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American psycho
When Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, the horrific slaughter revealed not only the poisons lurking in popular culture but the crisis of young males in a feminised society, says Sarah Baxter
Just before 5am on Monday, April 16, Cho Seung-hui got out of bed and walked to his computer. Perhaps he fiddled with his rambling 1,800-word self-portrait of a killer as the insults and grievances that he had been nursing for years coursed through his head.
High on his list were his classmates from Westfield high school, who jeered at him to “go back to China” without bothering to check his nationality. Two of them — who happened to attend Virginia Tech — were going to pay later that day. Then there were the college girls who reported him to the police for stalking and got him carted off to mental hospital after he sent them shy love messages full of yearning.
“By a name, I know not how to tell who I am,” he had written to one of them. He understood literature, he could have thought, while they didn’t have the brains to recognise that he was quoting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Spurned by them, he had to make do with a fantasy girlfriend, a supermodel who called him “Spanky”.
On the way to the bathroom Cho bumped into his roommate Karan Grewal. As usual, Cho didn’t try to speak to him or even nod hello. He swallowed his antidepressants, put on his contact lenses and applied his spot cream. As he picked up his weapons, a Glock 9mm pistol and Walther P22 handgun, and twisted back his black baseball cap, he clearly did not want to be remembered as the kid with acne.
Watching just a few minutes of the rambling manifesto of paranoia answers the question which the US has asked itself for three days: why did he do it?
At 7.15am, campus police were alerted to a shooting at West Ambler Johnston residential hall, a two-minute walk from Cho’s own hall. Witnesses heard screams and the eerie “pop pop” of a semi-automatic weapon before finding the bodies of a young man and a young woman sprawled on the floor in the hallway between the men’s and women’s dorms.
The dead girl was Emily Hilscher, 19. Perhaps there was something about her that reminded Cho of another girl he had fancied — the one he had sneaked into the women’s dorm to see but, as a roommate recalled, “When he looked into her eyes, he saw promiscuity”.
Was Ryan Clark, 22, her boyfriend? Cho didn’t know but he shot him anyway. Deprived of sex himself, he regarded those who were getting it with malevolence. “All your debaucheries weren’t enough . . . to fulfil your hedonistic needs,” he had ranted on his pre- prepared “martyrdom” video.
He went back to his room and recorded one last QuickTime video clip. It was 7.24am, according to his computer log. “This is it. This is where it ends. End of the road. What a life it was. Some life,” he said agitatedly.
But Cho wasn’t finished yet. He still had more scores to settle and fame to seek. He downloaded 28 video clips onto a DVD, which showed him posing with his weapons like the star of a Quentin Tarantino film or Lara Croft, and set out for the post office, past the police cars that had arrived outside the dorm. By the time he arrived it was 8.45am.
It was tax-filing day in America, but as a student he didn’t pay any. The queue in the post office surprised him, though he waited his turn patiently as he rehearsed his next acts of violence in his mind. He posted his multimedia manifesto to NBC News, went back to his room, grabbed his weapons and set out for more killing.
This time he would target professors as well as students. He walked across the campus to the teaching block at Norris Hall, where he chained the front doors so nobody could escape. He may have remembered some lines from Mr Brownstone, a play he had written: “He gave me a D, when I only forgot to turn in two homeworks.”
As he gunned down Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a French lecturer, science professor Kevin Granata and Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, he may have thought again of the professor in his play who “ass-raped us all — isn’t that what teachers do?
“I wanna watch him bleed, the way he watched us bleed”. Now he was fulfilling his own prophecy.
As for the students, they could forget his sympathy. He fired at them again and again, scattering their flesh across the floor. Most of his victims, girls and boys, were shot three times. Sometimes he would return to check whom he had killed and who was merely playing dead. His face was blank, but his emotions were seething.
As he said in his video, “You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats, Your gold necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs . . . You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing.”
The baby-faced Cho was 23, an adult by most people’s reckoning. In any other era it is doubtful he would have thought of himself as a boy or described his fellow students at Virginia Tech as “brats”. Trapped in the perpetual adolescence of the student, he has become a new monstrous poster child for boys who would rather kill themselves and others than grow up.
Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae, believes Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. “Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation,” she says. Or to quote Martin Amis on that other killer, Fred West: he became “addicted to the moment where impotence becomes prepotence”.
Cho swallowed his medicine, but it failed to stop him carrying out the biggest mass murder by a lone gunman in American history. By the time he turned his gun on himself, 32 students and teachers were dead — more than twice the number killed by the Columbine high school students in 1999.
Colin Goddard, 21, whose father is British, was one of the last students to be shot before Cho killed himself. He remembers the horror he felt as Cho entered his lecture room at Virginia Tech and began firing calmly and methodically at the class. “He had on boots, dark pants and a white shirt. He just started walking down the rows of desks, shooting people multiple times. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t demand anything. He was just shooting.”
The scene at Virginia Tech was hellish. Some students managed to save themselves by jumping from the windows, but those left behind died without knowing what Cho’s grievance was or why they were being punished for his rage.
Yet in death and murder, the silent Cho found his voice, railing at the perceived ills of society and slights to his deranged ego. From the blunt message he posted on a college web forum warning, “I’m going to kill people at Va Tech”, to the mountainous last testament of writings, photographs and video clips sent to NBC, rarely has a killer been as loquacious or left so much evidence of his twisted mind.
“That’s got to be more than he’s spoken, ever,” one surprised graduate student said. “I thought, ‘Well, he does talk’.”
Cho’s parents were hospitalised by shock when they heard of the killings, but some relatives have begun to speak out. Cho’s sister Sun Kyong-Cho said: “This is someone I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn’t know this person.” But in Seoul some family members described Cho as alienated even as a child. After watching the videos of him posing with his weapons, his furious 82-year-old grandfather said, “Son of a bitch. It served him right he died with his victims.”
Kim Hyang-Im, Cho’s mother, was the second of five children, who was obliged to look after the younger members of her family. At 29 she was still unmarried. Fearful that she would become an old maid, her parents fixed her up on a blind date with Cho Sun Tae, 10 years her senior. “Her husband was very serious and quiet and careful with money. He was not very friendly to his mother-in-law and father-in-law,” Cho’s 85-year-old aunt recalled.
Cho’s father scraped together enough money to buy a second-hand bookstore in South Korea, where they lived in a cheap, rented apartment. When relatives invited them to America, they were thrilled at the chance to “provide a better education”, the grandfather said.
The family was already worried about Cho, then eight years old. Soon after arriving in America he was diagnosed with autism. “He was very quiet and only followed his mother and father around but never showed any feelings or emotions,” his great-aunt said. His parents were too poor and busy trying to scrape a new life together to get specialist help for Cho.
They opened a dry-cleaning business, like many Korean immigrants, and moved to a two-storey cream town house in Centerville, Virginia, just outside Washington. In fulfilment of her parents’ dream, Cho’s sister went to Princeton University and now works as a contractor for the US State Department on the reconstruction of Iraq.
Cho chose to study English in at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, a sprawling residential college in the distant Blue Ridge Mountains. It is hard to fathom his rage at the “trust fund” brats with golden necklaces, vodka and cognac and “everything you wanted”, when among his victims were many immigrants like himself, who were proud of making their way in America.
But this carefully manicured campus — home to 26,000 students who called themselves Hokies — was no place for a social misfit. Even Cho used to wear the uniform of the mini-city: an orange or maroon T-shirt or sweatshirt with a baseball cap. Paglia, who has taught in American universities for 35 years, describes America’s residential campuses as vast “islands of green and slack conformity where a strange benevolent and tyrannical paternalism has taken over. It’s like a resort atmosphere”.
Paglia believes the school Cho attended would have been no better equipped to deal with frustrated young males. “There is nothing happening educationally in these boring prisons that are fondly called suburban high schools. They are saturated with a false humanitarianism, which is especially damaging for boys.
“Young men have enormous energy. There was a time when they could run away, hop on a freighter, go to a factory and earn money, do something with their hands. Now there is this snobbery of the upper-middle-class professional. Everyone has to be a lawyer or paper pusher.”
Cho is a classic example of “someone who felt he was a loser in the cruel social rat race”, Paglia says. The pervasive hook-up culture at college, where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out.
“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”
The sex, Paglia argues, “is everywhere but it is not erotic”, as can be seen by the sad spectacle of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears flashing their lack of underwear during a night on the town. “It’s not even titillating. It’s banal and debasing.”
The former Virginia Tech student who posted two of Cho’s hate-filled plays on the internet recalls that Cho fitted the “exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a ‘school shooter’ — a loner, obsessed with violence and with serious personal problems”. But the plays show he was preoccupied not just with girls but with paedophilia and sodomy.
In Richard McBeef, a drama about child abuse, a stepson rants, “I will not be molested by an aging, balding, overweight pedophile [sic]stepdad named Dick”, before threatening to shove the television remote control “up his ass”. It concludes: “I hate him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick.”
Dr James Gilligan, a former prison psychiatrist who teaches at New York University, believes that misogyny and homophobia are a central component of the make-up of violent criminals, who often fear they have homosexual tendencies.
“An underlying factor that is virtually always present is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood and the way to do that, to gain respect, is to commit a violent act,” he says. “It is tremendously tempting to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one’s sense of masculine self-esteem.”
It is not simply an American phenomenon. In Cho’s video manifesto, there are unmistakable echoes of the home-made martyrdom videos of the young male jihadists circulating on the internet.
Cho began working out in the gym weeks before the killings, and the video pictures sent to NBC reveal a bolder, more muscled character than the images of the shy young student released when his name was first identified.
Dressed to kill in black and tan, Cho borrowed the vocabulary as well as the iconography of Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers by hailing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — the two teen killers at Columbine — as “martyrs” of the same vengeful cult of death.
On his arm Cho had etched in red ink the nom de guerre Ismail Ax, a possible reference to the son whom Ibrahim (or Abraham) prepared to sacrifice in the Koran, sparking a torrent of speculation on the internet about his religious motives.
Others suggested that the student of literature was merely thinking about an American novel called Ishmael about a young boy growing up outside Washington, just as he did. But Cho was also explicitly drawn to Christian symbolism and its own veneration of martyrdom.
“Do you know what it feels to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement?” he railed on video. “You have never felt a single ounce of pain in your whole lives. You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience.”
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama believes the common denominator between the terrorist suicide bomber and the suicidal mass murderer is their sexual frustration and gender. “It really is young men between 15 and 30 who are responsible the vast majority of crimes, although it is politically incorrect to say this too loudly,” he says.
Suicide bombers and the Virginia Tech killer, Fukuyama suggests, “fall into the same demographic of young males, a lot of whom are unemployed, without a clear place in the social hierarchy. These guys have the most to gain and the least to lose by martyrdom”. And often, he adds, they are upset about girls “whose attention they can’t get”.
Fukuyama believes that Cho’s case is “fairly unique” but “the maleness is important”. In his essay Identity and Migration, published by Prospect last February, he writes that radical Islamism should be understood in the context of identity politics.
“We have seen this problem before in the extremist politics of the 20th century, among the young people who became anarchists, Bolsheviks, fascists or members of the Baader-Meinhof gang.” It is not specifically tied to radical Islam, he insists.
Yet Cho’s ethnicity may have prevented the university authorities from intervening in his life, Paglia suggests. Voicing a theme that conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh have taken up with gusto, she wonders whether political correctness about his background and culture may have led them to make excuses for him.
“He was Korean and so people were hesitant to declare he was abnormal in American terms,” she says. It is no accident, she believes, that the two female lecturers who were most suspicious of his behaviour were themselves not white.
One professor, Nikki Giovanni, known as the “princess of black poetry”, was the first to raise the alarm about Cho’s writing. It did not feature hardcore violence; but it was weird. “It wasn’t like, ‘I’m going to rip your heart out’,” she said. “It’s that, ‘Your bra is torn and I’m looking at your flesh’.” When female students said they were scared of him, she wanted him out of her class.
Giovanni reported her concerns to Lucinda Roy, a British professor of literature who was then head of the department. She was so disturbed by Cho that she contacted the university police and went on to give him individual lessons — after devising a code word which, if ever used, would be a signal to her assistant to call security.
“You seem so lonely,” she told him. “Do you have any friends?”
“I am lonely,” Cho replied. “I don’t have any friends.”
The lone gunman is a familiar figure in American mythology. “In American culture you always have the rough-edged loner, the anti- establishment figure which goes all the way back to the silent films and westerns and continues through Humphrey Bogart, James Dean and Marlon Brando,” says Paglia.
In Cho’s case, there were echoes of Taxi Driver, the story of a stalker. The promiscuity that Cho saw in women was “a huge warning sign”, Paglia believes. “You want them, you want the status of being seen with them, you’re driven towards them and at the same time they are contaminated, they are dirty. That’s exactly the mentality of the stalker and assassin played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. There is an apocalyptic impulse to destroy everything and to purify the world.”
In a twist to the debate on masculinity, some commentators have complained that the terrified Virginia Tech students were no Rambos when it came to defending themselves. John Derbyshire, a right-wing British writer based in America, wondered, “Why didn’t anyone rush the guy? Yes, I know it is easy to say these things, but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?” — a reference to the passengers fighting back in the 9/11 hijacked plane.
The columnist Mark Steyn took up the theme with an essay on the “culture of passivity” that is overtaking America. In his view, students are becoming so infantilised that they have lost their capacity to take responsibility.
“In a horrible world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself and others,” he believes. “It is a poor reflection on us that in those critical first seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor understood instinctively the obligation to act.”
Librescu, 75, forced his body against the door to prevent Cho storming his classroom, gaining time for some of his students to escape. He was shot dead. But there were younger heroes, too, such as Derek O’Dell, who was shot in the arm but managed to wedge his foot in the door and prevent Cho from re-entering the classroom.
Another student, realising that a friend was playing dead, was said to have deliberately drawn Cho’s attention to himself as the gunman searched the room for survivors — and sacrificed his own life.
“When someone opens the door of a classroom and begins firing with a semi-automatic weapon, there is no fighting back possible,” says Paglia. “All of this happened too fast for the young men or young women to rush the shooter and bring him down.”
Paglia is a defender of the constitutional right to bear arms in America. She is troubled, however, by the ease with which Cho bought his weapons. “The problem is not hunting guns but these semi-automatic weapons. He could not have cut down that many people so quickly or with such brutal efficiency without them. They have no use except for commandos, swat teams and paramilitary organisations.
“This is part of the plague that has come with the drug culture in the inner cities,” she says. “Cho’s use of semi-automatic weapons can ultimately be traced back to gangsta rap. It is a fabrication of urban life which is sold to teenagers trapped in the utterly sterile shopping-mall culture of the American suburbs.”
“Throughout most of human history men have been armed, but with swords not guns,” Paglia observes. As the weapons grow more deadly, even a solitary “boy” can commit the worst massacre in American history. This is the 19th such scenario in the past decade. Unfortunately it is unlikely to be the last.
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I think everybody involved in this affair should look to see if things couldn't have been averted.Obviously the drugs didn't work,guns not so easy to obtain for students with known problems,the teachers were not an asset to him inasmuch
as that I read that he may well have been denied majoring
due to verbal bullying,not one male student would help him out by taking him under the wing and it is said that,had he been Brad Pitt the female force would have been falling all over him from carrying out the same actions.Come on America,the world needs you and my country certainly needs you to take a lead .One or two noticeable hacks are now asking why we should not authorise guns since in a few enclaves of my country there is gang warfare and it will spread.
There should be no argument ,guns should be allowed in the states but people should be more wary of young men who look like they are going to crack.There were plenty of signs
in Cho's case.We should all be responsible for each other.
michael savell, eastbourne, England
I think that this boy had alot of mental problems and his family should have seen it before he started killing people. they should of gotten him some kind of mental help.
Theresa, Louisvillw, Kentucky
Cho was never LOVED. By anyone.
Mike, Glenhaven,
I don't fully agree with the piece, but I'm exasperated by constant feminist allusions to 'patriarchy' and 'misogyny' when in fact fatherless boys who grow up in more 'sensitive' environments men are MORE likely to commit serious crime.
Society is not the only arena. Humiliating personal exchanges and a lonesome upbringing clearly fuelled his rage, and in the emotional realm women young and old alike simply seem more surefooted. Difficulty in reading emotions and a tendency to oversimplify complex situations are a defining mark of the male sex, and autism is constantly referred to as the 'extreme male brain'.
Add that to the fact that testosterone, eight to twenty times more present in men than in women is a powerful agitator and it's no wonder that so many young men in this age of the deflated male role model go off the rails. An excuse? No, an explaination. But fem-fascists dismiss everything that comes from a man's mouth, unless he's degrading his own sex. They love that.
Dion, Liverpool, England
The basketball cap militarization of US society certainly played a role.
Not just feminism....
ant, london,
Feminim is the American way to destroy family values on a global scale. Afro-Americans have been the firts to experience this onslaught.
ant, london,
Oh wow! "Soceity is too feminized". But then why should I listen to you when you're just part of your own problem? After all, since you are a WOMAN, you're obviously feminine, so how can I listen to you? SO since you're obviously wrong, being a girl and all, I will keep allowing 'feminization' until females finally get the equality they deserve and which they don't have.
Do us all a favor and get a sex change.
Matthew, Newark,
I agree with Angela, LA, CA. Many people put on prescription drugs for mental illness end up worse. If they can't metabolise these drugs because of their genotype, e.g. "Poor metabolisers", impulsive violent thoughts and actions can and do follow. I hope the investigators examine the drug levels in Cho at autopsy and genotype his DNA. Maybe indiscriminate use of SSRI's and antipsychotic drugs is the reason why there are so many high school shootings in America and I hope U.K won't follow. Drug companies manufacture these drugs for profit and often do not test them enough or in some cases deliberately hold back information which highlights the dangers of their products. There is evidence that these drugs are no more effective than placebo. It is too easy to give someone a pill than to give them the care and attention they need at difficult times in their lives. American pro-gun lobbyists argue that it is not the gun that kills but the person.
Jan , Battle, East Sussex UK
"Feminised society"? Excuse me, half the population is female, and it's time that that was accepted as normal. It's not feminisation, it's equality.
Interesting that - again - it's pointed out that the girls are promiscuous, but does anyone have a problem with the fact that boys are equally promiscuous, and this has always been accepted as normal and even good?
This man was a nutcase, obviously, but 'feminisation' of culture is not to blame, but our innately misogynistic culture (which sorely needs to be 'feminised').
Tom, Berlin,
So women are to blame for this? All because some boy couldn't get laid? Please.
This column is downright degrading and nothing more than an excuse for the author to make excuses for the killer.
*Women* werent to blame for his mental state. Nothing was going to stop him kill.
And yet again, music is being blamed. When really, it's the bloody constitution with the gun laws unchanged. But no government will change them because it would lose them a lot of voters.
Obviously, this author is sad that today's society has become feminist. She wants to be back in a patriachal society where men rule all. Blame the wome, it's the easiest thing to do.
Honestly, this makes me sick. How can you make excuses for this guy? it's disgusting and disrespectful.
Lauren, Oxford, UK
Umm....this article is rather disturbing. I disagree that feminism holds any blame for Cho's actions. If we are going to put Cho's personal responsibility aside and if a culture is to be blamed, it is the anti-feminist culture that is rooted in patriarchy, sexism, and violence.
Lara H, Springdale, AR
Blah ... blah ... blah ...
Has anyone thought that the guy might just be a nut case? What is all this psycho-babble anyway? The man is, after all, dead; so there's really no way of knowing what was going on in his addled brain. Can't we just leave it at that? Do we have to psychoanalyze this matter to death?
Richard Boyle, San Francisco, CA
Oh, please. Serial killers and mass murderers have had issues with the opposite sex long before women's suffrage and lib came about. In a case in which blame has been placed on our bullies, our schools, our teachers, our gun laws, our country's founding ideals - a "feminized society" isn't high on the list.
Polly, Front Royal, Virginia
The Second Amendment was deliberately written in such a manner to protect an individual right to bear arms. The "well regulated militia" part of the amendment was inserted to make sure that the individual was well versed in the use of his weapon of choice and was prepared to use his arms in defense of his land against enemies foreign and domestic. At the time, standing armies all over the world had single shot pistols and muskets for long guns. That said, all able bodied men, 17-45 had to have the same pistols and long guns and had to know how to properly use them. These men were the militia, the army of defense of our land. The US government wasn’t meant to have an army to chase overseas knight errands. Unfortunately, the US federal government now has a professional army and at the same time, our society has removed much of the personal responsibility men had in not only defending our land, but in every adult responsibility; To be reduced to almost a child like existence.
Leonidas, Sparta, USA / Georgia
Great article!
I was at a bar/restaurant in Tokyo last Friday with my girlfriend. After dinner we went out to the bar area next to the window. As the night got later, the "young" ex-pats started to show up. Packs of American bankers and professionals. All dressed the same in groups of 4 to 6 guys, and probably between the ages of 26-32.
I commented to my girlfriend about how strange it was to see grown men congregate and act like frat boys at their ages.
After reading this article that night flashed into my mind.
Are we, America, becoming a nation of boys?
I guess if one was to analyze our leadership they would conclude that we are a nation of "frat boys," don't you think?
Henry Miller, Big Sur, California
Cho didn't send "shy love messages". He leaned under tables in class to take pictures up girls' skirts. The idea that feminism, or the women who commited the unpardonable sin of sleeping with people other than him, can be held responsible for his inability to deal with his problems and feelings in a non-sociopathic way is utterly disgusting and sloppy journalism.
Laura, Oxford, UK
This column is offensive, simplistic, and little more than an opportunity for Camille Paglia to run at the mouth. The sympathetic speculation over what was going through Cho's head as he moved between his killings is particularly appalling.
Nate Martin, Takoma Park, MD,
Those who would give up their civil rights for temporary safety deserve neither rights or safety. Why is it when something like this happens there is always someone that wants to regulate or outlaw the instrument or type of instrument used? Wouldn't it have been better to help the individual involved before this happened, before the problem came to a boiing point, especially when there were signs and people were concerned with this individuals behavior? The whole key, in my opinion, is that we need to be more involved with other people. We, as a society are so self absorbed and selfish that we don't pay attention to the geeks and freaks. We, as a society with our selfishness and our greed and our self absortion are creating this problem and trying to find every other excuse to blame this type of thing on rather than where the blame really belongs, in each of our hearts.
Gary, Osage,
This could have happened anywhere, and James Wilton, Orange County, CA, USA's post dead accurate.
Russ Smith, Jacksonville, FL. USA
In response to my post, Mike in Raleigh wrote, "You're not an ex-gun owner. For if you were you'd know that the ONLY laws that have helped reduce crime have been concealed carry laws."
