Hospitalist Chris Rangel looks at both sides, as well as a take-home message unrelated to whether guns are regulated or not:
Unfortunately, the best lesson to come out of this is for law enforcement and first responders. Don’t automatically assume that multiple homicides in normally peaceful communities where the killer(s) is still a large are isolated incidents in which a rational murderer is attempting to flee and has no interest in further violence or the taking hostages thus drawing attention to their location.
Related posts:
- Virginia Tech aftermath: Asian-American backlash
- More Virginia Tech and HIPAA
- The Virginia Tech massacre
- Virginia Tech: When should patients’ rights be sacrificed?
- Violence in the emergency department and how to promote ER safety
- My take: Paying for call, Muslims in medicine
- Radiology tech blogging
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 4 comments }
The situation at VT was and is such an anomaly that there is really nothing to be learned from it.
We live in a free country, where freedom means you can buy whatever firearms are on the market. This is not going to change.
You can say whatever you want as part of freedom of speech, and this is not going to substantially change. You might say that “Well, this guy should have been kicked out of school, or hospitalized, or…” Perhaps only delaying something like this, and maybe if anything intensifying his deranged anger at those at VT.
The reason college campuses seem so safe is that there is no track record of things like this happening with any kind of regularity or predictability. Even as a kind of mass murder this is highly atypical.
This is also a country where one can already almost hear the sounds of the legal vultures flapping their wings to swoop down and monetarily punish VT for its role in this disaster. Because they have the legal freedom to do so.
Blame gun control, blame video games, blame whatever you want. The fact of the matter is that there is only one entity responsible for this tragedy: the shooter himself.
In the 80s it was rap music and Dungeons and Dragons, in the 70s it was MJ, in the 90s, it was Marilyn Manson.
It’s so much more convenient to react than act proactively. So much easier to pass the buck, especially when the person who really owns that buck is not around to actively be the focus of society’s wrath.
One other person with a gun in that building could have saved dozens of lives.
A change in the law could not have stopped Cho because he obviously was intent on breaking the law and much more.
But it was the law and VT policy that said to all the VT students and faculty “You can not arm to defend yourselves, we will protect you.” -which was a lie.
The only gun control that will stop this sort is good muzzle control by an armed opponent.
Comments on this entry are closed.