict gun availability. This is rooted deep in the American belief in individual freedom and a powerful suspicion of government. Americans are deeply leery of efforts by government to restrict the freedom to defend themselves. A sizeable minority, perhaps a majority, believe the risk that criminals will perpetrate events such as yesterdayís is a painful but necessary price to pay to protect that freedom.
William Anderson, commenting on Columbine after the 9/11 attacks, but equally applicable to Virginia Tech:
When the police arrived after hearing reports of a massacre under way inside Columbine High School, they did not storm the building to catch the criminals. Instead, these heavily armed officers, wearing their famous coalscuttle helmets, surrounded the outside of the school, “sealing the perimeter,” according to their spokesmen.
Inside the high school, Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold were running freely through the halls, merrily killing and wounding unarmed teachers and students as they tried to escape. In the end, the police didnít even have to fire a shot, as the two miscreants ended their own lives. Thus, people were treated to a worthless show of force by the authorities, which did almost nothing to save anyone caught in the building.
David Kopel channels that thought in this WSJ ($) op-ed:
At Virginia Tech’s sprawling campus in southwestern Va., the local police arrived at the engineering building a few minutes after the start of the murder spree, and after a few critical minutes, broke through the doors that Cho Seung-Hui had apparently chained shut. From what we know now, Cho committed suicide when he realized he’d soon be confronted by the police. But by then, 30 people had been murdered.
But let’s take a step back in time. Last year the Virginia legislature defeated a bill that would have ended the “gun-free zones” in Virginia’s public universities. At the time, a Virginia Tech associate vice president praised the General Assembly’s action “because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.” In an August 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times, he declared: “Guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”
Actually, Virginia Tech’s policy only made the killer safer, for it was only the law-abiding victims, and not the criminal, who were prevented from having guns. Virginia Tech’s policy bans all guns on campus (except for police and the university’s own security guards); even faculty members are prohibited from keeping guns in their cars.
Few differences are as clarifying as attitudes towards “gun control”. (The quotation marks give me away.) (1) Control advocates trust the authorities to protect us — and to somehow enforce gun control (consider long-standing attempts at heroin control and consider how carefully the DMV screens auto drivers); and (2) Gun control advocates cannot distinguish between the gun and the owner. Mere access makes us all equally dangerous. I have problems with both thought patterns.
And even amidst the terrible carnage, courage and humanity still shine:
A 76-year-old Jewish-Romanian lecturer was hailed a hero after blocking his classroom door long enough for many of his students to escape the Virginia Tech gunman, before being shot dead.
Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, pressed himself against the door of the classroom while shots were fired in the corridor and surrounding rooms. He stood firm, attempting to barricade the door, while his students clambered out of the windows.
The last person to see Professor Liviu Librescu alive appears to have been Alec Calhoun, a student at Virginia Tech who turned as he prepared to leap from a high classroom window to see the elderly academic holding shut the classroom door. The student jumped, and lived. Minutes later, the professor was shot dead.
There is no meaningful distinction between one relativeís grief and anotherís sorrow as the bereaved converge on Blacksburg from as near as Roanoke and as far as India. But it is worth reflecting on the significance of Professor Librescuís life of quiet heroism, which encompassed the Holocaust, a career of internationally admired teaching and research, and a final act of sacrifice that saved at least nine other lives.
The son of Romanian Jewish parents, he was sent to a Soviet labour camp as a boy after his father was deported by the Nazis. He was repatriated to communist Romania only to be forced out of academia there for his Israeli sympathies. A personal intervention by Menachem Begin enabled him to emigrate with his wife to Israel, from where he visited the US on a sabbatical in 1986, and chose to stay. The appalling ironies of his murder by a crazed student after a life of such fortitude and generosity will not be lost on anyone who hears his story.
Yet neither should those who mourn him forget the role that America played in his life. As for so many other survivors of the mid-20th centuryís genocidal convulsions, the US was for this inspiring teacher both a beacon of hope and a welcoming new home. Founded on the idea of liberty, it also made, for him, a reality of that idea. Let those he saved now make the most of it.
Update: The NY Times has more on Professor Librescu here.