So merely owning a gun imparts knowledge about laws and their effects on crime rates. Fascinating.
I did not write that I'm an ex-gun owner. I wrote "ex-NRA," and I did it to encourage other gun control advocates not to back down from a gun nut. Does Mike think that no NRA man is ever taken alive and dragged off by us evil anti-gunners?
Note that in this year's U.S. federal appeals court decision overturning the DC handgun ban, the majority opinion stated that "reasonable restrictions" on firearms are still quite permissible. Mentioned were gun registration, background checks, and mandatory training. The last two amount to a de facto license.
Even when two judges rule in the NRA's favor, they still support the NRA's worst nightmare (after bans), registration and licensing. Hilarious!
Harry, Andrews, TX
Interesting premise...the infantilism of young men at the hands of a sterile feminized culture. Unfortunately it just doesn't wash. First, the option to strike out on ones own and work with one's hands still exists. It just does not exist within the constraints of middle to upper class - and that has always been the case. This is nothing new.
Also, chicks have always ruled in the dating game. That is also not new.
Here is whats new. The average young man has to learn to deal with rejection. Historically this has been done within the context of a group of guys. The rigors of dating have been offset by male-bonding.
His teacher nailed it. This dude had no friends...and to the degree that this kind of solitude is becoming ubiquitous across the board, its a problem. I see a lot of men like this. They are not only unable to get the girl, they can't sustain a friendship with a guy. No wonder they snap.
Erich, Minneapolis, MN
A Brit stated:
"Its time for the NRA to harden up and call these deaths what they really think they are - collateral damage.
As long as the hunters right to kill is valued higher than the innocent's right to live the cycle of violence will escalate."
The 2nd Amendment isn't about hunting. I don't think 10% of gun owners hunt. I do not.
20th Century: 100 million killed by their own governments after being disarmed. Nuff said.
Mike
Mike, Raleigh, NC
From reading some of the comments posted i have an uneasy feeling about the majority of Americans who are defending the right to carry guns even after 32 innocent people were killed by a 23 year old student with handguns that should really only be used by trained Law enforcement specialists.
These people are delusional if they think that their arguemnets are justifiable. Such as Jesse's from Minneapolis who seems to be dwelling on the technicalities of the handguns used as opposed to the fact that these handguns should not be available to the general public.
Arguemnents that suggest guns prevent crimes are also laughable. 2 million is a figure someone has put forward as the number of crimes prevented by the public use of guns. Has that person considered the number of crimes committed because of the almost free availability of guns to the US public? I'm sure the repost would be that there are strict gun ownership laws etc. but clearly not strict enough!
Grow up America.
Mayur, London,
Anabella, Chicago, USA - i'm guessing your a feminest who seems to have a lot of built up hatred towards the male of the species. Maybe some of the points raised in this article apply to you? Yet you fail hugely on the fact that you're blaming a particular part to society. Everything works together in society, everyone plays their part, like or not, we are all cogs in an even bigger machine. SO, it would be wise not to point the finger of blame, and rather look at why such failings are happening, and what can and is being done to correct these problems.
The question i would have in relation to Cho is, where did it start? What led him down the path to the point in killing innocent people? Was it feeling alienated in a country he didn't know, was it being teased by fellow pupils at school because he was different, was it because he didn't live up to the achivements of his sister, which depending on the family can bring some shame? who knows, but don't be simplistic with your views
simon, lincoln,
For those that say the 2nd amendment is outdated, only applies to hunting, or that the framers didn't expect automatic weapons to exist, you miss the true purpose.
The intent of the 2nd amendment is self protection and independence. An armed populace is not easy to invade if you are a foreign entity, and difficult to contol if you are domestic. The second amendment was not written just so we could repel foreign invaders. It is necessary if we have to defend ourselves from our government. All governments fail. Often before they do, they become severely oppressive. The United States is much like the Roman Empire, already on the decline. Its size and the power of the state will eventually cause collapse.
England is already a totalitarian state, with cameras everywhere. Big brother IS watchning. Individual rights are not respected, because they need not be.
Mike R, California, USA
We as a society are forcing our children to conform to a norm that is only possible for a small percentage of them to meet. They are the beautiful, the outgoing and the aggressive. They know how to get the things they want. Cho never would be one of them. He did not fit into our model of normal and his beautiful peers did let him forget this. He was forced to acknowledge that he would never be one of them with every turn he made. We judged him to be less than and he forced us to hear his pain.
We watch the commentators speak about him as a madman; the talking heads that have never felt the pain of not being one of the chosen few. They have always fit the model of what they tell us what we should be. They cannot see the art of the artist. They only see pain of the victims because they were like them. They say over and over again, ”They were good kids”.
Chris, Fort Smith,
What about the chain and lock he used to barricade the doors. Shouldn't there be a law regarding the sales and possessing such items?
habman, Lansing, MI
...Did anyone report his illness to his parents?...
He was suspended in junior high for making a hit list of students he wanted to kill. His parents were notified. Check out Greta's Fox news show on Sunday night. Cho has had problems his entire life. There were several people aware of it including school officals, but what could they have done? You can't lock someone up for what you think they might do.
John, MO, USA
The drivel about semi-automatic weapons is ludicrous. As if a pistol which fires once at each pull of the trigger is somehow more insidious than any other, such as a revolver, only goes to show ignorance or an agenda. Better that some students were carrrying concealed to meet force with force.
Phil W, Atlanta, GA
I think Mrs/Ms Paglia is on to something. I believe that people sould be able to purchase guns/ bear arms. Having said that I think there needs to be some attention to what Mayor Bloomberg is saying about unscruplous people who deal in arms and flood inner city and rural communities with guns. But we know how interprising the white man can be, did'nt whites sale guns to Indians also!
Mosi Bundu, Spartanburg, SC
As Chris Rock once said, "What ever happened to 'Crazy'?" Many people are abused, neglected, have trouble adapting, and are you kidding me....getting laid...! The guy was simply crazy.
Tony, New York, New York
Hopefully we will one day have a society where:
Medication is not the only solution for the unhappy.
Artist will be cherished for their uniqueness.
Normal will mean that you are being yourself.
Pain is accepted as a part of life.
Shooters use paint to paint pictures.
Chris, Fort Smith,
Paglia has no idea what she's talking about when she says she supports the constitutional right to bear arms. It has nothing whatsoever to do with hunting. What?! Are people going to carry around hunting rifles to defend themselves? Guns didn't arrive with the drug culture. Swords were the most efficient means of self-defense then, guns are today. She's a professor of spouting her liberal, feminized agenda. What does she know of humanity?
Wiglaf Wintersturm, Grand Rapids, Mi, USA
The premise is interesting but it doesn't seem to fit here. Males in america are still expected to bottle up and not show their emotions. A healthy tear is still frowned upon. Explosions of anger are all too common for many males who are trained out of being in touch with their emotions. Society here for the large part still idolizes the emotionally incomplete and out of touch male. Trying to fit into that society to this day causes a wide variety of aggressive behavior in attempts to fit the role...Machismo... As evidenced by the amount of aggression in many of these comments, a lot of men are emotionally unstable creatures that still fill their role in a MASCULINE society.
On the issue of guns, law or no law it does not matter. They are here. If you care to explore the larger picture, it's like nuclear weapons for countries. Countries with the tool are very hesitant to start conflict with other countries with it. However if you don't have it, you're fair game. It's action, not word
Dredloh, San Diego, CA
Ah, I now understand that living in a feminist society which has so emasculated men to deny them the traditional outlet to aggressive masculinity of 'hopping on a freighter, going to a factory and earning money, doing something with their hands...] has left we men with the only masculine alternative: a murderous rampage.
Hmmm, on second thoughts, that is absolute twaddle.
This is the sort of pseudo-intellectual drivel I remember reading when I had a bout myopia in choosing Criminology as an option in my undergraduate Law days.
The intellectual traditions of Feminism/Sociology/Criminology et al seem to ignore the doctrines of individual responsibility and common sense spectacularly well as is demonstrated by this awful piece of ill-reasoned writing by Ms. Baxter.
Mr. Seung-hui's being far from compos mentis, the failure of the mental health authorities to deal with this problem and the ready availability of weapons to such a deranged person are more relevant than feminism!
Daniel, Belfast,
As a British ex-pat now living in Texas (since 2000) I can definitely say that I feel much safer in Texas than in the UK. In the UK you literally have to nail everything down otherwise it will get stolen. You need locking wheel nuts and a removable car stereo. In Texas, you don't.
It's amusing to see so many anti-American anti-gun comments from UK readers and so many pro-gun comments from US readers. It seems to me that there's a lot of UK readers who are using this tragedy to "bash" the US and its culture just because they don't like Bush or because they've been watching too much BBC lately. Please, unless you've actually lived in both countries for any period of time (like me), you really don't have a clue nor are in a position to "throw mud" at the other side just to further your agenda.
All I know is, having lived in both countries, that I feel safer in Texas than in the UK. To me, that is the only fact I need worry about.
NickT, San Antonio, Texas
All the discussion about the control of inanimate objects is non-essential to the phenomenon which occurred at VT.
Cho, isolated by his apparent high functioning autism, is analogous to an alcoholic truck driver, who without the intervention of a traffic officer or a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous, smashes his fully loaded eighteen wheeler into a school bus. The size of the truck, the fact that it was registered and licensed, it's cargo, possibly flammable, and that the alcoholic had a driver's permit were irrelevant to the catastrophe.
The key failures involve the human element in the event that transpired. Whatever the clinical specifics turn out to be, Cho's meltdown and its consequences occurred due to a lack of sufficient intervention by the living, not controls on the inanimate. A last resort in the intervention possibilities would have been an armed citizen. Last resorts are usually the worst option. It's hard to stop a speeding, fully loaded truck!
Jan, Bullmuda, WA
Most countries have topics which are precious to them, about which they seem incapable of having a calm conversation. They are based on conviction, "historic rights" and generally "marmite logic" - you either believe, or don't believe, and there is no middle ground. Any discussion degenerates into ad hominem attacks. Outsiders cannot understand why the topic is just so difficult, as the answer may seem obvious.
In the UK this conversations about immigration tend to go this way (other topics included Northern Ireland and whether or not Margaret Thatcher was a 'good thing'). In Spain, conversations about why its wrong from the UK to have Gibraltar but fine for Spain to have Ceuta are much the same. In the Middle East, it is the situation of the Palestinans.
For the USA, this topic is guns. I have never seen a calm an rational debate about guns in the US, and I doubt I ever will.
Ed, London, UK
system failed (his case) twice: 1st the psychiatric institutions/framework, and 2nd the drugs he took, Lubox. Both designed to keep him free, but with little recognition/disregard of/respect for our freedoms.
And third, the pacification of VT students, by decree: a plan to lay down and die or run, rather than resist and overcome.
Jorge, Portland,
regul8tr, Charlotte, NC, USA, you must be joking. Charles Whitman and Oswald were both trained marines. Julian Knight (Australian mass shooter from 20 years ago) had also trained in an army military college. Attendance at a military college, in the US or elsewhere, does nothing to prevent these problems. The colleges harbour just as many psychos as the general population
Paul JM, Melbourne, Vic
"He was about as American as Christian Bale" -Adam, Virginia, USA
For us non-Americans, what does that mean?
Pete, Cov,"
Pete - by the simile he used I assume Adam is implying that Cho wasn't American; Christian Bale was born in Pembrokeshire, UK.
Although what Cho's nationality has to do with anything is a mystery to me. Delusional killer = delusional killer, regardless of where they were born. Arguing nationality is pure semantics, and pathetic in the face of the death of 32 innocent people.
Nicky Butler, London, UK
Guns are a problem in the United States, perpetuated by the popular media and a political ideology that doesn't recognize meaningful human rights.
As an American PhD candidate in Higher Education who grew up in Maryland, near Virginia, I am apalled by much of this article. I spent last summer at Lancaster University which reinforced, from an outside perspective, why I prefer other cultures over the United States I have grown up in.
You seem to romanticize the actions and character of a very sick, narcissistic, individual. Portraying the British department head as positive fails to acknowledge that she SHOULD have done more to get this mentall unwell student help.
There is so much that should be done to change culture in order to avoid a repeat of such a grotesque tragedy, but writing articles like this is most certainly not one of them.
Lyndsay, Denver, CO, USA
"Really? I had no idea that Christian had lived in the US for fifteen years since the age of 8 and is a naturalised US citizen. "
Actually, Cho was NOT a naturalised US citizen. He was a permanent resident. There is a difference.
Alicia Amos, Richmond, Virginia, USA
Dan, Hampton , UK;
He wasn't a naturalized US citizen. Learn to read. And why do you care? Do you need to have him fully American to fullfill your anti-american POV?
3rdMan, Manhattan,
As noted by another reader earlier you have a bit of an inaccuracy in your article. The two women who attended Westfield High School were 5 years behind Cho and could not have known him or taunted him during their years there. It is a terrible thing to link them to him in such a way when they were like all of the other victims, innocent, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. That highschool was very large and no doubt many of it's former students were in classes at VT that day.
Alicia Amos, Richmond, Virginia, USA
Has anyone noticed that this sort of incident hasn't happened at a military institution? I attended a military college, where every student, Instructor and Staff member were armed. I was trained at some length on how and when to use my sidearm. I don't particularly look forward to ending another human life, but if it comes down to defending my life, or a third party, then I will take action as necessary. The VT shooter had no concept of that reality.
regul8tr, Charlotte, NC, USA
“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”
I'd better expect to get shot next time I or one of my friends refuses unwanted sexual advances, eh?
Poor Cho. If only he'd had the luck to be born into a society where women aren't allowed to behave like men and indulge their impulses. Cherchez la femme, I always say.
Well done, The Times, for giving such weight to the ramblings of a semi-literate pop psychologist.
Bobbie, London, UK
I am reasonably ambivalent about the right to own a gun, but I have always had a bit of an issue with the 2nd Ammendmant being used for its justification. If as was allegedly intended, US citizens were given the right because standing armies, foreign and domestic, were not to be trusted, surely an extrapolation of that argument would mean that citizens should be allowed to hold any weapon in use by the US or other army: nuclear bombs, tanks, fighter aircraft, war ships etc.
Sipu, Retreat,
Mike from Raleigh ... if you are so anti-European, why are you reading and posting comments on a European newspaper?
LC, London,
One of the largest mass shootings before this was a crowded roadside cafe in Texas. If they didnt have a gun handy in Texas, what makes you think your rhetoric about students being allowed to carry on campus would have resulted in anything different? This is what the media has done to you, convinced you that life is a Die Hard movie.
Its amusing how these gun obsessed people turn their hobbies and interests into some kind of comic book "Ill save the world" speech at every opportunity. Even Captain America would be embarrassed by the 4th grade rhetoric they employ. Every bubba becomes a minuteman circa 1776 when he buys a gun, its soooo boring to listen to them.
watchyoutalkinbout, st pete, FL
It was not a tragedy. It was a horrific, heinous crime that was meticulously premeditated and planned...it was a slow motion suicide bombing.
And of course the terrorist, ignored all the gun laws..lied on his federal form, carried them, took them into a "gun free" campus, brandished them, discharged them,...all those crimes were committed before any human was struck with a projectile.
Laws do not deter criminals.
arthur, Leominster, MA
>>An increasingly feminised society and the fact that there is a lack of male role models within the home. Denchanter, London,
I really take issue with this comment. Feminised society? So it's OUR fault he went on the rampage? I understand the argument that men can have issues with their masculinity, but that is THEIR fault and no one else's. You sound like the Australian newspaper who gleefully declared that the girl shot dead in Norriss Hall was responsible for starting the massacre!
Joanna, Somerset,
You know what? This article is crap. Do you guys ever check your facts?
John, MO, USA
Nonsense heading. 'males in a feminised society'. That's utterly incorrect. Cho didn't do this because the society he lives in is 'feminised' Is that society even 'feminised'? No. What a ridiculous heading,and therefoe I am choosing to not even read the article. The title blames women for what Cho did now then? This paper The Times online, has now disgusted me twice in one day, one article and/or heading after another, being anti-women.
L Jackson, GREAT YARMOUTH, Norfolk
To me, Cho's sending of Shakespearean love notes to clueless women reminds me of Huxley's Savage reciting Shakespeare to a similarly clueless Lennina. Tragically for all, whereas in fiction the Savage merely took his own life, Cho savagely took many lives with him.
We live in what is becoming a sad, brave new world.
CJK, Milwaukee, WI
Sarah Baxter I don't remember reading any of your work before. On reading the above piece I will look out for you. It's a brilliant thought provoking article.
You have actually attempted to look at the underlined issues which may even be used to explain the reasons for the rise of youth gun crime in the UK.
An increasingly feminised society and the fact that there is a lack of male role models within the home. This may leave young men with a crisis of confidenc forcing them to seek out masculine suplements, guns, knives and even the ownership of dangerous dogs.
I know this strays a tad from your article but I've grown bored of reading the rants from trigger happy Americans.
Denchanter, London,
"He was about as American as Christian Bale" -Adam, Virginia, USA
Really? I had no idea that Christian had lived in the US for fifteen years since the age of 8 and is a naturalised US citizen.
Dan, Hampton , UK
To pete in Cov ... Christian Bale is the Non American actor who played the "American Psycho " , in the film of the same name . Apparently he's from Haverfordwest !
Benzo, Nr Chelmsford , England
1st of all to say we live in a feminised society is the second dumbest thing I've ever heard. 2nd,
if you have a problem with people having guns, don't look at them as if they are criminals, most of them have them for no other reason than to protect themselves from other peoples children with knives who's parents didn't have time to show them right from wrong. lets be for real here. men not supporting children women are left with the responsibility and then she is paid 50 -75 cents to the dollar a male makes but he doesn't have the financial burden of a child, she works 2 jobs to support child with no time left to teach the child...smart men they cut off their nose to spite their face and then to make matters worse
men more and more blame their behavior on being a male
other than because they are an idiot
"I have to look at porn...I'm a guy" and these are male childrens role models and you say this is a feminised society?
Anabella, Chicago, USA
"God given right..." for the truly religious, they know this doesn't extend to the ownership of anything intended to kill! He said "turn the other cheek", so how can you use His name to condone this? Anyway, that's not my point. You can argue the 2nd amendement till you're blue in the face. What saddens me is the belief that we should live in a society where we are afraid of each other! If everyone is armed, then everyone is deterred! I read on this website, on this very same debate (albeit different article) a person posted "A society that arms itself in fear of society, is no society at all" whoever posted this is IMHO a very very wise man (or woman). I'm not saying we should all be passive, I'm the 1st to stand up for what I believe, but the focus seems to be on gun control, it should be on the issues that society perpetuates. Cho's "resentment of society "planted the seeds of his actions, accompanied by his "non-value attached to human life". These should be addressed!!
julian, Bromley, UK
"And the groups you named are non-sequiturs. Nice touch tossing in the Jews though. You still think, like Soros, that they cause the problems? "
I was being SARCASTIC, exaggerating and satirising the way that some right-wingers think that everyone is conspiring against them. Of course those groups are not conspiring (well, maybe the communists...)
I can't speak for the rest of the American media, but we can get Fox News on satellite TV here, and what I've seen is about as centrist as Benito Mussolini. It just seems that if you think that everyone is left-wing, it is more likely that your views are quite extreme.
Come on, is it really that bad? Does every media outlet in the US have a left-wing bias? Surely there have got to be some right-of-centre newspapers? Is the US media really that different from the rest of the world?
LB, southport,
Its time for the NRA to harden up and call these deaths what they really think they are - collateral damage.
As long as the hunters right to kill is valued higher than the innocent's right to live the cycle of violence will escalate.
Steven, London, United Kingdom
This event is a tragedy regardless of what country it occurred in. It seems lots of people want to rush to judgment and blame many things and many people but there is only one person to blame and that is Cho. All the rest of this noise is simply media generated hype designed to drive ratings so advertisers will pay to showcase their goods and services in the media. Banning guns will not stop gun violence anymore than handing them out to everyone. Background checks designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous or ill people only work when said people try to acquire them through legal means. There are no guarantees or absolutes in life. All that is left is individual choice which is what freedom is all about. My choice is to own guns so if needed I can protect myself and those that I love. All the rest of this is just noise that will be in the forefront until the next sensational story comes along. God Bless America and God Save the Queen.
James Wilton, Orange County, CA, USA
in America children are Not given guns to play with , in fact they can,t even have a picture of a gun without getting in trouble . GUNS are instruments of freedom in the hands of the lawful. The victims at Va. Tech were men and woman , not children. Danny Boy
Danny, Bel Air,
"The stats are only skewed by hoplophobes."
Apart from the incredible naivete of that comment (no-one has anything to gain from making guns seem like a worse than they are, but plenty of retailers, manufacturers and gun clubs have something to gain from making them seem like a good thing to own), you fail to see the difference between fearing weapons per se, and fearing weapons being sold to in the supermarket to anyone with an ID, with very few background checks. If there were tests for gun ownership to make sure people know what they are doing, as with driving tests, fewer people would have a problem with it.
""A fear of weapons is a sign of emotional ans sexual insecurity." Sigmund Freud."
Very mature, questioning the other person's sexual prowess/inclination.
We could ask why some men want to have guns so much (anyone who has read Freud knows what they symbolise!), and whether they own them to make up for a little something.
Or we could just stop acting like 13-year-olds
LB, southport,
Someone in Texas wrote:
"So essentially no students or professors will be good with a handgun when a murderer strikes".
Have you any data? I have data refuting you.
"More concealed handguns is not the answer".
Have you any data? I have data refuting you,
"We must repeal the 2nd Amendment, ban semiautos, and impose registration and licensing. Then limit ammo purchases"
I feel very sorry for you.
"I'm ex-NRA, grateful to the anti-gunner who cared enough to whip my sorry pro-gun hide".
You're not an ex-gun owner. For if you were you'd know that the ONLY laws that have helped reduce crime have been concealed carry laws. Nice try.
Mike
Mike, Raleigh, NC
"He was about as American as Christian Bale" -Adam, Virginia, USA
For us non-Americans, what does that mean?
Pete, Cov,
If children are given guns to play with someone will get hurt. Whatever happened to common sense?
Janet Menage, Rugby, UK
"They are certainly not widely marxist. Perhaps it is YOUR sources which have the agenda."
Sorry, but since you don't live in America you have no idea of what our press is like. And the groups you named are non-sequiturs. Nice touch tossing in the Jews though. You still think, like Soros, that they cause the problems?
John Lott has researched stories in the press . They widely leave out guns that are used to prevent/stop crines.
The American press [not talk radio] has no conservative outlet. FOX moved to the middle and the rest are totally unaware of reality and live in a socialist world similar to the one forced upon Brits. You should have headed F.A. Hayek and "The Road to Serfdom".
Don't take it from me. Tom Wolfe [Bonfire of the Vanities] recently reported on being at a large media gathering and he said they resoundingly have no idea what being an American is like in their own nation. They root against America and think they are annointed in some fashion.
Mike
Mike, Raleigh, NC
"This is why the Asians developed all the martial arts based on farm implements" -KR, Hamilton, Ma
I didnt know swords, spears and javelins were 'farm implements'.
Pete, Cov,
"Studies have been done and the press in America virtually refuses to report on a crime stopped by a gun as they have widely become socialist/marxist. "
Yes, I suppose that the atheists, communists, homosexuals, liberals and Jews have joined forces to spread propaganda that will take away Americans' right to bring guns to school.
When you think that media outlets are forming a conspiracy, you should start questioning your sanity. Some have a left wing bias, some have a right wing bias, and some are towards the middle. They are certainly not widely marxist.
Perhaps it is YOUR sources which have the agenda.
Lb, southport,
[Cho attacked students who rarely consider owning a gun, they should not be forced to take part in an arms race because you want to own a semi automatic weapon. Semi automatic weapons are meant for the mass murder of humans, support by gun enthusiasts only reflects their delusional love of weapons, and their constant fear of people like themselves. The second amendment, like the support of slavery 200 years ago, is aged and useless. Statistics quoted by either side are never referenced and always skewed.]
The stats are only skewed by hoplophobes.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of emotional ans sexual insecurity." Sigmund Freud.
Now who's delusional?
Johnny Jones, Kentwood, La. USA
[The 2nd amendment is a draconian and archaic law meant to protect citizens in a bygone era which needed such protectionist measures.]
Then how about we just ditch the whole Bill Of Rights?
After all, it's an "archaic" law also.
In this day and age is there any real possibility that the American government will try to limit speech?
Or attempt to arrest people with no probable cause, and no warrant?"
Or, consider quartering soldiers in private homes?
Institute cruel and unusual punishments?
Nah.
(sarc off)
Johnny Jones, Kentwood, La. USA
"You don't know what you're talking about. Armed citizens stop/prevent about 2 million crimes a year."
Well, I find it very unlikely that so many crimes that require such intervention are even attempted; if they are you must have a trully dystopian society. There is less crime over here and we do not have guns. What is your source for this amazing power of guns to solve crime? The NRA, a gun retailer (whose existence depends upon people believing this)? And what kind crimes are these? Children playing trick or treat? People walking their dogs without a lead?
I have always wondered: do American postmen deliver the post into a box by the street because they would be shot if they went to go to the front door?
LB, Southport,
I have a question.
Here and on other media, supporters of the 2nd ammendment say that the right of Americans to bear arms comes "from God", and God has given them the "right to protect" themselves.
Can you please explain how do you know that God wants for Christians (and Muslims or others, for that matter) in the US to carry a weapon in order to kill someone and "defend themselves"?
Bali, Olympia, WA
what exactly is a feminised society? for crying out loud, a madman goes on a murderous rampage and somehow we manage to find a way to blame females? Women suffer the most violence ,physical,sexual,emotional and social and yet we don't hear of them going about shooting innocent people left,right and centre. It was not a 'feminised' society that made Cho do what he did...it was Cho who made Cho do what he did.Full stop! It's just ridiculous to try and blame (again!) women for a man's actions.Unlike so many men think,just because you fancy some girl,doesn't mean she's obligated to fancy you back,and stalking her won't help you getting her one bit. Most men have faced rejection from women at least once in their lives,as have women from men;what would the world be like if we all decided to go and shoot dead 32 people just because rejection is so hard to deal with sometimes?
louis smythe-silva, sintra, portugal
Before guns, when men were armed "but with swords, not guns", tyrannical rulers would ban the swords. This is why the Asians developed all the martial arts based on farm implements. Much easier to impose your will on others when they're unarmed.
KR, Hamilton, Ma
Count the number of times that mental illness and violence crime are linked. Do your own studies, note each time the violent person in the news heard voices, talked to themselves aloud, had delusions or hallucinations.
Then factor in the use of psycho-active drugs, powerful chemicals that alter brain function, and have "only" 1% chance of negative side effects.
1% of the millions taking these drugs are a lot of people, and the illusion that drug treatment of the mentally ill makes them "normal" is simply wrong.
These factors account for far too many violent crimes.
Vern, New York, New York
"'When someone opens the door of a classroom and begins firing with a semi-automatic weapon, there is no fighting back possible,' says Paglia. 'All of this happened too fast for the young men or young women to rush the shooter and bring him down.'"
This is laughable. He had a 9mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun. These are not unusually powerful weapons, and they cannot be fired rapidly enough to stop a swarm of people at close range (a semi-automatic gun fires one bullet for every pull of the trigger, but the shooter must also manage the recoil from each round).
If people are going to comment authoritatively about guns, they should learn a bit about them first. Hanguns do not make the ordinary person invinsible. If a few students had rushed at him, the death toll might have been four or five--not tens.
Jesse, Minneapolis, MN, USA
In America the right to bear arms is integral to who we are. People that choose to own handguns for their own personal safety with a license have every right to carry a weapon. However, it is illegal to have them on school campuses which ties the hands of responsible adults that may otherwise protect themselves and others with their licensed weapon. How different would this story have been if the heroic teacher Lebresciu the 75 year old holocaust survivor had had a handgun in his desk? I guarantee he would not have hesitated to protect his students with it. Outlawing guns woud only take guns away from law abiding responsible people, the only people with guns then would be outlaws and criminals. Men in America need to remember what it means to be men, (Think the WWII generation) Its difficult for some guys to find their place, its sad, but thats how it is today. God Bless the Families of the victims and all of the students and faculty.
Dennis, Olive Branch, Ms
"Is EVERYONE in the USA required (or at least expected) to have his handgun on his person AT ALL TIMES in order to guarantee protection against anyone else with a gun?"
First, there's no guarantee. Second, no. Guns don't need to actually be present to be a deterrent. Only the possibility of their presence needs to exist in order for them to deter crime.
As for crazies... I'll give a million dollars to the first guy that can figure out how to deter them.
Jeff, Woodland Hills, CA
I am a female who was studying for a graduate degree and staying alone in a city in Washington state, where it is relatively easy to get a CCW permit. My husband bought me a Lady Smith for my birthday since he would not be with me for my studies. A short time later, a too-friendly landlord tried to enter my apartment with his master key at 2:00 am, with a story about trying to protect me from someone trying to climb up the side of my building into my balcony window. The chain prevented him from coming in at will. When the door opend on the chain, I woke up and asked who was there. The landlord told me his story. I told him not to worry about me because I slept with a 38 under my pillow. He never tried to get in again. He was fired from the job shortly after, and not from my story about him. I never reported this potential crime being deterred, I guess I should have added my statistic to the long list of crimes prevented by law-abiding citizens with their legal handguns.
Anne, Keaau, Hawaii
He was about as American as Christian Bale.
Adam, Virginia, USA
There's a name for places where the military and police control all means of coercive force. (ie:guns)
That name is: Police State.
Johnny Jones, Kentwood, La. USA
Those decrying "semi-automatic" weapons just display their ignorance, probably thinking that these guns file multiple projectiles per trigger pull like a real machine gun. The "non-semi-automatic" handguns are called revolvers, which can be fired just as fast and reloaded as quickly as semis. The rifle equivalent is the bolt-action rifle, which is slower than a semi action, but proved sufficient for Lee Harvey Oswald, even shooting bullets that changed course in midair.
The second amendment is not about hunting, it is about maintaining the ultimate check and balance on government, an armed citizenry. As V says in V for Vendetta, the government should fear the people, not the people the government. But the USA has opted for a police state, so that issue is settled. For now.
Mike MacLeod, Mountain View, California, USA
I think the problem is that sexual satisfaction is too hard to achieve by less socially adjusted people, like Cho. If he'd had access to some "recreational" females without the stigma (or illegality) of using a prostitute, he might have been able to blow off some steam without hurting anyone.
Randy, Ashland, Virginia
You called him an American Psycho, he's actually Korean, for the record.
P. Carrasco, Upland, CA. USA
Great article, but a little long on speculation and short on substance. Interesting views and you have provided a lot of thinking material. Also, to all those saying he just should have been locked up earlier, in this specific case it appears he should have, but in reality it's much harder than that. When most people are found out to be killers it is usally a shock to those who knew them. It's easier said than done to just lock all the crazies up before they do harm. And blaming the supreme court for this? thats crazy.
Ohr Shottan, Sunnyvale, CA
Factual errors all over the place:
1. Semi-automatic weapons date back to the 1880's. The Broomhandle Mauser that Winston Churchill used at Omdurman was functionally equivalent to the Glock 19 that Psych-Cho used.
Technology that's nearly 130 years old is hardly the result of Gangsta Rap.
2. Taxi Driver was about, as screenwriter Schrader wrote, a guy driven insane by modern life who finds sanity by killing the right people, the pimps who exploit a 12 year old prostitute. Bickle doesn't want to sleep with the Jodie Foster character, but rescue the kid as her father. Big surprise the educated upper class slumming Cybil Shepherd character finds Bickle odious and crude.
3. Psych-Cho was a nut, but IMHO the lack of role for men in a feminized culture is a problem. More in the low marriage/birth rates than anything else IMHO.
Jim Rockford, Irvine, CA, USA
Cho attacked students who rarely consider owning a gun, they should not be forced to take part in an arms race because you want to own a semi automatic weapon. Semi automatic weapons are meant for the mass murder of humans, support by gun enthusiasts only reflects their delusional love of weapons, and their constant fear of people like themselves. The second amendment, like the support of slavery 200 years ago, is aged and useless. Statistics quoted by either side are never referenced and always skewed.
Jared, Lexington,
I find this article nearly as disturbing as the incident itself. First of all, it's people like the author--and this paper, that play a small part in creating incidents like this. Fear of crude labels and mass ignorance is one thing that often stops too many Americans from getting the help they need.
Let me ask this: If this was a story about a gay man man instead of a young man who was clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness--which is most often cause by a chemical imbalace in the brain--people don't just wake up one day and decide to be "crazy." If this was a gay man, would you label the article "American Fag?"
Sensationalizing a horrible tragedy with banal information is just...tragedy in itself.
Nancy, Adirondack Mtns. , USA NY
The stuffy intellectuals overseas can't even get their headlines right; Cho was not an American.
Mr. Guns, Utah, USA
Imagine if one of these bright young men or women that was killed at Virginia tech was allowed to and endorsed by government training to carry a firearm at school? I'd bet that half of these wonderful people would still be with us today. Strangely a year previous Virginia Tech defeated a motion to allow concealed carry on campus. In a politically correct world we disarm our citizens in the idea that it makes us civilized where in fact it makes us vulnerable to those that are disatisfied with society. If there was a police officer in every class would a madman attempt to do harm there? What if there were armed and highly trained students in every classroom? We can never get rid of guns on this earth but we can allow ourselves the means to defend ourselves. Being armed is not uncivilized, in these times it is just smart. I shed tears for the victims as I did when this happened at Dawson College up here. Truly tragic. Such minds lost.
Erik, Hamilton, Ontario
Mr. Dirk Bode of Hamburg, Germany, asked if the Holocaust could have happened if the people were armed.
In the 1930s the German communists were well armed. The Nazis slaughtered them to the last man, woman and child except for a handful left to rot in concentration camps. The Germans also wiped out the massively armed and fortified French army, not to mention a few hundred thousand well-armed Brits, Yanks and allies. The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had acquired guns and rifles. Few survived the Nazi siege.
Michael Caracappa, Charlotte, NC (USA)
The students should have been able to stop" the Mad Korean" , if we assume that he would use two seconds per victim (three shots), and two seconds to insert new clips(mags)into his autopistols.
But these where students in a feninized environment.
Worse is the case with the 15 Brit soldiers who did not defend themselves against the Persians...
Per, Oslo, Norway
...High on his list were his classmates from Westfield high school, who jeered at him to “go back to China” without bothering to check his nationality. Two of them — who happened to attend Virginia Tech — were going to pay later that day. ...
This is incorrect. The two girls who went to Westfield high were five years younger than Cho. They did not attend Westfield at the same time as Cho. The above statement implies the two teased and taunted him and that's not the case.
Personally, I wonder why Cho chose the engineering building as the site for this rampage. Why didn't he choose a more familiar setting like the buidling where his own classes were held? And why did he let his suitmates live? He didn't kill anyone in his dorm. I find it strange he chose more unfamilar settings for his rampages.
Jackie Brown, St Louid , Mo. USA
Sorry to quote Kafka "It started as a normal day, all the natural laws were in force" If John Derbyshire whos brave words you refered to, was sitting in that classroom and had a gun pointed at his head, he might also be very suprised.
Instead of the handwringing about modern societies why not accept the obvious,
This man was a nutter, ultimately without consience and inexplicable.
My sympathies to the bereaved.
Frank H., London, England
This isn't the worst massacre in US history. Look to the past, where 70 people were killed at once with thrown dynamite.
Foobear, San Diego, CA
Big problems come with more hidden handguns:
1. Competence with one requires attending a shooting school and much practice. Few will do both.
2. As Dave Grossman writes in On Killing, most people will refuse to kill when the moment of truth comes.
3. Among the poorly trained and those not in full control of themselves, high-capacity semiautos tend to induce "spray-and-pray." It results in few hits on the intended target, even at close range. All those bullets go somewhere.
So essentially no students or professors will be good with a handgun when a murderer strikes.
More concealed handguns is not the answer. Several steps are needed, but the most important in the U.S. is to reduce the killing ability of any person.
We must repeal the 2nd Amendment, ban semiautos, and impose registration and licensing. Then limit ammo purchases.
I'm ex-NRA, grateful to the anti-gunner who cared enough to whip my sorry pro-gun hide.
Harry, Andrews, TX
Perhaps it is now time that the USA stop living in the days of 1776, and realise that the enemy is not abroad anymore and that there is no danger of invasion. The 2nd amendment is a draconian and archaic law meant to protect citizens in a bygone era which needed such protectionist measures. However, i think americans have got far more important issues to trouble over than an invasive govt. What about the excesses of a despondent and consumerist society, there has never been greater individual rights and freedom in modern civilised, and prosperous society. Worry about social alienation, and cultural abasistment or unfortunately liberalism will turn society into something totally different from what we wish. But, please excuse me for stating the obvious: one will defend oneself with a gun if one is attacked by one; conversly, one will protect oneself with the most effective deence available id est the most deadly and accurate. A gun is deadlier than a knife. More liberating and powerful
Dave, london,
More than the guns there is the killing atomization of society. The University respected diversity and privacy, and feared the ACLU lawsuit if it acted responsibly.
He was able to take photos of girls' underpants while they were wearing them, in living color and with impunity.
The school sent out an e-mail advising 'all is o.k.'
A week before the tragedy, the killer bought magazines for his Glock on E-bay, anonymously, one transaction among millions.
He had to buy his weapon face to face, There were fifteen long minutes before the approval came through. "O.K. to sell."
The clerk of the court that had declared the killer a danger to himself did not report it to authorities, or checked the wrong box on the form, or the task of reporting the news was out sourced to India and the import of a subtle intonation of voice was missed.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms was upheld; the sales completed and payment effected in time. The customer is always right
Don Martin, Woodside, New York, NY
Russell, Oxford, NJ USA wrote:
"As an American, I don't understand the gun control laws. People should be allowed hunting rifles, or even regular handguns if a good enough reason is give, but semi-automatics???? For what, shooting a herd of attacking deer????There's only 1 reason for these guns, & we just saw that reason in VA.."
Russel, having movd to NC 5 years ago from NJ I can say that you have been brainwashed, New Germany is an awful state where wherever you go, you and your loved ones are designated victims.
The 2nd Amendment isn't about hunting. I don't need to give my government a reason to own a gun, they have to give me a reason why they have taken my rights away. You have no rights. Sorry, but I know NJ laws.
Would you have wanted me to toss my .40 caliber with 12 rounds through a window to one of the students last week? Answering that question should start you on the road to figuring this out.
Mike in Raleigh
Mike, Raleigh, NC
The 2nd amendment has NOTHING to do with HUNTING! Let's get this straight, once and for all!!! I'm sick to death of pinheads always bringing up the 2nd amendment and hunting in the same sentence. If you actually have read the writings of our founders and framers, you would know for a fact that they distrusted standing armies, and the people, as in "We the People", were to have weapons that we could actually fight with, against tyranny, both foreign and domestic. You cannot fight against tyranny with 5 shot bolt-action rifles anymore. You have to have the same kind of weaponery to even stand a chance for freedom to survive.
I have been a law-abiding free citizen all my life, and I'm 43, and, for the record, I will never give up my firearms, EVER! I don't care if the gun-grabbers try to pass more restrictive gun laws, enough is enough. My rights are guaranteed by the Lord, as our Founding Fathers understood. And I'm staying free, now and until I die!
Gary, Fort Wan\,
Many of you non-Americans seem to think laws in books will protect you by there mere existence. You also seem to fear someone with a gun of whom you would not be afraid if she or he did not have one. I'd also like to point out that gun violence is on the increase in the UK to the point that many of your police are armed now.
Hello?
I'll never forget taking a Japanese client to a popular skeet and trap shooting range operated by a gun manufacturer. There were scores of shooting fields, and there were hundreds of people there, men, women, and children walking around carrying shotguns -- semi-automatic in many cases.
He stared in amazement. He had never in his life ever seen a real gun in civilian hands, and now he was surrounded by them.
We went into the clubhouse, and there were gun racks everywhere full of guns. There were people eating, drinking coffee, chatting as they waited for their number to be announced.
To be continued
Bill, New Canaan, CT
TomTom,
His age is about right for the last year at university. Maybe a year later than usually in America. Usually the graduate high school at 17 - 18, and assuming they finish university in four years 21 or 22.
Actually for a typical university graduate in the UK about right. A lot of UK students do a four degree now. Most UK students finish university at 18-19 (assuming no gap year), they would graduate at 22-23 assuming he does not take a gap year..
William, Richmond,
Padlia observes "Throughout most of human history men have been armed, but with swords not guns."
I say, true when only swords existed, but as time advanced the bad guys got guns and the good guys found themselves fighting bullets with swords. Many died. Taking a sword to a gunfight is stupid and suicide. In the words of US Ranger's 'kill 'em all and let God sort them out!"
Al
Al Barrs, Greenwood, Florida USA
In America everyone needs to carry something. Pepper spray or whatever. People think this kind of stuff only happens to others or it will not happen to them because they are somehow special. This kind of thinking needs to stop. The government is not going to protect us. We must protect ourselves and not by playing dead.
John G, SA, TX
Sally, it isn't really reporting they are doing, it's editorializing. There's a difference between the general purpose of a news report and an editorial. Pagalia is a columnist and as such gives her opinion on a matter. So it's okay that they speculated and gave their own insights into the event.
Hope that helps for your future reading.
Chad, Mesa,
Continued....
LB, Southport?
You don't know what you're talking about. Armed citizens stop/prevent about 2 million crimes a year.
-----------------
We went to the place where we could rent my client a gun, and the nice man fitted him with one. We bought some shells, and headed out with our instructor for a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.
He told me that the place had the feel of a country club, and that is exactly right.
I'd like to remind some of you that the Second amendment is NOT about hunting rifles. It is about military weapons.
I'd also like to point out an inconvenient truth. Towns and cities with less restrictive gun laws have less crime. I was a cop for many years in Vermont which had no gun laws. None. There was little gun violence. Almost every house had guns, and everybody knew it.
Bill, New Canaan, CT
Any of you actually teach or work at a North American u. or college, or spent much time on campus lately?
Dan from CT hit the nail on the head. At my semi-tony private liberal arts college, easily 1/3 - 1/2 of the students are on psychotropic meds and under psychiactric care for depression, anxiety, ADD.. you name it. Add to that that the kids are drunk or high 3-4 nights a week. Now we should let the kids arm themselves? What planet are you on guys?
Statistically, with the number of troubled young men on school campuses and easy access to guns in this violence intoxicated country, you can only hope that there but for the grace of God goes your own classroom someday. And no, I'm lifelong libertarian, not some out in left field la-la land academic.
NJ prof, collegeville, NJ, USA
"Go back to China"? Does any one even believe that this was said to the killer in high school? This quote is nothing but a fallacious attempt to fit this tragedy into the Socialist template of minorities and/or criminals must have been justified in their actions because of racism, classism, etc.
High school classmates may have giggled at him for being so quiet but saying he "should go back to China" is an outright lie.
Socialism is murder, London,
There's a lot of gun talk going on in relation to this story. Let's start with: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The object of the gun guarantee is for use in well-regulated militias, but it is neither limited to that, nor is it without limits. Like other rights, such as free speech, it is not a right unlimited by reason. Americans have free speech, but they cannot yell fire in a crowded theater or use a megaphone at 3 AM to blast their opinions throughout the neighborhood (not without consequences anyway). I think the second amendment will survive a calibration of gun regulations that keeps guns out of the hands of fellows like Cho.
There are lots of young men in college who aren't getting any (more than care to admit it). It's not a justification, nor is it even a reasonable explanation, for his conduct. More vigorous therapy and observation was in order.
Frank, Rockville, MD USA
I am 60 years old. If I had permission yo carry a firearm from the time I was 21
I would have never been in a position to need it, nor, for that matter, would anyone I know. If all of us had ben armed for all of that time I just have to feel that ONE of us would have accdently discharged it. As for the NRA, everytime thje wind blows a branvh against a window they claim they scared away an intruder with a gun. Look closely at the miss america story. one guy was charged with misdemeanor tresspass and the pthers not charged. What would have happened had they been criminals, say, stealing gas. Or maybe they were just out of gas. let's say they were armed and the lady shot at them. what would have been a nothing incident could have been a stupid murder.
RTon Orf, tripoli, iA
Dorothy wrote:
"As for guns. There is no reason for assualt weapons to ever be for sale."
Dorothy knows nothing about guns since NYC bans them. An "Assault Weapon" isn;t even defined by the BATF. They became a class of "ugly" and "mencing looking" semi-automrtic guns that had restrictions placed on them to let the foolish think government was doing something. ALL THE SATUDIES ARE IN. The now expired Assault Weapons Ban did nothing to reduce crime. Nice Job!
"Someone intent on killing could probably order one from outside the country via the interenet".
No, you absolutely couldn't. Wrong again.
"Or the kid could have set fires or something. So I think the real thing to do is to be vigilant about one another"
Now you finally have realized it's the individual. I'm safe with a thermonuclear weapon. Cho wasn't safe with a box or matches or a screwdriver, but you'd take all the guns, and give us double and triple the crime rate, d=so you could feel good. SELFISH!
Mike, Raleigh, NC
Paglia's comment that semi-automatic weapons "have no use except for commandos, swat teams, and paramilitary organizations" is troubling and incredibly naive. How does she propose to eliminate criminals' access to such weapons? Furthermore - and more importantly - if she cannot explain how this is feasible - and clearly it is not - how dare she propose that law-abiding citizens be deprived of their means of self-defense against such thugs? In every instance - including the U.K. and Australia - where strict gun control laws have been passed - the result has been a massive escalation in violent crime. Criminals by definition do NOT OBEY THE LAW - they are therefore only emboldened when they know their prey are defenseless.
Mark Koenig, Atlanta, USA
I wonder how much the antidepressents had to do with his ability to emotionally disconnect with what he was doing. The drugs that psycholigists give might be a case of the cure being worse than the desease. I suggest more fish oils for emotional stabililty. We don't get enough fish oils.
Yes, the Republicans are crazy.
HJ, San Jose, CA
Previously stated:
"The reality is armed citizens do save lives."
And a response of:
"It is a pity that they end hundreds of times as many"
You would be wrong! I'm shocked...SHOCKED! Guns prevet at least three times as many crinmes as are committed while the oh so civilized Europeans are being ravished with violent crime that they prefer not to speak about.
"Happiness is a warm gun"
Mike
Mike, Raleigh, NC
The feminized society was a college.
Ed Naile, Deering , NH USA
Taught or spent much time working on a North American u. or college campus lately?
Easily 1/3 of the students are on psychotropic drugs and under psychiactric care. And most of them drink and get high at least a couple times a week.
Let the gun lobby bozos have everyone arm and Dan from CT has it right about what would happen. There are so many disturbed people out there and given all the guns and societal intoxication with violence, this is almost statistically bound to happen eventually somewhere, horrible as it is.
NJ professor, collegeville, NJ, USA
"The irony, lost on many gun owners, is that the biggest threat to them personally is not the US government coming to take their freedom away, but their fellow citizen who also happens to be exercising his 2nd amendment "freedom" right to bear arms."
What claptrap.
Oh really? America should have a crime rate equal to those law-abing gun owners. If we had the crime rate of concealed weapons license holders we'd need few police.
Governments in the 20th century killed around 100 million of their own citizens AFTER they had disarmed them.
No, I'll fear government, and particularly the ones elected by those who know nothing about guns as it's not about guns, it's about freedom!
"The Pervert" as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner said he should be refered to as, would have gotten gasoline, fertilizer, or a truck to kill. A killer is a killer. You people gave those kids no chance to live because you feel so good about passing laws agaisnt the law-abiding
Mike, Raleigh, NC
“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”
"Young men have enormous energy."
What are these statements by Camille Paglia doing in the article? Is the author seriously suggesting that promiscuity among young women caused Cho to kill 32 people? Is she seriously suggesting that because Cho had "enormous energy" that he couldn't release, he had no other choice but to kill people? Do women not have enormous energy? Are women not ever spurned? I don't know what the author of this article is playing at, but in no way are Cho's actions a result of the acceptance of promiscuity in society or his enormous male energy. Cho's actions were the result of a twisted mind that was tormented by several severe mental illnesses. That's it.
Monica, Boston,
Mike wrote:
"If Paglia knows anything at all about guns she would know a .22 and a 9mm are small caliber weapons, actually very hard to kill someone with".
Mike, thank you for your service...and she knows nothing, like many here, about ordance.
I don't know if any police department in the US still outfits their police with 9mm as the power is not strong enough, particularly in winter and through clothing.
As I heard a trama doc once say "give me a guy who made it to the hospital with 3 bullet wounds over a guy who was worked over with a bat as the bat does trauma a gun can't do".
Thank you again for keeping my family safe. I'm watching the homeland with friends and so far, we're doing a pretty good job thanks to the training we've taken.
Mike in Raleigh
Mike, Raleigh, NC
It is always the either/or argument that I grow weary of. No, not every American should carry a handgun and no, we should not be a defenseless society. Develop ways for average citizens to go through programs that deputize them and allow them to carry arms with proper training. Ramp up and encourage the carrying and use of non-lethal protection. We are so obsessed with not offending anyone, let alone carrying some horrid weapon that might suggest I would actually cause you bodily harm under ANY circumstances. Cripes, T shirts and jeans?(see above comment) For crying out loud, a day will come when T shirts and jeans, what we wear, all of our silly infatuations will be swept away with a few nuclear bombs if we do not stand up and take responsibility for not only our safety, but our very soul as a nation. We must arm ourselves first with bravery, character, and a willingness to help people like Cho. If that fails then we must protect ourselves from people like Cho.
john, long beach, ca
I'm in loose agreement with the article, but have difficulty equating the "feminization" of your headline to the gynophobia, homophobia, and general rage of young men adhering to fundamentalism Islamism.
Tulia, Portland, OR, USA,
If Paglia knows anything at all about guns she would know a .22 and a 9mm are small caliber weapons, actually very hard to kill someone with. I think it is telling that he shot the victims so many times. It would take multiple hits to put some one down. I have had the dubious honor of serving in Iraq and have seen people take multiple rounds from larger weapons and continue to run/fight etc. This is one reason I agree with Steyn and others.
Mike, San Diego/Camp Pendleton , CA
A couple thoughts, when my daughter was attending an upscale elementary school in Los Angles I remember how strange it seemed to me when parents and teachers were so upset with the boys (ages 6 to 9) because they wanted to run around during recess and lunch. As I remembered it, that is exactly what I did when I was that age. I heard comments like, "why can't they be more like girls". My thought was that maybe it is because they are not girls. I have to say that while she received a great eduacation at that school, I was very happy I had a daughter and not a son going there. When we moved back to the Cincinnati area I was surprised to see that the same mind set had taken hold in the midwest.
I am also concerned that there is so much talk about more gun control and so little talk about mental health regulations. There was a time when this guy would have been in an institution long before he could have killed 32 people.
Politically correct - NO, Worth considering - Yes
kencincinnati, Cincinnati,
Many people have commented about the power of the NRA. The NRA has so much power because it is the largest citizens lobbying group in the United States. It is so large not because of corporations but because it has millions of citizens as members. So is it not only fitting that they hold a lot of power. It is one of the few groups that represent millions of real people. To the Europeans out there a quick lesson. Our Constitution is unique in that it's premise is that people have all rights and we only lend some rights to the government. our Constitution is a list of what we allow the government to do. We are not ruled we lend these powers. We have an obligation to assure all rights remain with the people. The Bill of rights was considered unneeded as government had no right to interfere in these areas. But these basic rights have a lot to do with keeping the government in check by the people. This is why the founders assured us of these rights and why we are suspicous of government.
Steve, Kekaha, HI
allow students to engage in fist fights again and they won't have to resort to guns. Does anyone notice that, in today's over-protecting paternalistic society, children, teenagers, and adults are no long able to settle their petty difference by less violent means. It wasn't too long ago that a score could be settled on the playground with a couple punches. Now, kids, teenagers, and adults go to jail for punching someone else. So they resort to more final means to get their point across. All these do-gooder, moral orals prevent male children from settling disputes like male children use to, a bloody nose and a busted lip. Nowadays, mommy and daddy run to the principal and cry over their little boy who had his pride injured. Then mommy and daddy sue little jimmy for beating up their precious son (the sissy) and jimmy's parents have to pay. Kids cant take criticism anymore because they r taught that they are special. Let em' fist fight again and i bet this problem disappears.
Steve, Newark, NJ
The problem isn't semi-automatic handguns; the law-abiding citizen has a right to be able to defend himself/herself from any lunatic out to kill. The problem is disarming law-abiding citizens, as is the case in colleges and universities across America where these mass murderers --- as crazy as they allegedly may be --- always somehow understand they will encounter little or no risk to themselves. These mass murderers don't happen to pick police stations, or defense plants, or other locations where they might find one or more armed guards. No, these alleged crazies always target places where they know everyone but they are unarmed.
Steve, De Queen, AR
Of course, the most practical way of defending oneself in the US is to carry a gun. That's the sad reality of the situation.
Many here worry about a government taking away their freedom, but these are the same people who live their lives in gated communities, drive in their permantly locked cars and live with the fear everytime they see their children to school in the morning, they might not come home.
Is that freedom?
The irony, lost on many gun owners, is that the biggest threat to them personally is not the US government coming to take their freedom away, but their fellow citizen who also happens to be exercising his 2nd amendment "freedom" right to bear arms.
F.S.Summers, N.Y.,
This is not "the worst massacre in American History" as Camille Paglia claims (remember 9-11?), not even the worst school killing in our history (a bomb incident in the first half of the 20th century killed more people). Since schools were decreed to be "gun free zones" killers were assured that victims in schools would be unarmed. About 50 years ago Arafat and his friends began targeting schools for attacks and the Israeli government ordered all adults in schools had to be armed. Since then no children in Israel have been murdered in school, while in our US of A many people have died in our "gun free" schools.
Pedro Jose Diaz, Caguas, PR
"americans are (or sort of used to be) citizens.
brits are subjects. "
No we are not; we are citizens and have been for a long time. I am looking at my passport right now, and it says British CITIZEN. If you are going to resort to gross national stereotypes, at least learn some facts about the country that you are criticizing.
"When will American Legislators and The National Rifle Association stop the cowboy mentality and realize that guns should be regulated for safety reasons,"
When they can no longer make huge profits from weapons which kill over a thousand Americans per month.
LB, Southport,
I am a gun owner, mostly guns used in the 19th century, but I do own semi-automatics, and I have never considered killing people, except to protect myself. The question I ask is why are "commandos" the only ones who should have semi-automatics? If the bad guys have them, shouldn't I be able to protect myself with the same? The problem is peoples attitudes and aberrant behavior that remains unchecked, as in this case. Society had opportunity to prevent this, without disarming law-abiding citizens, and did nothing. God gave us the right to protect ourselve, not governments. I am a citizen, not a subject.
Jay Thorington, Cody, WY
When will the media and authorities take seriously the fact that there is one common denominator with these types of incident and give that actuality the consideration and coverage it truly deserves.
Mental illness was recorded by ancient Greek and Romans - guns have been a part of American culture for as long as it’s history - so why the change - why over the last two decades have these incidents become more frequent?
The perpetrators share little - nationality, back ground, education, religion - are as individual as they are themselves!
There is only one irrefutable common factor - all perpetrators were taking prescription medication ‘treatment’ for mental health issues.
The second generation psychotropic drugs like SSRI / SNRIs involved - list mania, paranoia, aggressive behaviour, psychosis, suicidal & homicidal ideation & action as adverse and side effects - carry manufacturer warnings in verification and have been available - increasingly - for past two decades or so.
Mardi Bennett, Colchester, Essex - UK
There are plenty of people who don't like snobbery, who have been molested, who come from other countries for a better life and struggle with fitting in, who feel insecure about themselves and with the opposite sex, who get picked on in school, etc. and guess what....they don't kill people. When the right to bear arms was written into the constitution, the world was a very different place than it is today. Our forefathers could never have imagined this country in the 21st century. The right to bear arms is based on a country that no longer exists. That right must be removed from our constitution. But sadly, that won't eliminate the problem of gun massacres by psychos. Take a look at Timothy McVeigh and the damage he created with a few chemicals. Cho spelled out it in so many ways that he was a very sick individual and heaven forbid, we did the right thing by locking him up.
Anne, napa, ca
Quoting Ms. Paglia. "As the weapons grow more deadly, even a solitary “boy” can commit the worst massacre in American history." The worst "school" massacre in U.S. history was in 1927, when an enraged anti-tax finatic blew up a school with explosives hidden in a clock. I believe it killed 100 people.
Lou, Schriever, LA
To all those spouting about what a great article this is...I'll agree but only once you get about half-way through. Before that, I'm curious about how we know the gunman's internal thoughts: did he scrawl his surprise at the post office line on the side of his package or engrave it in his torso or perhaps he apologized for being so late when he started in the engineering building? A single example out of many, so many I stopped reading until I skipped all the way down to the last third of the story or so..... Seriously now, you're reporting known facts and the adding the professional opinions.....not fabricating a narrative to entertain school-children. I just want to clarify the purpose of journalism (which you are doing much better than most US outlets) - it is not to fabricate or entertain nor politicize or hype. It is to state facts and professional interpretations of those facts
LS, Charlotte,
"Random guess, because they are not actually manufacturing and selling guns personally? I mean, should we blame you for what Bush does/did? Or for what the US arms sellers do?"
If Europeans are so concerned for our safety, why don't they create laws in their nations, prohibiting their own gun manufacturers from exporting firearms to the U.S. or prohibiting them from manufacturing firearms in our nation? It appears Europeans have absolutely no problems profiting off of death and misery either, otherwise they would have stopped this practice long ago.
Red, Riverton, Wyoming - United States of America
No, not everyone need carry a pistol: perhaps one person permitted to possess a concealed weapon might have made all the difference. An off-duty police officer put a stop to the mall massacre in Utah earlier this year, a principal in Mississippi brought a school shooting to an abrupt end a few years ago. When would-be perpetrators no longer find absolute assurance of unarmed victims ready for slaughter, then fewer massacres will occur.
JB, Springfield, MO
Why American Psycho? He came to the USA from South Korea as " damaged goods " already. Global Psycho could have been more accurate.
raul gero, miami, usa
Cho was not going to succeed in any society, he was mentally incapable of it. As reported by family in Seoul, his mother agonized over his sullen, brooding behaviour and empty face early on in his life. The more that is learned, the clearer it becomes that he could never function in mainstream society. One of his roommates from Junior year said Cho had called him over Thanksgiving break to say he was vacationing with Vladimir Putin, who he had known from growing up in Moscow. The pressure had been mounting his entire life.
Mary Catherine, Elmhurst, USA/IL
Where were all the tough, "equal" feminists?
Don't they chop down men with a swift kick on TV?
I would have thought that the women's studies department would be called into action. I guess the police department wasn't fast enough to notify them.
Devos, Boston,
Goggle nightclub fire deaths, and ask your self why nothing is done to stop the tragedy
Michael Karg, Folsom, Calif
Following on from an earlier comment:
I am not any sort of expert- and would be very much interested in some expert medical/legal comment- but I think there is legal caselaw in the UK which supports the plea of 'diminished responsibility' to Murder on the basis that anti-depressants can, in some people, ascerbate anger-rage-violence in some way?
If this is the case, there surely has to be as much questioning about the medical/psychiatric 'treatment' Cho was being given as his (frighteningly) easy access to handguns. Young angry loner? Oh, these pills will do...
Paul, Sheffield, UK
In the aftermath, the only obvious fact that fails to be mentioned is that police can not protect us. They are adequate at cleaning up afterwards, and gathering facts after all is said and done. But let's be honest, the only one responsible for your protection is YOU! Now, who is really responsible for taking away our rights, no, better yet, those students rights to defend themselves. The same who would speak out negatively of what might happen if we were all allowed the right of self defense. Then those same people refuse to claim any responsibility when something like this happens. If you remove your dog's teeth, he has no chance against a wolf and is destined to a life of being hand fed by his master.
D., Morehead City, NC
if prostitution was legal then maybe if he had gotten some he would have chilled out.
mallard, milford,
Noelene, Launceston, Tasmania wrote:
"I read the American papers online,and I don't read that people have protected themself from danger by using a gun. I am sure some people have escaped danger by using a gun,but the incidents must be low."
Studies have been done and the press in America virtually rfuses to report on a crime stopped by a gun as they have widely become socialist/marxist.
I have defended myself with a handgun, The two guys ran away, So who do I call?
The low estimates are 1 million crimes prevented each year from a Time Magazine [liberal[ study, Criminologists point towards 2.5 million a year.
Mike
Mike, Raleigh, NC
Nowhere in Europe has an event like this happened. Psychologically damaged human beings taking out their fustrations, nay , their sheer hate of themselves & humanity on their peers; and I know some of you are going to think about Bosnia, Serbia etc. But that was WAR. Nowhere in Europe has a person gotten hold of guns and gone on a shooting rampage with the frequency that happens in the "good 'ole US of A" GET RID OF THOSE GUNS. THEY DO NOT DETER VIOLENCE, BUT ENCOURAGE IT.
Get rid of the 'old Boys Club Republican NRA.
CHOOSE LIFE NOT GUNS!
Cristina, Fayetteville, , USA/NC (EX-PAT)
Self-defense incidents where armed American citizens thwarted criminals are reported daily at the Civilian Self-Defense Blog:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html
Ben, Spokane, Washington
Solutions? Ideas?
Identify at risk killers.
Arm more people - perhaps with tasers or something.
Train, role-play young people in threat assesment and ACTION. People freeze in these lethal situations instead of running or fighting back.
legolam, fort mill, sc
Have any of you muppets actually read this article? Let's take a look together, shall we? Early on: "He swallowed his antidepressants, put on his contact lenses and applied his spot cream." Did he? Who saw him? Next: "Was Ryan Clark, 22, her boyfriend? Cho didn’t know but he shot him anyway. Deprived of sex himself, he regarded those who were getting it with malevolence. " Did he? How does Sarah know this? And then: "The queue in the post office surprised him, though he waited his turn patiently as he rehearsed his next acts of violence in his mind." Really? Or is Sarah having another wild guess? And so it continues: guesswork, conjecture and amateur reporting backed up by huge quotes from the hardly more qualified Camille Paglia. Check this quote: “When someone opens the door of a classroom and begins firing with a semi-automatic weapon, there is no fighting back possible,” says Paglia. How do you know, Camille? This is gobshite reporting - I expect better from the Sunday Times.
Sally Hudson, London,
Wow, what a load of crap this is/was, where to start... lets start at the end, This was not the worst school tragedy in american history The Bath School Massacre was, my point is a sick mind will carry out sick plans with or with out guns, would it have been better to steal a car and run down cheerleaders at the homecoming game?
Are you serious about young men, in general, being dangerous, and not that this guy was off his rocker, thats why we have school sports etc, a sane person has plenty of ways to work out his aggresions.
Why in all of this do you not think this guy should be on some kind of watch if not locked up in a mental institution before this ever happened, there were plenty of people extremely concerned.
If anything our society has become to complacient with disturbed people, if someone is capeable of making a bomb threat, he is capeable of carrying it out, simple bomb threat = lock 'em up minimum 1 year "for observation and treatment"
Mike California
Michael Karg, Folsom, Calif
Americans must again exercise our rights to not only keep but bear arms.
Responsible government must encourage the citizenry to arm itself so that a tragedy on the scale of this can not happen again.
The real reason this loser was able to do this heinous act is because no one was shooting back.
The anti gun lobby and liberal media outlets are responsible for creating the current society of unarmed victims, ready to be shot dead like so many fish in a barrel.
Same goes for the flights of September 11th.
Yes I am advocating the restoration of 2nd amendment rights even on transports such as airlines.
Once you create a situation where the law abiding are unable to defend themselves it is only a matter of time before some deranged individual or tyrannical government will commence to slaughter the innocent.
Rob, NYC, USA/NY
The NRA's Armed Citizen column posts armed citizen defense stories with names, dates, and the newspaper that reported the story. I know this is difficult for the anti gun folks to accept, so "it must be fraudulent".. I guess you'd be willing to sacrifice these people, by disarming them, as it would be more politically correct.
KR, Hamilton , Ma
I would have to completely agree with Camille's analysis of the male issue and the alienation in today's society that can be experienced by many males particularly those with no male role models in their lives. I think the gun control analogy is more specious as an explanation for this type of event but I too am beginning to question why we need to allow automatic weapons or semi atomatic hand guns with huge clips to be sold so easily. I am a big believer in the 2nd amendment but this is not purely a second amendment issue. we dont allow people to have cannons and bazookas and other sorts of weaponry.
bill, beverly hills, usa/ca
<<"American Psycho? I thought from the title this piece it was about George Bush." - John Chuckman>>
It says something about the left that no matter what the issue, they will twist it to suit their grotesque purposes. Chuckman, since you apparently did not notice: This was a grotesque slaughter that we are trying to come to grips with, and it had nothing to do with Bush. Believe it or not, all your (and the world's) problems cannot be blamed on this man, no matter how badly you want that to be true. Try to get past relying so heavily on that crutch, and you might actually mature as a human being.
Disgusting.
Mister Snitch!, Hoboken, USA/NJ
"One commenter asked if guns are so effective for self defense and preventing crimes where all the stories are about people successfully defending themselves. One way to get these stories is to become an NRA member. Each month Freedom magazine prints 15-20 stories gathered from local TV, police reports, and newspapers. The stories are there but the national media doesn't report them."
So, each month (according to the NRA, whose existence depends on people owning guns, making their news about as reliable as information on global warming from an oil company) 15-20 incidents are prevented by people with guns. In that time, about 1 000 people will have been killed by them.
LB, southport,
Per my earlier post on self defense and guns ... not sure if this is allowed but --- here is a link to a story about self defense with a gun by an 82 year old, former Miss America ....
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55309
Terry, Minneapolis, USA, MN
"Everytime a tragedy like this occurs there is inevitably discussions regarding gun control. Already you hear things like 'It was too easy for him to acquire the guns". If one believes that guns kill people, then you also have to believe that pencils misspell words, cars cause people to drive drunk and eating utensils make people fat."
One of the best retorts to gun [control] scapegoating I've heard in a long time.
Ray, Columbus, OH
Before humans learned metallurgy, they armed themselves with clubs.
Like the humans carrying them, weapons evolved. Now, I understand, the British want to outlaw sharp pointy objects. Apparently, they don't think the citizenry can be trusted with them.
Half a century ago, we worried about nuclear war bombing us back into the Stone Age. Now, it appears, the paranoid among us will put us back there legislatively.
Bell, Hickory, NC USA
Does "Gun Control" work in Iraq?
I don't know what is more offensive, that insane boy's actions or the insane assertion that gun control = violence control. Its not. Anyone can make gun (or as easily an improvised explosive device) from plans on the internet in as fast a time as it took to buy those guns on ebay. Its PEOPLE so inclined that we have to "control".
I'd like to point out that Virginia Tech DEMONSTRATES why we should not have gun control.
Campus is a gun free zone, right? A mini Utopia of peace. An unarmed mini society, right?
Now we see why the one-eyed man is King in the Valley of the Blind. Not one of those students was armed, not even armed MENTALLY. They were sheep for the slaughter, the perfect embodiment of "gun control" laws in effect, with their see, hear, speak no evil APATHY it generates. Grow up people. Its YOUR life and YOUR responsibility to protect yourself, and be prepared mentally and physically with the best tools you can get a hold of legally.
Brandon, Lafayette, USA/IN
Train the campus security to carry concealed. Wow, that hurt my brain to figure out the answer to these shootings.
Mike Dively, Duncansville, USA / PA
What was Cho's Grade point Average(GPA). Was he going to graduate? Maybe he wasn't. He probably killed himself so that he wouldn't have to work in the dry cleaning business. I think he was very spoiled. I believe third world people are not brought up to respect women, and they treat them poorly, without repect He might have been helped by going to a manners school. Manners School is a term I made up myself.
Beverly Weisenberger, Porterville, California
A refreshing aricle, something a little different with bits to consider that I wouldn't get from the general everyday media spin show. I've even gotten some references that will be good for further research.
Thanks.
Ken, State College, Pennsylvania
Camille Paglia is not just a genius, she is obviously the Hidden Mahdi finally emerged from her 847 year Major Occultation.
How difficult it will be for the Iranian faithful to deal with that most vexing irony! Can you imagine the consternation of the average super-strict traditionalist Muslim male to find out that his long-awaited Messiah is not merely a feminist, but an over-exposed hack feminist to boot?
Lam Bopolis, dallas, usa
Ban guns! Ban them like drugs and make it against the law to own one just like it is against the law to enter the US without going through immigration.
You can't ever see an illegal immigrant or get drugs anywhere in the US, ever!
Matt Gangwer, Tampa, USA
PAGLIA: 'Throughout most of human history men have been armed, but with swords not guns'...
KROGSTAD: Throughout most of human history men have ridden, but on a horse and not in a car. So what?
John Krogstad, Burlington, MA, USA
"Why is it that Europeans complain so much about American gun cultue, but have no problem manufacturing and selling guns here?"
Random guess, because they are not actually manufacturing and selling guns personally? I mean, should we blame you for what Bush does/did? Or for what the US arms sellers do?
starling, Lancaster,
The problem here is that law-abiding citizens are denied the right to self-defense. People were unable to defend themselves agaisnt Cho because they could not legally have weapons on campus. The laws designed to protect the law-abiding ironically did not stop Cho, whose entire goal was to break the laws. The problem here is not the availability of "semi-automatic weapons." Cho broke all the existing gun laws in Virginia. As a mental patient he cannot legally purchase firearms. He is not allowed to have weapons on campus. He is not allowed to carry weapons without a carry permit. It was illegal for him to file the serial numbers off his weapons. The problem is that Cho was a murderer, and the people were left defenseless against him by an overzealous legal system.
Jared, Ann Arbor, MI
An alcoholic rarely admits to his problem.
A drug addict usually thinks he could throw his habit any time.
As an outsider I see the American addiction to guns as a severe personality disfuncion.
The US will continue to have these slaughters regularly.
It's the price they will have to pay.
Robin Bather, Metepec, Mexico
"All I read is innocent people being shot dead or suicide or children accidentally shooting others or themselves." -- Noelene, Launceston, Tasmania
Yes, because that is ALL that the Liberal American Press wants YOU to know.
Joe B., Los Angeles,
The VTech massacre is an excellent example of what happens when the unarmed are pitted against the armed. It usually ends up going very badly for the unarmed. Ever wonder why the massacres are always at gun-free zones and never at police stations? It's time for some common-sense concealed carry legislation, including uniform federal gun rights. There are plenty of law-abiding, mentally stable people out there who are willing and capable to carry guns for their own protection and that of others. One responsible student in that building with a weapon could have saved dozens of lives.
EJ, Moline, IL
If they ban guns guess who will have the guns. These cry baby gun control nut balls need to wake up. The problem is not guns it is people. People are not held accountable for their actions because that person came from a poor home or a broken home or some other politically correct theme. This kid was obviously a nut ball. The system failed to keep him in check. If he could not have used a gun he would have used some other device. People who are driven to do things like what happened at V/T will stop at nothing and the lack of guns because of some sort of gun control would not have stopped him. Citizen arm thy self
drb, houston, tx
I have taken antidepressants - 3 different ones in my lifetime. I can vouch for certainty that antidepressants change the way a person feels and thinks and acts - each one in a different way, and not always in a good way. I am wondering just what changes they made in Cho. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this rampage could be caused by the changes in Cho's mental attitude brought on by drugs. I think doctors in this country are way too prone to hand out antidepressants without maintaining a watch for the long-term effects. I know in my case, I started having thoughts I didn't want to have, and I went off that medicine. And in another case, I started doing things I didn't want to do & I went off that medicine When I heard about the warnings being placed on antidepressants for suicide, I realized what happened to me was not unusual. Cho may be a victim of this country's medical system's lack of patient oversight, as well as of his own autism.
J. Rhinehart, Spartanburg, SC, USA
When an individual can enter an area where people gather knowing that they are most likely the only one armed .Does this not empower them to escalating aggression.Where as a fully armed populace will serve as a deterent.Such as we as a nation did during the Cold War .We as a society need to stop counting on someone else to protect us and return to the time of self-reliance and responsibility.
Russell, Providence Forge, Va
It's understandable to want to explain the inexplicable, in hope of controlling such behavor in future. But the truth is, in America and worldwide, anybody who wants to kill stands an excellent chance of succeeding.
The tacit idea expressed by some comments is that if everybody in society carried weapons, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. That's as insane as Cho's outlook.
Nor does the insulting psychobabble about "feminization" hold water. That's exactly the same "Women=Bad" argument Islam uses to cover women in the Hajib, believing the mere sight of "provocative" women fuels men's inherent violence.
Sentimentalizing insanity, as in this article, does nothing to "explain" violent irrationality, nor prevent it from happening again, any time, on any scale, anywhere in the world.
Robert Glass, Los Angeles,
Noelene let me help you with some facts. Florida State University Criminologists in 1994, approximated 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms nationwaide. That means, according to this study, an american with a firearm has used a firearm to protect themselves or others against a ciminal every thirteen (13) seconds. (Fall 1995, Journal of criminal law and criminology).
Let me hlp you some more, according to the U.S. Justice Dept., Law Enforcemetn Assistance Administration 7.7% are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse..
In a 1998 stat by the BATF, 90% of all violent crime in the U.S does not involve of gun of any type.
Let us face the facts. The media won't publish acts of self defense with a firearm because it is not news worthy. If it doesn't bleed it won't read. However, there is also the possiblity of an agenda driven media as well.
Jorge, Texas, * United States of America *
The Bubonic Plague was Chuck Norris's way of saying "I hate England."
American living in UK , Hell Mouth, UK
No telling what tripped. There were signes. Now 32 dead.
rich, Boston, Mass
"There's no 2d Amendment in Great Britain. I should conclude there's no handgun violence there either, correct?"
There is, but there is about as much of it every year as there is in the US every day.
LB, southport,
I think "cowboys" are geting a bad rap here. In case you haven't noticed, none of these attacks have been carried out by cowboys. It is almost always the anti-depressant addicted, emasculated spawn of suburbanites that commits this particular act. Time liberal social engineers take a good look at their kids instead of buying them another video game and trust government to fix thier problems. Quit blaming the problem on the one segment of society that isn't having a problem with it.
Matt Swenson, Evanston, WY
The second amendment has nothing to do with hunting. It is quite simple. This kid was insane. The mental health community failed and should be banned for giving out pills like there candy. I have to lose my rights over a kid that should have been locked up i highschool? He was not right ever. We as society know who is right and who is not. It just isn't pc enough to point them out.
bob, Cayuta, ny
Mr. Dirk Bode of Hamburg, Germany expressed it very well, when he asked if the Holocaust could have happened if the people were armed. Criminals and government killers will always be with us. All of the violence committed with guns by criminals in the U.S. does not add up to one Madrid and London bombing. My sympathy is with the British and other Europeans because you literally can not protect yourselves, as your laws confirm. I live in a state that has a concealed carry law and it is a much better place to live because of it. I do not expect you to understand that, or to accept it, because it is beyond your experience. Check out the crime rate in your countries, and Australia, on "hot burglaries", which are a serious and terrifying problem after gun bans. Most of our gun crimes occur in gun ban cities like Washington, which you are not told. All states adopting concealed carry have had reduced crime rates. You have serious problems facing you down the road. Good luck.
attorney, etna, wyoming
Paglia said that people always had knives, but not guns. NOW I say that people did not always have printing presses buying ink by the barrel or tank truck to print such liberal garbage either. States that do have gun prohibition have more gun deaths than those that allow people to protect themselves. The attack in Virginia was a "gun free zone". If there had been just a few with guns, the death toll could have been cut to a few and the gunman. Then that stupid liberal news outlet nbc gave that fool insane killer his immortality with the publication of those videos. It is almost as though nbc was in concert with the killer to give him this mark in history. Shame on them, shame on Paglia, and shame on this paper printing her garbage.
jake, hasings,
All of these hypotheticals about what would happen "if" students had been allowed to arm themselves on campus miss out on the primary issue. These student were forbidden by the force of Government to take any steps to protect themselves, all while that same Government failed in IT'S attempt to protect them. They won't let you defend yourself, and they are incapable of defending you themselves. That is insane.
Derek, Round Rock, Texas USA
American Psycho?.....Ok, I'll bite. Lets blame the culture of the U.S. justice system....a system in which the greater good of the individual over shadows the greater good of society. Those who interpret our laws (U.S. Supreme Court), thus giving directions to lower courts as to what can and cannot be done, are to blame.
If you show signs of being unstable, lock them up, get them help. If you engage in violent crime, lock them up.....for a long time, no easy outs.
If not a gun then a knife, if not a knife then a club, if not a club then a car, if not a car then poisons......etc. Disturbed people will find a way. Normal folks don't!
Mike Hermsen, Omaha, Nebraska/U.S.A.
Do people not understand what "semi-automatic" means? It doesn't mean machine gun, people. It means every time you pull the trigger, a shot is fired. If you hold the trigger down, NOTHING HAPPENS. Just like every other firearm in existence. Revolvers, rifles, they all operate on the same principle. Semi-automatic is a term latched upon by frantic liberals out to cause more problems than they solve. When liberals throw these terms around without knowing what they mean, it underscores the ignorance that is part of the problem. They don't know the difference between a "clip' and a magazine! Worse they'll mix the two together. Get educated before you speak, otherwise rampant emotionalism and illogic will always cause meaningless "feel good" Soccer Mommy legislation. That leads to the rampant crime and victim culture that has brought the UK and Australia to their knees.
Mike, Missoula, MT
It's ironic how you Brits and other supposed allies didn't mind the United States' Second Amendment around the time of the Lend-Lease program, back in WWII wherein citizens of this nation were prompted by pleas from the "evil" NRA to provide your nations with our citizens' privately-owned firearms, so you could help protect your families from invading armed forces. When are you Brits and others going take the lend-lease weapons you have hidden and tucked away in your closets, so we can give them back to their rightful owners, or their rightful heirs?
Red, Riverton, Wyoming
Shes pretty accurate in her assessment I would say. The term "mentally ill" may make you feel better by pretending that Cho was the "other", like some comic book villain, and that his motives were beyond analysis but I dont think its useful as a diagnosis. He was diagnosed as autistic, which combined with the other factors led to extreme isolation, which clearly played a role in his situation. Isolated people sometimes come to resent others and sexual frustration and rejection may have helped to ignite his resentments into something darker. A history of being bullied in the middle school years also seems to fan this fire. That is something the Columbine killers and Cho share. I experienced this myself and carry rage with me every day of my life.
To be honest, I almost did this myself as a young man (long before columbine) so I think I often know exactly what these people feel. Its something we need to learn to identify before it gets to the violence stage.
watchyoutalkinbout, st pete, FL
The worst massacres on American soil are arguably Wounded Knee, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Reflect on who the perpetrators were during two out of the three events.......
The last two events had very quickly "sanitized" crime scenes.
The very non-mainstream religious sects (Sioux ghost dancers and Branch Davidians) were certainly "protected" by the government from rogue elements
Jack Citizen, Washington,
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Poor widdle boy suffers from being around girly girls, ooh. What total sexist tripe. What's wrong with you people?
John, London, England
One comment states that the second amendment is not about hunting but about bearing arms against a foreign or domestic threat. Looks like this destabilised young man did just that. Excluded by extremely promiscious female students and completely ignored by concentric fellow American males who told him to go back to China. What were his options? Remain alive with ever decreasing self esteem amidst an increasingly pornographic generation of insular conservatives .... or pop down to the local superstore, buy an automatic gun and obliterate everything that had rejected him? mmmmmm
Jimmy Crackedcorn, Anytown, Country
I tell you hat. If you had a gun you might be able to go to a restaurant at night over there in Edenbourogh. Sounds like you should be more concerned with the drinking problems over there than the gun problems over here.
And lets remember the murderer/criminal here, was the one with the gun. The law abiding people were the ones who were not able to carry the gun.
Now say what would happen if the sale of guns were not permitted. Would that stop someone like this who wanted to kill many people like Cho? They will just try to find other means to kill. Failure will never overtake them if their desire to succeed is strong enough. Bombs planes, biological weaponry. Sure it y be out of scale with this incident, but terror and mass murder all have the same things in common, those wanting to kill, and those that are defenseless.
The Des, Marietta, Ga
Here we go again. Today's comatose Americans are so darn ignorant, including of their own history, that they don't even know WHY the Second Amendment was conceived, written. As America marches towards religious fascism under the present administration, the right of the citizenry to bear arms and create "militias" in their own neighborhoods may prove more essential to the survival of our freedoms than a hundred more anti-gun laws to "protect" us against the occasional alienated nutcase. The "enemy" was potentially our OWN government, boys and girls. Don't they teach you this in school anymore? THAT is the experience the Founding Fathers took them from their history with England., across the pond and here.
amy kaye, miami, fla
regarding uk folks' comments on americans having the right to bear arms:
americans are (or sort of used to be) citizens.
brits are subjects.
that mentality pervades each of our national psyches.
brits are so passive they are not even legally allowed to defend themselves.
and they want everybody else to be like them and the french.
early american researchers determined it was not a good idea to be british.
200 years of subsequent study has proven them correct.
peace.
jeepers, las vegas, nv
I enjoyed the article which was intelligent and well written. American psycho could perhaps capture some of the emotions going through Cho's mind. However I believe strongly that the predominant theme that resonates throughout this massacre is the media.
Cho Seung-hui mailed his tape to NBC with the wish that his message be conveyed to the world. He was studying english and clearly interested in communication. His wish was granted in that exerpts of the film were shown. He got to be the star he wanted albeit with a macabre twist.
'Man bites dog' is an excellent movie in which the media's complicity in this type of violence is examined through dark satire. In one scene, the camera crew that has been following the protagonist 'psycho' (it is shot as a fly on the wall documentary) buy him a new gun and holster for his birthday. He is so excited that he pulls his gun out and shoots 2 of the crew.
Rudy E Parker, Cambridge, USA
Breathtakingly well written article! I would rather not enter the debate on gun control in US as I seriously believe that it is a internal issue for Americans themselves to settle. Of course, even here in a post-war and notorious-for-violence region (perhaps unjustly), we are surprised with how easy it is to buy as many tactical weapons and ammo as one wishes.
Driton, Pristina, Kosovo
Semi-automatic hand guns have been around since at least 1893 when Hugo Borchardt introduced the 30 Mauser cartridge and the gun which utilized it.These items were designed by an American,but manufactured in Germany.
They evolved into the famous German Luger(1900) and were followed by numerous other european pistols and cartridges in the early 1900s as well as John Moses Browning's 1899 .32 auto and ammo (made in Belgium).In 1903 Colt began manufacture and sale of another Browning designed pistol for this cartridge,
Federal regulation of machine guns and short barrel shotguns began in 1934 but it was 1968 before regulation of other firearms began.
Widespread concealed carry is a relatively recent development taking place on a state by state basis, resulting in lowered crime rates wherever adopted, rather than shoot-outs over fender-benders as the anti-gun folks had predicted.Had VT not forbidden the right to carry as provided in VA law Cho would have lost!
Vincent Reagor, Nine Mile Falls, WA
I wonder? In a world that lost its sense of community long ago, if even one person had made a concerted effort to befriend Cho long before he went completely mad, if all this wouldn't have happened? This doesn't excuse Cho. He was obviously evil. But he also appears to have fallen thru the cracks. Could it have been simple loneliness that eventually caused Cho to crack?
It's a strange world we live in. You can converse with someone half a world away on the net and still not know your next-door-neighbor. How sad...
Brent, Tulsa, USA
"The reality is armed citizens do save lives."
It is a pity that they end hundreds of times as many.
LB, Southport,
Our country has put individual rights over the rights of the commmunity over and over again. It is this mindset that permits someone who is clearly this mentally ill to 1) remain on campus without real follow up following his hospitalization. He should have been made to be re-evaluated each semester before he could register for classes. 2)live with five other suitemates and be permitted to behave as he had -- ie not be part of the suite community. 3) Not be brought before some discinplinary board for snapping photos of those girls.
As for guns. There is no reason for assualt weapons to ever be for sale. Someone intenet on killing could probably order one from outside the country via the interenet. Or the kid could have set fires or something. So I think the real thing to do is to be vigilant about one another.
Dorothy, New York, NY
Tha blame for this crime does not lie with his guns. The blame lies with Cho and an increasingly decadent, hyper-sexualized culture where no one need ever grow up (just look at the huge numbers of baby boomers dressing and acting like badass teenagers - fingering drivers they've just cot off and loudly uttering expletives in the presence of strangers and children in any rastaurant).
Why should we expect children to grow up with some respect for others and some capacity to accept that "life isn't fair" when their 30 and 40-something teen parents (in the rare case where both parents are present) won't?
And from what I've read in essays by people like Theodore Dalrymple, the UK isn't any better off.
Robert, Kansas City, MO
This entire tyrade of social sicophant writing about the causes is exactly what Cho was talking about... me included. There's no justification for how he was treated. There's no justification for what he did. IT'S CALLED - BEING WRONG. Everyone who picked on him. Everything he did with that. Its not because he was feminized. Its because he was treated wrong. In a manner not to his liking. Due unto others as you would have done to you. He sure as heck didn't mind dieing in the end.
Fred, Nowhere, USA
The Lott / Landes study should have ended the debate, so I will focus on an error on Paglia's part. As Jerry Miculek has proven, revolvers can be fired and reloaded as quickly as autos if one practices enough. Suppose Cho had chosen a long arm? He was apparently not challenged when crossing the campus, and could have concealed a short barreled shotgun or rifle in a duffel bag or similar arrangement, and also would have had an easier time purchasing a long arm. Had he chosen an ordinary pump action shotgun, the death toll would probably have been higher, as 12 or even 20 gauge buckshot is much more powerful and effective than any 9mm handgun round. I would also point out that in tests conducted at Gunsite Ranch, a training facility in Arizona, pitting an AK47 against an 1894 Winchester lever action rifle, it was found that the Winchester could maintain as high a rate of aimed fire as the AK. Automatics aren't the problem. As other posters have pointed out, disarmed victims are.
John Dunlap, Yucaipa, California
The article says much, but not the most important issue, even if this is a 'feminized society' [I believe it is not] The important issue is about taking responsibility for your own actions. This was once part of manhood. Reagrdless of how many people make excuses on your behalf, only YOU are responsible for you. Giving in to this idea that it is society's fault in some way, IS THE MOST DANGEROUS potential outcome. Cho said himself that it was everyone elses fault, and you have simply backed that up by blaming everyone else. It is an easy thing to do, but it is wrong. To teach a young person to have an intact sense of self, to understand and ignore naysayers who verbally attack you to make themselves feel better, this is a thing that can be taught. This can also be taught to an autistic spectrum sufferer. Blaming the easy hookup culture does not stop it's existance, nor allow the outsider entry. Asking a person to rise above that culture, invites them to show their power to do so...
D, Denver,
"I see a lot of people on here stating that guns are needed for self defense. I read the American papers online,and I don't read that people have protected themself from danger by using a gun. I am sure some people have escaped danger by using a gun,but the incidents must be low."
Noelene, Launceston, Tasmania
I suggest you read the "Armed Citizen" reports in the American Rifleman magazine. You'll find what you are looking for there. Defensive uses of firearms are rarely reported in the US main stream press or government sponsored propaganda machine in your own country because its law abiding people defending themselves with legally owned firearms and not a psychopath shooting 33 unarmed innocents in a "gun free" school zone. Research from both government and independent sources (FBI and firearms researcher John Lott) estimate guns are used defensively 2.5 MILLION times a year in the U.S.; many more times the number that are used in crimes.
Shane, Carlsbad, Ca
Anti-depressant medication seems to be a common thread in these incidents. Too much medication with side effects that can be the root cause of these incidents. Our society is so enthralled with it's own intellect that it believes that a small pill of it's own design will cure all ills. Worse is that it distributes these pills like candy to anyone who claims they need them. Parents don't have time, doctors don't listen, kids get pills. It's not society or guns that are the problem, it's parents and doctors.
Terry, Roscoe, Illinois
The point is being missed. There were far fewer guns and people in the US in the 1920s, yet some of the worst crimes against school children took place then.
The first school massacre was around 1923 when a gunman entered a US school killing many kids with a gun. 1927 saw a gunless coward blow up a school killing 40 - mostly schoolkids.
There was no feminism then or liberalism, so stop using women and their rights as a reason for males unable to control themselves committing unforgiveable crimes.
de Havelland, Maclean, NSW
There are always, always, warning signs on these things. There were at Hungerford, Columbine, and now Virginia Tech. And, as usual, the authorities do nothing. In fact, at Hungerford, the authorities are alleged to have covered up the insane activities of the soon to be shooter.
In a simpler, less compassionate time, when firearms were much more easily available, these crazy bastards would've been locked up. For good. Unfortunately, a perfect storm of liberal do-gooders and politicians who no longer wanted to fund state mental health institutions have made that no longer possible.
So, the crazies run the streets.
Letalis, Freedom City, USA
I don't understand the logic. Is EVERYONE in the USA required (or at least expected) to have his handgun on his person AT ALL TIMES in order to guarantee protection against anyone else with a gun? Does this mean that when I'm in America I'm surrounded by people everywhere with handguns concealed on their person? If you don't happen to have your gun with you, how can you protect yourself with it? Difficult with T-shirt and jeans ...
alan, cologne,
Fair enough, outlaw guns and make it legal to carry swords.
Brian S., Toronto, Canada
You can make a case for the armed citizen, but college students have one hobby in common and that is drinking to excess. Who in their right mind would want to be on a campus full of intoxicated armed students on a Saturday night ?
Dan, Winsted, CT / USA
But surely pencils, cars and eating utensils are not made with the sole purpose of causing harm to others, so do not offer a relevant comparison.
Kate, caversham, england
Asian males aren't on the bottom of the social scale on American campuses.
Mute sociopathic stalkers with violent fixations are, no matter what their race.
Adam, Houston, TX
um, we all get picked on in grammar school, high school and college, and the real world is even more brutal. why are you trying to make us have some emotion for this guy. he was a coward for what he did. instead of being the better man and not letting them win he wimped out. he should be the poster boy for what not to do in the face of a challenge. you never quit you just adapt to what you can accomplish.
kip stone, ridgefield,
One commenter asked if guns are so effective for self defense and preventing crimes where all the stories are about people successfully defending themselves. One way to get these stories is to become an NRA member. Each month Freedom magazine prints 15-20 stories gathered from local TV, police reports, and newspapers. The stories are there but the national media doesn't report them.
I support the right to bear arms, but we should have some screening and training requirements in place. Also we need to require something to instill more than laying down and playing dead as a reaction to the mad, bullying, and violent amongst us.
Terry, Minneapolis, USA, MN
You are looking at an isolated scenario and saying that a feminised society is one cause. But one could easily argue in a much broader context this feminised society of ours actually results in less violent crimes. In America over the past fifteen years, rates of violent crime have fallen across the board. Why? Two main reasons record low unemployment and an older society.
Secondly if it is infantilization of young males like Cho, why is this type of thing not happening in Europe. Compared to Europeans, Americans grow much faster. Most Americans graduate university at 21 or 22 and end up getting real jobs. In countries like Germany or France, they don't get real jobs until their mid twenties or late twenties. By the time your typical French graduate has his first real job, the American has mostly likely gone through two jobs, launched a business and started a family.
William, Richmond,
This is the best article I've seen on the VT shooter & the events of this past week...It isn't screaming headlines like many American papers or TV networks....
As an American, I don't understand the gun control laws. People should be allowed hunting rifles, or even regular handguns if a good enough reason is give, but semi-automatics???? For what, shooting a herd of attacking deer????There's only 1 reason for these guns, & we just saw that reason in VA..
Russell, Oxford, NJ USA
Wow! A very powerful article with great commentary and observation that provokes thought. It is good to see that there are still news writers out there that can compose without injecting blatant political bias.
Andrew M. , Fort Collins, USA, CO
The victims were disarmed by the laws they respectfully obeyed. They didn't even have a "sword" (as referred to by Paglia) or other weapon of defense due to the disarming laws and campus policies. Cho, just as other criminals, was not stopped by the presence of social and moral laws against taking innocent life. He wouldn't have been stopped by any lesser law. The "right to life" implicitly allows self defense of that innocent life.
On a much larger scale, Jews of 1940's Germany were disarmed by laws against their having firearms, prior to being rounded up and exterminated. They couldn't fight back against their tormentors just as the Va. Tech students couldn't. Needless deaths might have happened in both cases had the victims been allowed self-defense weapons while waiting for someone to come to their rescue.
This analogy is not meant to trivialize the Holocaust or exaggerate the murders in Virginia, just to illustrate what always eventually happens when innocents are disarmed.
Brian, Ann Abor,MI, USA
The book is "More Guns, Less Crime". John Lott, then a visiting Prof at Yale. Over the twenty years from the mid '70s to the late
'90s in states that have "shall issue concealed carry permits" mass public shootings are DOWN 60% over those jurisdictions that do not have such laws.
Please understand this is a world ruled by the aggressive use of force. Star Trek and "can't we all get along" is great to teach in kindergarten. At some point the real world will rear its ugly head.
You'll wish you had a means to defend yourself.
Semi automatic hand guns have been around since the US government purchased John Browning 1903 model. They were used in the Spanish American War, and WW1 & 2.
Too bad the know it alls that run VA T deluded themselves into thinking they were safe by banings them. They should be made to answer for their stupidity.
David, Harwinton, USA CT
"Too many people are focusing on the wrong issue. Okay, lets get rid of all of the guns. That would get rid of all evil actions, right? No, because Cho could then have planted explosives. Take your pick, would you rather die by a gun or having your head beat in with a baseball bat? Incidents like this will happen again. Honestly, I am more scared of people that drive cars killing me than someone with a gun."
I dont know about you but I dont think Cho could have done much dammage with a bat...
If you chose gun over bat... well I dont know what to say.
sam, ny, us/ny
Everyone's opinion all boils down to one basic point. What is your 'worldview'? Is man basically good or is he evil? The Founder's believed that man was in a fallen state...and if left to himself, he would oppress others. History clearly shows what happens when men gain control of govt...look at ancient history and modern..Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and even our own US govt is increasingly becoming more agressive against her own people. Adam's said if men were angels than there would be no need of govt, hence a system of checks and balances. To check what? Men's passions! Coupled with the pulpits free to PREACH against the evils of men's hearts, true self govt may be possible. Even Jefferson had to conclude that Christianity was the best religion to allow in society because it did what no other religion did...it searched the heart of man. No wonder people want to silence the pulpit with boards and regulaions. Take the Word out of our society and it's influence and preach valueless evolution
Dave, Almont, USA
Again, it comes down to gun control or the lack of it. I am from Britain which has not been free from such outrages, though mercifully they are extremely rare. Strict gun laws will not completely remove the risk but will substantially lessen the chances of such tragedies occurring. The Bill of Rights guaranteeing the right to bear arms was written 200 years ago. Le's move on.
M J PHOENIX, Arlington, Oregon, USA
"I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, where every night of the week people are insanely inebriated and assault each other with bats, chains and knives."
Then imagine if they had semi-automatic handguns.
LB, southport,
Regarding Professor Paglia's statement that she is a "defender of the constitutional right to bear arms in America" but has problems with Americans owning semi-automatic firearms - the Second Amendment doesn't restrict the people to "hunting" or "sporting" arms. Many hunters use self-loading rifles and handguns for hunting in any case. Second, it is a simple fact that any mass school shooting in the recent past that was stopped before the murderer(s) killed large numbers of people, or committed suicide, was not by law enforcement responding to the scene, but individuals on-site with a gun. Finally, does she believe that anti-gun politicians will stop at one type of banned weapon? The UK licensed, limited, then banned guns, and their per capita violent crime rates now approach US rates. Unilateral disarmament leads to more, not less, bloodshed.
Alan, Springfield,
...and on the issue of gun control one must be practical about it. there are 200 million guns out there in the country. If we outlawed guns tomorrow where do you think the guns will go? Magically disappear? Unfortunately we are in a situation if that happened only criminals will have access to them. I have to agree with the argument that gun control are laws that only control the law abider's use of them. Criminals, by definition, will not abide by the law. One must also realize for a country this huge and this many guns these incidents are fairly rare. I'm sure that doesnt make the victim's feel any better but there are outliers in every demographic. We must take practical steps - outlaw semi-automatic weapons, make gun licenses tougher to attain with more thorough background checks and most importantly with all those guns out there we need more protection at so called "gun free zones."
The3rdMan, Manhattan, US
This is the best article on this story that I have read.The US papers should take a lesson from the London Times.
It is wonderfull how the internet opens the world to average people
Thank you for making this shareing so easy.
Lionel Desharnais, Wetaskiwin Alberta, Canada
First of all the supply of guns REALLY needs to be restricted to those who really "need" them. I know I am stating the obvious but if it is so obvious why is'nt it taken into account? Second, can you really blame him? I agree he did not take a civilised approach but these mental problems, who caused them? SOCIETY. If society did not treat him in such an uncivilised manner would he have taken this approach? This extreme situation is just a reflection of how weak the unity of our society actually is. Its shows how people even in this day and age keep so much prejudice against the ethnic minorities or the lower classes. Why do they keep pointing out that he was a from a very poor family as though to say only people from poor backgrounds do this? Even if this is the case, who is to blame? The poor unity of our society thats who. Would it kill us to give a little respect? I think not.
Jaimini, Leic, UK
Personally, I believe that Cho Sheung-hui killed so many people, rather than just commit suicide, to set an example (hence the reference to Jesus Christ in his rant). He wanted to draw the attention on his problems, so that students in a similar situation could get the help they deserve. Feminized society is indeed troubling certain male students and the problem is not limited to the United States alone. The fact that Europeans blame American society, is therefore a sign of pedantic complecancy. It is imperative that this problem get more media attention, so that basically good people like Cho Sheung-hui can get proper help in the future, before they become monsters and do very stupid things.
I.C. Willems, Zwijndrecht, The Netherlands
Unteated mental illness , the lack of accesssability to mental health care and professional counseling for the poor and those without insurance, combined with the ability to gain firearms easily set this disaster in motion.
When will the American legislators wake up and provide easy access to mental health teatment in America?
When will American Legislators and The National Rifle Association stop the cowboy mentality and realize that guns should be regulated for safety reasons,
J. Parker , Hartsburg, mo, USA
It really is fascinating what people are capable of. I ease my stress and tension through Martial Arts.
People view Martial Arts as a violent thing, a way of defending yourself, or a great excersize routine. In reality, you meet people, you fight people, and you find yourself.
How many of you have wanted to just hit someone? Shrinks will tell you to "hit a pillow" or something along those lines. Why not hit someone?
Watch Jet Li's "Fearless." I wish Cho had found a Martial Art, or something like it (boxing, Tae Bo) in order to calm himself. He may have made friends in these classes.
Ted, Shrewsbury, MA
Wow, maybe people don't realize this but A. There was a gun ban placed on campus so no students or teachers would be permitted to carry any weapons. Obviously anyone with criminal intent is going to completely ignore any laws that may be in place so everyone obeying that law obviously sufferes. and B. Several EMT workers have admitted that they were told by the Feds to stand down and not to enter until the feds arrived (2 hours later), which completely prevented any type of protection from them. So the students and teachers were unable to defend themselves and the authorities were sure as hell unable to. What does that leave us with? A big massacre.
James Ryan, Los Angeles, CA
There's no 2d Amendment in Great Britain. I should conclude there's no handgun violence there either, correct?
Joseph Pierro, Ashland, Virginia, USA
A country is paranoid about its security and a history of invasion to many small and big foreign countries, and a constitution of cowboy era, it is no surprise to
see killings after killings spread from its own land to foreign lands. American
are obsessed with guns and the lack of insight and heritage, make the tragedy
to repeat itself.
stanley wang, cincinnati, Ohio
"Can any rational human being seriously suggest that the way to reduce the number of these sorts of deaths in a supposedly civilised society is to have more people (if not everyone!) carrying concealed firearms?"
-any human being who has ever bothered to look at every published study and case example available in the U.S. will realize that not only is this "rational", it is a proven FACT.
But keep living in denial. You'll have to think a lot less that way.
George , Washington, DC, USA
if Emily or Ryan had guns, the nassacre would have never happened
mario koll, glenview, usa/il
In the mist of the furore when 32 people killed in this horrible incident , a lot of people jump on the bandwagon blaming the lax gun law in America for the tragedy. To put the matter into perspective it has been some years since a similar incident took place last time. Given the size and population of America and compared with the huge number of people killed in that country by other causes such as traffic accidents, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity , cancers etc. , without wishing to sound callous, it makes one wonder if we have got our priority right. There is a common thread among these killings. the perpetrators were all mentally disturbed. Instead of tightening the gun law(the horse has bolted) surely it is much better to revise the prevention, treatment and the aftercare of mental diseases . We have also missed a very important point here, namely there is no way of finding out how many lives are SAVED every year because law abiding people can protect themselves with firearms.
Wing, Poole, UK
Let’s talk about the positives of handguns. I'm a permit to carry holder in the state of Minnesota. I trained and endured extensive background checks to receive it. My weapon will only ever be deployed in the defense of myself, family, or victim of a crime I happen across. I'm in a better position to stop a crime in its tracks than the police ever will be. Hypothetically if I had been locked in that building with Cho, he wouldn't have achieved the death toll he did that day.
Wherever I go, everyone is a little bit safer because I am there.
Wherever I am, anyone in need has a friend.
Whenever I return home, everyone is happy I am there.
'It's a better life!'
- A permit to carry holder
James, Minneapolis, MN, USA
I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, where every night of the week people are insanely inebriated and assault each other with bats, chains and knives. My grown children can't go to a movie after dark. At any hour, drunks grab my daughter and scream obscenities in her face. The endless hate crimes here are so common they aren't even reported in the press. The police don't attend for hours- if at all. My husband and I don't walk to restaurants, avoiding the inevitable scene of a person having his head kicked in on Princes Street. Children aren't exempt. Assuming only one person a night dies in the barbism, Edinburgh has created its own Virginia Tech, bare-handed and "sans" guns in a month. Virginia Tech may be more precise, focused and "clinical," but it is hardly unique in a world which fosters so much hate in the pattern of Mel Gibson, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarznegger, and Bruce Willis. Men killing everyone -- onstage and off.
Nancy, Edinburgh, Scotland
Guns are not the problem. People are the problem. It all beging with home teaching.
Bruce, Seale, AL
Melinda Huntley: "If one requires a license to drive a car why not a gun?"
Please point out to me the part of the United States Constitution that guarantees a right to drive. Or to operate a horse and buggy, for that matter.
Even though drivers are licensed, in the US, automobile accidents cause almost twice as many deaths as firearm-related injuries. Diseases cause nearly 65 times as many deaths. Note that firearm-related deaths also include suicides, self-defense shootings, and criminals killed by police.
Travis, Houston, Texas
I agree that college life did Cho no good. It presented him with his own inadequacies every day. It surrounded him with a society that he was totally incapable of joining. But that isn't VT's fault. Nor is it the fault of the individual women that he interacted with. I don't think he would have felt at home in a chaste stereotypical 1950's campus either.
Whether it's cultural or a family dynamic, he never made that leap in childhood in creating a support system(friends, hobbies, sports) outside of his immediate family. That support system listens to you, cajoles you out of creepy behavior, and encourages you in your first forays with women. One positive relationship with a girl when he was 16 would turned him from quiet creepy sociopath to quiet soulful interesting loner.
Pete, Ridgecrest, CA
I think Ms. Paglia's comment on automatic weapons is somewhat flawed. The most popular and purchased handgun in the USA is the Colt M1911A1, a weapon adopted by the US military in ... 1911. These weapons have been around for ages yet spree killers and mass murderers are a recent phenomon. Sure there were a few before WWII but there has been a marked increase since 1965. I do not think there is a coincidence relative to the increased homicide rates, spree killers, gun violence in general in relation to the societal debasing that occured among the post-war baby boom generation.
Bill, Fort Belvoir, VA, USA
That Cho went unarmed to the Post Office while in his "citizen" role then re-armed before resuming his "lunatic" role is a perfect example of the stupidity of gun laws in America. Guns are banned in the Post Office. As a Citizen he obeyed the law. Guns are also banned on Campus but as a Lunatic who cares?
To restrict an ordinary citizen from being armed means the society assumes two responsibilities. One is confiscation of every gun, knife and bludgeon in the country. Tee-Hee. The other is to constantly protect every citizen from attack.
The reality is armed citizens do save lives.
Scott Parsons, Navarre/Florida, America
The 2nd Amendment does not incorporate hunting or self defense as a purpose for its existence. "The People" have the right to have the weapons of "a well regulated militia" for the purpose of overthrowing an out of control government.
Darrell Hart, Odessa, Tx
It should be noted that Virginia gun rights advocates had warned that Virginia Tech's policy against students carring guns for self defense had created a safe environment for mass murder. Madmen will always be with us but adopting insane policies that leave us less safe is the act of an insane society. Freedom should not be limuted because of what madmen do.
Paul, Fairfax, VA
Those that are calling for new gun restrictions fail to acknowledge that people intent on killing others and themselves are not bound by the same rules as those of us who obey laws. The VT campus was already a "gun free" zone which only fueled this tragic act because those that do obey laws were helpless to defend themselves and their fellow students/administration. By outlawing guns we are ensuring that only the outlaws have guns. Is that something we want to facilitate?
Brian, Richmond, VA
The author did a great job on this article. This is a very well written piece.
d montgomery, Bossier City, USA, LA
I wonder if the anti-depressants he was taking contributed to this incident. Maybe they gave this shy, introverted kid the ability to act, that he never had befor. Perhaps it would have been better to leave him inside his shell.
Randy, cleveland, Tn
Everytime a tragedy like this occurs there is inevitably discussions regarding gun control. Already you hear things like 'It was too easy for him to acquire the guns". If one believes that guns kill people, then you also have to believe that pencils misspell words, cars cause people to drive drunk and eating utensils make people fat.
Rick, Phoenix, AZ.
As an Asia-born male on an American campus, Cho would have been at the bottom of the desirability stakes in the college dating game. This is something that has to be taken into account when analyzing the gunman's feelings of rejection.
Calista, cambridge, uk,
It was said that "An armed society is a polite society." The increase in gun control legislation continues to tilt the scale in favor of the lawbreaker and against the law abiding citizen.
Had half of the law-abiding students of Va Tech been carrying legal, concealed firearms (imposssible because of gun control) Cho would have made it through a couple of victims at most before being stopped dead. As a matter of fact, a Cho would not likely attempt such a spree if he knew that the right to keep and bear arms were practiced by a large fraction of his classmates and professors.
Curt Ferguson, Salem, IL,
To all offshore of the USA & to those within who've forgotten, the 2nd Amendment neither bestows nor confers anything; it acknowledges the innate rights that we all have as humans. Our government did not give us these rights, they are ours from the moment we take our first breath. So sorry you allowed your government(s) to abolish yours in the name of your safety & security. The world is an awful place, filled with awful people. You cannot have an omnipotent police (without giving up even more of your freedoms) so you better be able to handle things when a monster appears before you.
Thomas, Medfield, USA / MA
smartest article i've read all week. thanks.
bill, richmond, virginia
Again, the press and the pseudo intellectuals they talk to have got it all wrong. Cho wasn't a social misfit or exercising his maleness--the inescapable truth is that he was seriously mentally ill and he needed to have been treated for this awful illness when he first exhibited symptoms.
Michele Krause, New York, NY
I see a lot of people on here stating that guns are needed for self defense.
I read the American papers online,and I don't read that people have protected themself from danger by using a gun.I am sure some people have escaped danger by using a gun,but the incidents must be low.It would be interesting to see the figures for exactly how many people have saved themself or somebody else by shooting the attacker.All I read is innocent people being shot dead or suicide or children accidentally shooting others or themselves.
The guns are in the hands of the criminals now.
Maybe schools should think about putting some form of inside locks on the classroom doors.The toll would have been less if they could have stopped him entering the class rooms.
Noelene, Launceston, Tasmania
Mentally ill people and guns are a bad combination. There are mentally ill people the world over. They are everywhere. The X factor here...The ability to purchase a semi automatic weapon down the street...
Had Cho remained in SK would he have been able to access weapons of such power and do the same in that society? In the UK? Australia?
No.
F.S.Summers, N.Y.,
"As the weapons grow more deadly, even a solitary “boy” can commit the worst massacre in American history."
Wrong. The worst US massacre - and it was a school massacre - was in 1927, when a deranged man used explosives to blow up an elementary school in Bath, Michigan. He killed 45 people - mostly children - and injured 58.
People are too eager to transfer human responsibility onto inanimate objects. If "guns" did the killing in Virginia, then "planes" did the killing on 9/11 and "fertilizer" did the killing in Oklahoma City. The rap for the VT massacre goes to the shooter, the pusillanimous school authorities, the violence pimps in the media, and American society.
Jack Maloney, Saint Paul, USA
The worst massacre in US history was not carried out with guns. It took place in the 1920's in Michigan. The man blew up a school using dynamite and other explosives and 55 people, mostly children, died.
Guns are not the issue. People are. If these crazies cannot get guns, they will use something else. And if one of the law abiding college students had a gun last Monday, this tragedy might have turned out very differently
Doug Moll, Tulsa, OK
And what's happened to your crime rate in Australia since your government disarmed you?
Look at the UK as well.
You any only you are responsible for your safety.
JJ, Boston, MA
Let’s talk about the positives of handguns. I'm a permit to carry holder in the state of Minnesota. I trained and endured extensive background checks to receive it. My weapon will only ever be deployed in the defense of myself, family, or victim of a crime I happen across. I'm in a better position to stop a crime in its tracks than the police ever will be. Hypothetically if I had been locked in that building with Cho, he wouldn't have achieved the death toll he did that day.
Wherever I go, everyone is a little bit safer because I am there.
Wherever I am, anyone in need has a friend.
Whenever I return home, everyone is happy I am there.
'It's a better life!'
- A permit to carry holder
James, Minneapolis, MN
We don't know what might have happened had Va Tech not banned students and professors with concealed carry permits from carrying weapons on campus. Some will spout the tired argument that "30 people in a class would pull out their guns and shoot each other" if college students are allowed to carry firearms. Many of these same people were the ones saying that every fender bender would turn into a "Wild West" shootout when states made it easier to get concealed carry permits back in the 1990's. Of course this didn't happen as those that go throught the trouble of taking classes, being investigated and fingerprinted for the CCP are some of the most law abiding citizens in this country.
Dialing 911 and waiting 60 minutes for the police to arrive was a losing scenario at Va Tech last week.
We don't know what might have happened if some of CHo's classmates had been armed last week. We do know what happened when the only one armed was a nut with mass murder on his mind.
Will, Richmond, Va
From Virginia: to the original and other like comments-- the 2nd Amendment was NOT about hunting. The US Constitution has provisions for a militia- the militia is defined as "all able bodied" who are able to fight to defend the sovereignty. The need for the 2nd Amendment was because the Founding Fathers became concerned that the militia would be a "government" run private army to enslave the newly free people. There was and is a need to "regulate" the militia by having a counterbalance of armed citizenry. So the Amendment reads " A well-regulated militia being neccesary for the Security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed". That is, recognizing the potential of abuse of a government tyranny enforced by a government militia, the Amendment provides for "the People" the right to keep and bear Arms. Congress may not infringe upon this right. This is a significant difference in American democracy not seen in any other country.
Drew, Stuart,
This is the single best article I read on the subject so far. I believe that Cho Sheung-hui killed so many many people, rather than just commit suicide, to set an example (hence the reference to Jesus Christ in his rant). He wanted to draw the attention on his problems, so that students in a similar situation could get the help they deserve. Feminized society is indeed troubling certain male students and the problem is not limited to the United States alone. The fact that Europeans blame American society, is therefore a sign of pedantic complecancy. This problem should get more media attention, so that basically good people like Cho Sheung-hui can get proper help in the future, before they become monsters and do very stupid things.
I.C. Willems, Zwijndrecht, The Netherlands
There is an old saying...guns don't kill people...PEOPLE kill people! This is a 'spiritual' problem, an inner man problem. There are no more absolutes, all is grey and everyone has their 'rights'. Although many may reject Christianity...the Founder's understood it's rightful place in society. Make sure government never captures the pulpit. Allow the pulpits to be free to preach conviction against sin against the lusts and desires of the heart. John Adams said that our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people and would not work with any other type of people. How can self government work when there is no check on the passions of men's heart??? That is why the pulpits were to be left free. Now the pulpits have died with 'career' minded preachers who are not called of God. Remember there is no such thing as an IMMORAL free man. The more immoral he gets, the more laws are passed to keep his lusts in check, and the bigger government gets to make sure the law is kept
Dave, Almont, USA
Why is it that Europeans complain so much about American gun cultue, but have no problem manufacturing and selling guns here? Glock from Austria, HK from Germany etc.
Vernon, Dallas, TX
There are so many simple ways to repeat or even exceed this type of horrendous act, without a gun, but I suspect we will listen to hours of debate by Politicians on gun control. Anything that can be used to bring themselves into the limelight. How do you make gasoline safe? Acid. Knives. Scissors. Axes. Poison. I guess banning cars would probably cut down on intentional homicide by vehicle. It's the deranged people, not the guns. Maybe instead of basket weaving, we could begin to teach students how to recognize these mentally disturbed people and how to protect themselves.
John, New Orleans, LA
American Psycho? I thought from the title this piece it was about George Bush.
John Chuckman, Toronto, Canada
First of all the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. The Founders of our Constitution believed that in order for a people to remain free citizens, they must be able to defend themselves against tyranny. Secondly, semi-automatic handguns have been around since 1911. Yet, we have not seen school shootings like these until after the cultural revolutions of the 1960's. It is our culture that has changed...not our firearms.
Dan Sanor, Canton, Ohio
Long live the NRA!! But how does someone with as many mental issues as he aparently had get ahold of guns?????
Greg, Minneapolis, USA
Dear Peter:
The second amendment has nothing to do with an American citizen's "right to hunt." The amendment is intended to ensure that individual Americans have the means to oppose a foreign or domestic threat.
Gomer, Richmond, VA
In respone to Kevin, I think you are mistaken on the issue of gun control being 'wrong'. It is true that banning, or at at least tightening the gun control laws in every state, would not remove all evil actions. However, it would certainly make it harder for one who wishes to take such actions to end the lives of so many people. And the choice of being shot or assualted with a bat? At least people would have the chance to fight back against someone weilding a bat. I find it shocking that so many are defending the second amendment right so aggressively, and I would happily go as far to call it selfish and ignorant of the needs of the defenceless.
Kieran, Newcastle-under-lyme, UK
The 2nd amendment isn't about hunting
Robert, Lafayette, LA
After having been inundated with so much media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre I am appreciative to read an analysis that is balanced yet thought provoking. The Virginia Tech massacre will surely reopen debates on gun control, school security, bullying, and viloent media. As a mental health professional, l hope that America will begin to examine and improve our mental health system so that shootings like this may be prevented. Cho was in the 'system' and recognized as a danger to himslef and to others yet he was able to carry out his sick and twisted plan. Shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech are multi-factorial in nature. Surely gun control, bullying, and violent media contribued to these horrible events. The mental health system, the safety net to catch Cho before he could act out, failed.
Michael , Orlando, Florida
So a psychiatrically ill person klls a vast number of innocent victims - and we blame women? Again? This is a badly written, poorly-argued article. Young men can still channel their energies into positive activities if they choose to e.g. sports, travel, volunteer work abroad etc. To say that Cho was some victim of a femiinised society is an insult to the vast majority of young men who are hard-working and honest. He chose to commit evil and he had free will.
Let me guess, the Times' next article on the Virginia Tech murders will investigate whether Cho's mother worked while he was young and had him in a creche facility. Conclusion: working mothers are responsible for mass murder - another classic in the Times Misogyny Series.
MB, Edinburgh,
Why not let the Iranians have a nuclear bomb then? After all nuclear bombs don't kill people, people kill people. Smart people the US Gun Lobby eh?
Joseph, Sydney, Australia
Cho is not indicative of the "crisis in American masculinity". What nonsense! There is a crisis in masculinity and it's not confined to America, but its effects tend to me more mundane. I will never be able to second guess why this young man killed 32 people and himself. I sense from his video appearance that there wasn't much there. His language, his clothes, his anger,
even- all borrowed. His targets in his diatribe make no sense. He was insane. As far as gun laws go, it seems reasonable to keep guns away from people who seem likely to use them. I don't get the whole gun culture thing. I'm a middle class female from New York and it was as remote to me in the U.S. as it is now that I live in the U.K. I find it stunning that a mentally ill person can walk into a store in Virginia and buy enough guns and ammo (ok, that was ebay) to "take out" a whole classroom of people, and the fact that he was free to do so makes "us" complicit in a way we wouldn't be if he'd built a bomb.
Melissa, London/ New York,
As recent events have taught us in the UK, Spain and all over the Middle East, when a person or a group of persons decides that they are going to take out innocent people and are not only are they willing to die but expect to die in the process, there is little we as a free society can do. We may be able to prevent more 9-11 type attacks that are so brazen and intricate in scale and planning, but a guy on a college campus, or in a coffee shop, etc. I doubt if there is much we can do. He could have manufactured a bomb and straped it to his body and done as much damage or more as he did with 2 semi auotmatic weapons. Even if Cho had been expelled from VT for his weird behavior, what's to have prevented him from coming back to an open campus to seek his revenge? Sorry, but we live in a world where the Cho's of the world will periodically commit horrendous acts against innocent souls and for a moment we all realize that true evil does exist.
Craig Young, Thurmont, MD
This article has a maliciously deceitful title. Cho Seung-hui was a psycho all right. But he wasn't an American. He was not born in America. He was not an American citizen. And his formative childhood years were spent in his home country of Korea. Suppose a German citizen came to Britain and stayed as a legal resident (like Cho was in Americar). If that German then committed a similar crime on British soil would you brand him a "British Psycho"? I doubt it. I really don't understand why the British press is so hostile to America. We have been good and steadfast allies to you folks for a long time. And there are bonds of commerce, culture and blood between our countries. Why don't you save your venom for your enemies?
Guillermo, Dayton, Ohio, USA
"But we ACCEPT violence and law breaking as being predominately a male trait."
Because men are naturally more violent. It's testosterone. People are not as civilized as most people think.
Lauren: the guy was mentally ill (translation: nuts). Most selfish sociopaths don't go out shooting people.
starling, Lancaster,
"Wierd how in places where there is no ban on Constitutionally protected bearing of arms, there is a lower murder rate...must be coincedence, right."
Wierd how how Enland and Wales had 50 gun murders last year, and the United States had about 15 000. And the country with the second highest number of gun murders per head of population in the Western world? Switzerland. Where gun ownership is mandatory.
L, Oxford,
Average yearly gun deaths in the UK=60.Average yearly gun deaths in the USA (with 5 times the population)=30,000.Not 10 times more,not 100 times more,but 500 times more.To those who state that guns protect the people from government-please give a single example of this.Did guns protect the people at Waco or countless other examples?
I do agree with much of this article-but basically the guy was seriously mentally ill.
Rob, Hitchin, UK
The most violent and polite society I have read about is "Medieval" Japan where many armed people were in each other's company. I think that this might have been the reason behind much of the literature of England and France and the drive toward courtly manners. It has been interesting to be in Paris during this sad time. There has not been one gun rant that I have seen. It has been thoughtful commentary on the mind and this man. I tend to like Pagila's takes on most things and agree that boys are being made into weak fools by current cultural fashions that deny their energy and constantly make them look like bumbling fools in advertising and film. Mind or Brain is the question. My preliminary vote for Brain in this case since his symptoms were apparent so early. A sad and well written article in the NYT says that what most gripped his relatives is that his final ramblings were the first time they had heard him speak a sentence.
CHR, Minneapolis, MN USA,
Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill started in the 1960s for all sorts of high-minded humanitarian reasons, but it was taken too far. Now, 40 years later, there's nothing anyone can do about a clear-cut case of schizophrenia unless the individual wants help. Anyone with Sz in the family knows what I mean, you just have to wait until they "become a danger to themselves or others." Mental health "professionals" can't give you a clear definition of "danger." So what if he's taking his meds, they all stop working at some point or other, then they decompensate until you can get them on something else. Great system. It's 100% voluntary, and presupposes someone mentally ill can self-diagnose... it also presupposes that someone with Sz is too fragmented to get it together enough to blow something up, which is absolutely untrue with certain reality-based forms of Sz...
john, new york city, usa
Paglia knows nothing about firearms.
TI, Lake Worth, USA
Paglia's statement that the problem is not hunting guns but these semi-automatic weapons is once again blaming the gun for the violence. The constitutional right to bear arms does not state or imply that you can bear arms but only for hunting. It may be true that Paglia is a supporter of the right to bear arms but it is also true that her statements prove she knows nothing about weapons. Semi-automatic pistols have been around for 70 years. They are nothing new, or more dangerous than they were 70 years ago. If the professor who tried to stop him or anyone else in one of those classrooms had access to a handgun Cho might have been killed or stopped before he took so many innocent lives. That is why the right to bear arms was written into the constitution. Not so we could hunt---so we would have the right to protect ourselves. The classroom and the dorm were two places in the state of Virginia where that right is denied by the state. Look at the results. Idiotic and very very Sad
AJV, Concord, Michigan
It seems a lot of the comment from the US says basically that if they banned guns he'd have done it with a bomb or some other weapon. Fact is he could have done it with a bomb or something else but chose a gun.
So what does that tell you? It's easier to commit murder with a gun and when you have easy availability of guns you'll have gun crime and nutcases will get guns and kill people.
Americans need to get over their paranoia about Government and their supposed need to defend themselves from Government with guns. This is the stuff of fantasy. And a sick fantasy at that.
Stephen, Sydney, Australia
From the American side of the pond... I've seen this go on for some years here in the USA. I can't understand why this country needs to include semi automatic weapons to fulfill what the 2nd amendment describes. If you need to hunt, you do not need a semi automatic nor an UZI. Less guns = less death
- a british american
Peter Lawrence, Los Angeles, CA
Too many people are focusing on the wrong issue. Okay, lets get rid of all of the guns. That would get rid of all evil actions, right? No, because Cho could then have planted explosives. Take your pick, would you rather die by a gun or having your head beat in with a baseball bat? Incidents like this will happen again. Honestly, I am more scared of people that drive cars killing me than someone with a gun.
Kevin, Placentia, USA
I can only wonder how a lone gunman could kill twice as many students as the Columbine murderers.
Will, Brooklyn, New York
VM was proud that it had made the campus safe by denying their faculty and students the right of (effective) self defence. However, the student's passivity is still alarming. Anyone lifted a text book recently? Especially an engineering text? They might have pelted and disarmed him but it takes time to choose bravery and self sacrifice.
keith evans, st george, utah, USA
Plenty of people have suffered abuse in their lives and do not resort to such violence. The only excuse or explanation for Cho's behaviour is severe mental illness. The tragedy of American society is, firstly, his mental illness was left to grow and fester and secondly, that such a person was permitted to buy firearms. This man (afterall at 23, he was no longer a boy) had given a lot of signs to those in his environment regarding the state of his inner self. Did his family, teachers and classmates think that such pathology was simply going to go away. For, in the end, we really are our brother's keeper and as a society, it is our collective responsibility to deal with such pathology before it kills.
Pat, Berlin, Germany
Do you know that over 1700 college students die every year of alcohol related deaths. I'll do the math for you. That would equal about one of these horrible Virginia Tech incidents per week, every week but No outcry, no congressional hearings cut the crap on the gun issue already. if ot was'nt a gun it would be a bom, if it was't a bomb he would have driven a truck through the center of town. he wanted to kill get it. The problem is Mental Illness. We have to find a way of recognizing and deterring these people BEFORE they take action and sometimes that will require infringing on their rights a little. are we up for that.
OP, Forest Hills/NY, NY/USA
This is Not the UK or Canada. We have the rights. Yes one is free speech. Another is the right to bear arms. I am sorry you lost that right, as now only criminals have weapons. As your crime stats show more then Washington DC. But why are the US weapons crimes so high? Try gangs and criminals, Period. Drugs are illegal, right? But you can still go to the street corner and get them. Of course on the same street corner you can get a weapon without going through any paperwork I.E. illegally. Do they care? NO Remember the police can only help you AFTER a crime, it is up to you to deal with before and during, You must choose what to do. Where I live has the lowest crime rate in the US. We have no weapons permits. Better to be tried by twelve , then carried by six. And No this is not the wild west, but look at the crime rates for all the states that now have shall carry laws. Down, Hmmm I wonder if that means something? Oh I was a police officer and now retired military.
mtnman, Essex, USA / VT
The tragic shooting of defenseless students at VA Tech should be a clarion call to all of us, that there are disturbed people among us and they should not be ignored or marginalized. Unfortunately, there are many Chos' in the United States. They come from all walks of life and social economic backgrounds. As always, respect for others should be reinforced and when a young person like Cho exhibits sign after sign of calling out for serious help, concerned parties should see to it that positive corrective action is immediately taken. Although Cho's actions were terrible, many people of his economic background despise the rich and wealthy because of their arrogance and greedy materialistic demeanor. I grew up poor in a wealthy upper middle class suburb of Chicago and I will tell you that there are many lower middle class youth who despise the rich because of the way they project themselves. People should not be judged by their clothes or what their home looks like.
Sean, Lakemoor, IL USA
I am sick of commentators infantilizing Cho by analyzing what made the poor susceptible boy suddenly fall to pieces. Cho was a grown man. If he found Virginia Tech unbearable, he should have left and sought his education elsewhere. His self-indulgent diatribes against the "trust fund brats" is borrowed rhetoric that rings false - Virginia Tech is a public, technical training school for predominantly Virginia residents. I'd be very surprised to meet many trust fund kids there.
Paglia's theories are total academy, no reality. Yes, suburban high schools can be stifling, miserable places, but had be stepped away from his own narcissism, Cho might have appreciated that his Northern VA school district is one of the country's best. This man was a selfish, cowardly sociopath, not a "troubled" kid. Pathetic.
Lauren, Washington , DC, USA
"Can any rational (non gun-obsessed) human being seriously suggest that the way to reduce the number of these sorts of deaths in a supposedly civilised society is to have more people (if not everyone!) carrying concealed firearms? The problem here is that guns are too readily available, not that they are not available enough. "
Yep. Ask any citizen of a little country called Israel. Basic fact. You cannot outlaw an evil, murderous, suicidal maniacs from obtaining the means to kill in a free society. You can however be prepared to identify and neutralize them.
Robert`, Sacramento, USA/CA
Camile Paglia is a genius. I am always amazed when I read her work or quotes of heres. I have thought for decades that the male in US society has been shunned and cast aside in favor of the female. This is not a rant against feminism, because we did need a social movement to give women equality. But the movement has come with great expense and we should ignore that no longer.
Think about this, the MAJORITY of college students in the US are female ... at a whopping 60%!! Where are the feminists screaming for equality now? What about this: over 95% of the prison population in the US is male. Where is the outcry? Clearly not all males are criminals. But we ACCEPT violence and law breaking as being predominately a male trait. This is hurting males and society. But society seems to only care about the effect of crime on women. Crime against men .. not so much. Just put the perp in jail, move on. Why aren't we studying this and helping those who would become men ... boys??
JJ, Santa Monica, CA USA
As usual, another poorly researched article.
The boy used basic hand-guns (a .22 and 9mm). These have many uses especially in self-defense. When you are walking down a dark alley or street, are you going to pull the shotgun out of your pants to scare away muggers? That's ludicrous.
Further, this was not the worst massacre in American history. Tim McVeigh killed many more people and then there is the Happy Land fire (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_Social_Club). Both of those make Cho look like a light-weight. I'm still waiting for people to call for the banning of fertilizer and gasoline.
Jeremy, Arlington, VA
Dirk in Hamburg
You have it right my man. We American's love freedom to the extent this can happen. NO One can stop someone dead set on killing. Yes, we have gun's, I've had a rifle since my dad taught me to shot when I was 15. It's stil in the case and hadn't even thought about it . But during my lesson he'd slapped my bottom when I pointed it in the wrong direction.
Back then a man grew up and his father tought him a lesson. Today you can't even spank your child without someone being offended. Believe me I used to be liberal until common sense left .
Mike
michael, Seattle, Wa, USA
This is, unfortunately, part of the mainstreaming in society of the mentally ill. It used to be, when someone displayed such obvious signs of mental illness, they were put in an asylum and locked away from the rest of the normal people. But the lefty do-gooders changed all that with their predictable sue everyone mentality, which started the "community treatment" of what they know dang well will become criminal offenders. It is time to round up all the psychotics, and simply lock them up and throw away the key. Better for them to lose their civil rights, rather than normal people having their civil rights abrogated further simply to accommodate these crazy people living out in society amongst the normal folks.
Ron, Cheyenne, Wyoming
Opinions on "gun control" in great part stem from the learned relationship of people to their respective governments. This is a significant difference in being a "subject" and being a "citizen". Many put their faith (and lives) in the hands of others believing the state will provide the necessary protection for them. When very bad things happen in easy times, the notion of getting rid of the "cause" is easy to jump to. No one wishes to think the unthinkable, that their faith and trust in their form of government may not be returned with like dedication and commitment by that government.
Many of the worlds major rights violations recently have come about because the people could not defend themselves. Getting rid of "weapons" only empowers those that are evil not the law-abiding and just. As other nations have banned private ownership, the crime rate (with guns) has increased. The link between guns and crime is "obvious" to many except that the reality is something else.
Bob Bridges, Anchorage, USA/ Alaska
"As the weapons grow more deadly, even a solitary “boy” can commit the worst massacre in American history."
Or some of those young people could have protected themselves with a gun of their own. Male or female.
The concealed carry laws hold apply on campus too.
We have people that know CPR, that know where the fire extinquisher is, why do we not allow those that choose to arm themselves, get the training, get the certification and become proficient, safe, and educated in the law defend themselves and others.
At least undercover security should carry no?
wake up America, it is not the guns, there are 300 MILLION of us now. Your going to have a higher occurance because of that..
Security is layered. The armed citizen is the last layer of defense if everything is working. If it is not, then it is the ONLY layer of defense.
Jack B. , San Diego, CA, USA
American people are allowed to own guns by our constitution not so that we can hunt, not so that we can defend our homes. We are allowed to own guns to protect us from an abusive government. To ensure that we have the means to overthrow tyrany when if it rears its ugly head. That is the reason that the United Kingdom still has a moncarchy and the USA does not!
Steve, Houston, Texas
The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.
—Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle
Jared M, Auburn, Ca
Great article! The infantile American reflects a nation raised by women... thus the causation for all of this violence - feminism. This proves that men need to take a more active role in leading their children, or at a minimum, their sons. Men should instinctively take a bullet, or a car or whatever danger there is for a woman. But the "infantile American" theory for why noone does anything in these tragic situations really does point to an undeveloped trait to stop expecting "mommy" to come to the rescue. Growing up is thus the action of accepting the terms of a violent death and doing it standing up - not lying down playing dead. Unfortunately, these words and your article will be read as harsh, but true they are.
Ron, Syracuse, NY
What rubbish!
Paglia's middle class boys used to be able to get a job with there hands but now it's all professionals?!!!!
Plenty of jobs are available for those who want to work. Had he got a job as a contractor, using his 'hands', he'd have been making more $$$$ than his Princeton educated sister!
He was mentally ill. Sick. Crazy. And, when he pulled the trigger over and over again, EVIL. In the end, who he was was his choice.
I'm sorry for his family and I'm sorry for his victims and their families. I am not sorry for Seung-Hui Cho. If only he would have killed himself before taking so many innocent lives with him.
M. Fernandez, San Francisco, California
It always amuses me to see Europeans commenting from their armchairs about Americans walking around with guns like it's some kind of gangsta land. Now they say we're all feminized. Make up your minds. If you're going to mock us, at least get your story straight.
See if you can go 100 years without gassing 6 million unarmed undesireables to death before you criticize guns. Have fun in your disarmed country while the smoke from burning cars in Paris wafts over you. You know one day they're gonna come for you. I just watched Hot Fuzz, a hilarious movie, but it was so obvious the actors had no clue how to fire a gun. It should be a cakewalk for the new wave of 'undesireables.'
Al, Denver, USA
This is the strangest angle on the tragic events of last Monday that I have yet seen. Is the following excerpt meant as some sort of implicit excuse, or an effort to make Cho's deed understandable?
"But this carefully manicured campus — home to 26,000 students who called themselves Hokies — was no place for a social misfit. Even Cho used to wear the uniform of the mini-city: an orange or maroon T-shirt or sweatshirt with a baseball cap. Paglia, who has taught in American universities for 35 years, describes America’s residential campuses as vast “islands of green and slack conformity where a strange benevolent and tyrannical paternalism has taken over. It’s like a resort atmosphere”."
Anyone who is following the news surrounding the events can confirm that for years repeated efforts were made to get in contact with Cho, or befriend him.
Ken, Washington,
I think it's disgusting that people have turned this horrible event into a chance to promote their political agendas. Should we have tighter gun control? Yes. Would it have stopped this event? No. He acquired his guns in a completely legal fashion. The act was premeditated – changing the laws would have changed his timeline, but I would argue that it would NOT have prevented this from happening. Take away guns altogether and he still would have found a way to take out as many people through some other means.
How about instead of blaming everyone and everything else (which is what Cho did) we instead accept the sad fact that this person was a psychotic sociopath who finally went over the edge. This didn't happen because of lax gun laws. This didn't happen because of violent video games. This wasn't the fault of the VT faculty or VT police department.
This is one person's fault – Cho's. It was a senseless, irrational act. We should stop trying to rationalize it.
Mark, Seattle, WA, USA
for the love of god, when are the libs going to stop trying to pin the blame on guns - for your info, if you had done any research, Dept of Justice did a survey during the clinton years and tried to find a link between violence and firearms and instead found that 2.4 million REPORTED crimes, between Jan 1995 and Jan 1998 had been PREVENTED, with the key word being "reported crimes" - the staticisan noting that it was unknown how many crimes had been prevented and gone unreported - - has it ever occurred to the lib mentality that this may have been the result of their coddling criminals and the passing of responsibility from the day these kids are born, that "they are the product of their environment" and how the schools no longer have any semblance of discipline or morality? Swords - what a laugh -
if a carpenter builds a house, do you praise the carpenter or the hammer?
Larry Gaglio, Richmond, VA
There are facts and there is grasping at straws. Are there any other subjects that can be derived from what possible reasons this disturbed man did what he did? From feminism, to homophobia, to no love life, to movies, to the drug culture in inner cities, to women having difficulties understanding male aggression, to someone not being able to tell the difference between Chinese and Korean?
Afterwards, wondering why someone didn't stop him when all the conjecture leads me to wonder where this persons accountability is and why there are so many excuses for him in these articles alone? Maybe, if you look at how people try to rationalize his behavior in these articles it will help explain how it happened here in America, before it was too late and how he "slipped through the cracks".
J. Cotton, Cincinnati, US
This young fellow sounds like he had Asperger's Syndrome (a disorder that is part of the autism family of disorders.) I am not excusing his violence, but the lack of recognition of his problems and the inabiliy or unwillingness of society to deal with them is likely to become more and more of a problem as children like him grow up. Anyone who has followed the medical literature knows about the tremendous increase in children who have Autistic disorders such as Asperger's. It is inexcusable that these children are not being identified and helped as soon as they begin to show problems. These children are not "monsters," but they lack the ability to develop social bonds with those around them. Most do well with their families and obviously, this person was at the extreme end of the spectrum since he couldn't connect with even his own family members. However, there are millions like him and unless we deal with their problems, we will have many more Columbines and Virginia Techs.
_bigfoot, Atlanta, GA
Wierd how in places where there is no ban on Constitutionally protected bearing of arms, there is a lower murder rate...must be coincedence, right. We should have gun free zones...oh wait VT was a gun free zone, and that worked out famously didn't it? An armed society is a polite society. Gun grabbers had thier little experiment with gun free zones, it failed tragically, now give us back our second amendment. Oh and for those who think that it only applies to the militias, guess what WE are the militia. Read the law (title 10 U.S.C.) all able bodied males 17 to 45 are the militia. No more debate on what the founding fathers meant, it's there in the law, enjoy your freedom.
Nate, Haddon Heights, US/NJ
Ridiculous babble from a British writer who has opinions but no American life experience. American males have serious behavioral and societal issues (thank God UK males do not), but that has nothing to do with the actions of Cho. This man was a psychopath, exhibited psychopathic behavior since infancy, and American society freedoms allowed him to inflict barbaric carnage. Let's never forget America's sacrifices to keep the world free from tyranny in WWI and WWII. Save the slagging and focus on what is dysfunctional in your own country.
Jacob Doyle, Lakewodd , USA/Coloraod
To those in the UK....you "enjoy" double the violent crime rate in America and have turned your country over the immigrants. We shall not be feminized like you.
As to more carry concealed weapons holders, such as myself who has used his gun in self-defense, America should scream for the crime rate exemplifeied by licensed carrieers of concealed weapons. It is virtually non-existent.
Professor John Lott, and economist, did extensive research in his book "More Guns...less Crime" and the ONLY laws that lower the crime rate are concealed weapons laws.
Mexico has a total gun ban, and four times the homicide rate of America. Bats, tire irons, knives, hands, and feet are used. I'm sorry that you socialist Brits lost your nation and that you don't get it. It's not about guns, it's about freedom. We can't keep drugs out of jail here or a mariachi band with an elephant from crossing the border [it was done by a news tea] so what makes you think collecting guns will remove the problem?
Mike, Raleigh, NC
The 2nd Admendment in the US has nothing to do with this crime. I beg to differ with those who would postulate that. A killer will find a way to kill, regardless. We have several towns in the US who REQUIRE their residents to be armed. They have, none of them, experienced murders by gun or any other criminal acts-one for over 25 years. If all were armed would there be as much crime? Likely not. If I am armed and you are armed we both respect the respective damage we could do to each other and so the threat diminishes because the playing field is level. What we believe in the US, among the armed population, anyway, is that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws would have guns. I'll give up my weapons when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers. I would rather have my guns and not need them than to need my guns and not have them. The anti-gun people are living in a virtual dream world where what could be never will be. Neither myself nor my family will ever be victims of gun crime.
Rand Roberson, Tampa, FL, USA
>>"Paglia...“The problem is not hunting guns but these semi-automatic weapons. He could not have cut down that many people so quickly or with such brutal efficiency without them. They have no use except for commandos, swat teams and paramilitary organisations. <<
Paglia is absurdly wrong. The 2nd Amend isn't about hunting and not limited to those she names. That .22 caliber has 150 foot pounds of energy. The 9mm has about 325 pounds. Hunting guns, siuh as a .308 round, have about 3000 pounds.
If someone has broke into your home and you are defending your wife and two young daughter from 3 men do you want a revolver only with six rounds that will be very hard under stress to reload? Or do you want a semi-automatic with 15 rounds to reload?
Does Paglia want to toss any student in that building, if we could freeze time, a .22 , or a .45 caliber handgun?
As a licensed concealed weapons holder that has drawn my weapon in self-defense, her wishes would leave America vulnerabe.
Mike, Raleigh, NC
That people have used swords much longer than they have used firearms, is merely an observation that is true at this point in human history.
It is fascinating to see the number of comments from people who are citizens of other countries. While they are free to express their opinions on our culture and constitution, we are also free to ignore their wish to make us just like them. No thank you, I like us just as we are, warts and all.
This kind of heinous act can never be eliminated from society, nor always predicted. It is one of the lesser risks of living in a free society. The alternative is not very pleasant to consider.
Dave, Roseville, CA, USA
Not to rip from the psuedointellectual Matrix, but this is all cause and effect. He was abused, not given a chance, made fun of. His consciousness was torn into nothing as people made fun of him whenever he talked. When he tried to fit in, they further made fun of him. The abuse was the cause, the massacre was the effect. The lesson is clear: Be careful of your actions, you never, never know what effects they will cause.
Determinism is real, Wisconsin,
I think everyone has it wrong about Cho. He really wasn't mentally ill in the true psychiatric sense, but quite sane in preparing and carrying out his purposeful serial murderous crime. Yes, he was emotionally disturbed, in the deep throes of a pathologic narcissism running parallel with the greater American cultures narcissim which they keep pandering to themselves about. But he knew what he was doing and why and was quite skilled in carrying out his morning of meanness. He was a thief by stealing other's lives. Its a mistake to assume this kind of horror is the work of the insane, as its clearly the work of the intensely mean. Nobody should excuse his crimes as an "illness" just because they are lex luther shocking. It doesn't matter if young males are haveing a tough year. You are responsible for your actions. Not excused by them. Let the world judge him by the fruit he bore us. He was a very bad person and I have no sympathy for him or his parents who brought him here.
Brian, Los Angeles, USA
This nonsense about "Americans Loving Guns" is such garbage. I've lived here my whole life and I've only ever seen a gun on a cop, have zero interest in them, and frankly I imagine most urban dwellers (who aren't criminals) could say the same. The fact is that there are quite a few lunatics in a country of 300 million, and a lunatic with a 9mm semi automatic gun can do a great deal of harm. Why someone who's been committed to a psych ward in the past can obtain one so easily, that is a madness I can't answer. But "love guns"? Not me, and not anyone I've ever known...put your broad brush away, thanks very much.
Eddie , Los Angeles, USA
If not guns, a backpack full of molotov cocktails could cause equivalent havoc depending on the nature of automatic fire suppression system in the area. Or a home made bomb like London's jihadists.
Don't blame inanimate objects for the destruction they wreak.
The best mitigation for criminals with guns is armed law abiding citizens. A gun in a sane, law abiding person's holster is inert until danger threatens. Self defense ability is the best prophylactic to victimhood. A feminized society should appreciate the value of readily available, effective prophylactics.
Jan, Bullmuda, WA
"worst massacre in American history"
No. It isn't.
Wounded Knee: 300 native american men, women, and children killed by U.S. soldiers
and that little scuffle called the American Civil War
Just FYI, journalists, American history goes back beyond Columbine...
IceW, East Bay,
What seems overlooked here as a factor in these murders is Cho's use of an anti-depressant. Wasn't at least one of the Kleebold/Harris boys also taking these drugs? Why did Cho continue to dutifully take his pills, even on the morning of the massacre? He wasn't taking it to help himself feel good. He was taking it to help himself to feel a murderous rage, a much better feeling than helpless apathy. These drugs, when taken without close monitoring, have led to many suicides and murders. One such case is the young mom who murdered her 4 or 5 children. Something must be done to stop these very dangerous drugs from being prescribed to potential psychos. Laws must be passed. And shrinks who prescribe these drugs to patients who then kill should be prosecuted.
larry, PEMBROKE PINES, florida, usa
American law did not fail in its second amendment right to carry arms. It failed by not linking this kids multiple dangerous psychiatric evaluations to the mandatory background check all gun sellers are required to run. If the Virgina law had permitted those records in the check he never would have been able to have purchased the guns.
Clay, Houston, TX
What a load of old rubbish! This wasn't about debased masculinity - the guy was autistic as a child and mentally ill and was easily able to get a gun.
Mike A, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Guns don't kill people, people do!
John, LA, Ca, USA
What man hasn't been rejected by women on a college campus? This guy was giving off warning signs which were ignored by the people who were supposed to be in charge. Teachers reported him, and he was stalking coeds. His behavior was reclussive and bizarre for some time. There was a court restraining order against him. So the system knew of him. The test for involuntary hospitalization is "a reasonable probability of a threat to the patient or others." It is always a judgment call, but come on! The things this guy was writing were violent and off the wall. Somebody dropped the ball on this one.
Tony Francis MD JD , Wichita, KS/USA
As an American whose only experience with guns was in the military, I can honestly say I have no love for them. In fact, they scare the hell out of me because they are inherently dangerous. On the other hand, our right to have them was specifically written into the constitution to prevent the government from controlling us. What's strange, is that Cho was able to obtain a gun, even though he's not a citizen and his mental state was in doubt. If the system is over burdened, then it should have at least taken years for him to obtain his guns, but it didn't.
Nathan, Durand, MI
American Psycho? He spent the first 8 years of his life--the most formative years--in Korea.
Anne, Monterey, California
I'm an American I'll tell you why we have these dreadful murders in my country -- we love violence. Hollywood cranks it out, we call it freedom of speech and art, we gobble up violence in our music, our homes, our television programs and internet. We no longer protect our children, we're too busy to monitor what they watch and play. Then to make sure we have all bases covered we make handguns readily available. We like to call it personal freedom but actually it's just garden variety insanity. And it will happen again. And again.
Kathleen, Bogota, Colombia
While its true that to round up all of the guns would stop all of the "GUN VIOLENCE", it would not stop violence. Its true that firearms make it easier for a monster to commit mass killings, it also makes it easier for a small person of weaker stature to defend themselves and others from aggressive individuals. This past January, the VA legislature voted down a bill that would have given students, and teachers the right to CCW on VA tech campus, if this had not been voted down, while there probally would have still been a tragic incident, it more than likely would have ended with much fewer people being killed, and the monster being killed by an armed citizen, rather than himself. One of our problems is the europeanazation of American culture. I have to say to those from not so great britian, and other european countries, mind your own business. Its the borrowing of your mindeset that brought this upon us today.
Randall S Russell, Liberty, KY
As usual, another poorly researched article.
The boy used basic hand-guns (a .22 and 9mm). These have many uses especially in self-defense. When you are walking down a dark alley or street, are you going to pull the shotgun out of your pants to scare away muggers? That's ludicrous.
Further, this was not the worst massacre in American history. Tim McVeigh killed many more people and then there is the Happy Land fire (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_Social_Club). Both of those make Cho look like a light-weight. I'm still waiting for people to call for the banning of fertilizer and gasoline.
Jeremy, Arlington, VA
OK Start in the first couple of paragraphs. Cho was bullied and teased in middle school, not high school. I can guarantee that at least every third boy was teased at that age, by his peers. The crucial question is how he perceived the teasing. The author is speculating about Cho seeking revenge against the two girls from his high school. We don't know if he even knew them. We know nothing about his motive in killing Emily Hilscher, but you speculate all over the place. Of course sexual feelings and thoughts about women played a part. Name a straight youth who doesn't have those thoughts and who doesn't get angry when he's rejected. The difference is the degree and intensity, and that's the mental illness part. He was not a poor regular kid who was rejected by all; he was MENTALLY ILL FROM CHILDHOOD.Last, it was not "the worst massacre"; 9-11 and Pearl Harbor were.
Virginia Lavender, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
in the days swords, they had cross bows. Just as deadly as a gun. The recent research has demonstrated that concealed guns
save lives. They also may prevent the goverment from being taken over by state socialist, as was the case in Russia and
Germany!
art hageman, clearwater, fl
Lost our way with the Second Amendment? Then the First Amendment and all of the others must be up for whatever feels-good revisionism or poll-result that comes along, right? No, it doesn't work that way. Americans are still free - that and our incomes and levels of education - are why we are so reviled. Oh, and that we as free men and women still own firearms - which, by the way, are what freed us from British oppression in the first place. Why are so many people eager to willingly scurry down the same path of gun-control that people like Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Castro took their people before slaughtering all who fell into disfavor? Anyone too cowardly to own a gun or to fight for their very life and the lives of their families should be free to make that sad choice. But please - don't ask the rest of us to be at the mercy of armed madmen, criminals and tyrants!
Winston, Orlando, FL / USA
I find it ridiculous that Cho is being portrayed as 'emblematic' of American males. His behavior was so bizarre and extreme that to twist it around to where he is some kind of symbol of American malehood is totally unfair. Of course, all the American males who woke up, behaved well and didn't kill anyone are not really male, I guess. They're just 'feminized' because they behave well. I am getting this right? I'm sure that I might not be understanding it very clearly. So Travis Bickle (from a movie!) and this extremely schizophrenic Cho are symbols of the American male. The other 125 million males who just happened to take the day off from massacres don't really make cool academic essays, so why pay attention to them? Paglia is so far lost in her world of narcissistic academic niftiness that she is completely out of touch. It's sad how quickly such a tragedy can be turned into self congratulating, academic, veiled female chauvinist drivel.
Steve, puyallup, WA
Many years ago when I was at uni, there was a young man, who I shall call Doolally. I don't suppose he was in Cho's class when it came to mental instability but when you spoke to him you got a diatribe of disaffection and so, of course, you tended not to engage again. One day he produced an ugly looking knife at a university bar and half jokingly was threatening with it. It was pretty unnerving though. A big lad thumped him and Doolally reverted to tears and recriminations. I never saw him again after that. I expect that every year in every uni has its own Doolally. But my point is that there, in Yorkshire, he didn't have the opportunity to pop in to a hockshop and emerge armed like Rambo.
The Doolallies will always be with us. Though I respect Paglia for saying (in my interpretation) that the rights of feminism carry with them some responsibilities. But I feel that the United States, a country which I admire, has lost its way with the second amendent. Can nothing be done
Geoffrey, Sydney, Australia
This has everything to do with mental illness; whether or not it is related to guns is almost irrelevant. These "experts" quoted obviously have no idea what happens on the campuses of American universities, and I suspect neither the British columnists and armchair experts leaving their pithy comments have any idea either.
It would be funny if it weren't so infuriating.
Ryan S., Lawrence, KS, USA
I agree with many Americans - even though I am also American because I am from South America - that someone can be an undergraduate at any age.
"I took off" almost three years from high school to University and I traveled to South Carolina when I was 21. First of all I did one semester at an English Program for Internationals, "EPI;" then I entered University with a Cross Country scholarship because I was a National Class distance runner. I graduated with good grades at 26! I had many friends in the Football (soccer) team from different parts of the world who were older than I.
Even though, I have a 100% European Look (Irish - Spaniard background), at first I had an strong Spanish accent because it was the language I had spoken all my life! So people thought I was not an "outsider" (6´3" or 190 cms; white,etc) until I spoke and a lot of people made fun of me - but they were just playing and I took it that way.
Cho was SICK and should had been into a hospital!
Andres , Guayaquil , Ecuador
The question is raised, "Why do Americans love their guns so much?"
Answer: They come in handy when overthrowing tyranny. Long live the Minutemen of this world. You might also be interested in reading John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime".
Kurt, Spring, TX, USA
I read a lot of "blame the victim" in this article. The girls who didn't want to date Cho, his parents who didn't get therapy for him, his relatives, his teachers, his high school classmates who teased, his roommates who thought he was creepy, the people who lived in his dorm, everybody who passed him on the street.... all are to blame for his miserable life and somehow provoked (or at least, explain why) he acted with such venomous violence. What I don't see is a Crisis in Masculinity, but a Crisis in the Cult of Individualism, where the individual's desires and needs are more important that the community's and individuals like Cho who think they are the center of the Universe and are furious at the rest of the world who disagree.
Just as there are saints that walk among us, there are people who are evil, and from all accounts, Cho was egotistical and vicious. The people who crossed his path were not to blame for making Cho do what he did. He chose that path.
alice, salado, texas
In the usa 23 year old undergraduates are not uncommon, I graduated at age 25 after my army service. The us army offers tuition help for military service.An 18 year old high school grad would start university at age 22 after 4 years military
henry cowan, linthicum heights, USA/Maryland
This case has nothing to do with mental illness but everything to do with the availability of guns. The collective American heart may bleed but they continue to fail to make any changes to their archaic gun laws. In 1999 the gun homicide rate in the USA was 40.8 deaths per million and in the UK was 1.2. Enough said. Also why does the news media think that the UK is so interested in 33 American homicides? We have been completely bombarded with this news story. Hundreds of people are murdered in Iraq every day yet we do not have endless TV programmes interviewing their friends and relatives. It is as if an American life is worth more than an Iraqi one.
Paul , Brentford, UK
I've been disappointed but not surprised in the last few days to see trotted out the standard argument (by a number of Americans, including Bob from California, below) that more rather than less guns are the solution.
Can any rational (non gun-obsessed) human being seriously suggest that the way to reduce the number of these sorts of deaths in a supposedly civilised society is to have more people (if not everyone!) carrying concealed firearms? The problem here is that guns are too readily available, not that they are not available enough.
To encourage universal possession of concealed firearms may arguably reduce the individual's ability to kill such large numbers of others before being stopped (which I assume is the rather facile point being made in support of yet more liberal gun laws), but does anyone seriously believe that it will reduce the number of armed (and as a result fatal) confrontations?
Graham, London, UK
Can anyone please tell me another use for a gun other than to kill. Even if it self defence, it is still to kill. It still seems strange that everyone is surprised about tragedies like these. I'm surprised that it does not happen more often. In today's dark world where violence, sex crimes, drugs, alcolhol, pornography, are being glorified, what do we expect from the world? I dont like to be a pessimist, but I am afraid we are going to see more of these kinds of violence but we cannot let tragedies like these stop us from going about our daily life Like terrorism, there is a high price for freedom but are we really free to live our lives in a world that is so desperately sick and void of accountability. When most people do not believe that there is a hell, they ultimately create a hell here. Seek God and His Ways to love and serve Him and to do the same for your fellow mankind. No one can defend this maniac but see what happens when love is absent and hate orevails.
virginiaDore, Brisbane, Australia
TomTom, what does it matter that he was still at university at age 23? He could've taken a year or two off between high school and university; he may have been held back in high school or elementary school, especially entering the American system at age 8. Plus, undergraduate degrees take 4 years in the US, not 3. But it's beside the point entirely. What is the point is that this guy fell through the cracks, and the sorry system that's currently in place to help and protect students was not adequate to put this guy in a psychiatric facility where he belonged. We need to stop being so pathologically afraid to trample on people's rights and realize that mental illness is just as devastating as physical illness...and was much, much more so in this case. The system needs to be overhauled, but this is America after all...it's much too much important to be completely free and not have your rights trampled on...at all costs [/end sarcasm].
Shelley, Boston, USA
In a strange way i feel sorry for Cho. I mean, here we had a young man that was clearly mentally ill, and was highlighted by people to be such, but yet was failed by the system. It's just that in the systems failing people ended up paying the ultimate price for it. Now, we're going to have the blame game, but in the end, was it Cho's fault? I wouldn't say so, as after many warnings, why was it the system failed to take action? Would you say that someone who thought to hear the voice of God and killed someone because of it was wrong, yes, but also no, as for them they think they're doing the right thing. So it is the job of the system to step in and stop such things from happening. This is where the system failed Cho and the 32 other people who died. Big contributors to such failings are communication and a transparency of procedures. So far this seems to be the major problem with all systems in place to stop such terrible crimes from happening.
simon, lincoln,
More on age:
There's another reason for the older ages, too. Our students are 18 and 19 when they finish high school, depending on when their birthdays fall. Since most undergraduate degree programs require four years of study, that makes them 22 or 23 when they graduate.
A few undergraduate degree programs require five years of study, and those students would be 23 or even 24 when they graduate.
Graduation with a bachelor's degree at 23 or 24 does not necessarily indicate a break in education or inferior ability. It is routine in the United States.
And getting an undergraduate degree at any age is common here. Going back to college for advanced degrees is a popular and career-enhancing thing to do.
barbara, charlotte, usa, nc
This is missing the point which is why any private citizen needs to own a hand gun in a civilized(?) society. There seems to be a high degree of paranoia in the US or maybe it really is a much more dangerous place to live than any other first world country.
I am over 60 years old, have never owned a gun and never felt the need for one to protect myself or my family. But then I don't live in the USA. Of course, one day I may be unlucky and be in the wrong place and get shot by some madman but life is inherently risky. More likely I will die in a plane crash, get hit by a Mack truck or get drunk and fall down stairs. A gun offers no protection for any of these, but I should have a gun to hand 24/7? It sounds like when I really need it would be when I travel to the states. Anyone tried getting one of these on a plane recently?
davie, Calgary, Alberta
I do not know how the university system works in the UK, but in the states a student usually takes 4 to 5 years to earn a BA, and 2 to 4 years to earn a masters. Not everyone starts their college career at 18, you will find students of all ages on university campuses. I received my BA at 59 and am working on a masters now., and I am not the oldest student enrolled. Why? Because this was my first opportunity to do so. I do believe the US should in some circumstances be more cornerned with the good of the community and less concerned about a dangerous individuals personal rights.And no, I do not believe every American should own and carry a weapon.
sarah, Columbia, SC, USA
TomTom, the normal course of University study in the US is 4 years, not 3 as in Britain. He was in his last year, so was just about exactly the right age.
He would have been facing the prospect of graduation/entering the "real world"/getting a job in about a month from the date of the shooting -- I wonder if that may have been a contributing factor in setting him off.
Lynette , Belvidere, USA, NJ
No LAW could stop Cho in his sick will to commit a crime! We have a lot of restrictions on guns in Germany - and in the end we had several gunmen like Cho committing the same crime. What the real difference makes is that in the US American culture the "lonely shootist" is more of a role model than it is over here. The stereotype of a role model according to Europeans is that of "Robin Hood" and his gang. And this has been the model in the anarcho Red Army Fraction through out the Seventies in Europe. Our laws didn't stop violence either. I don't think that the Americans "love" their guns. But guns were part of the American culture at a time when European settlers set foot on a soil so strange and dangerous at the time. These settlers felt it a privilege to wear a gun - no peasant in Europe was allowed to do so. These settlers felt "free". Europeans never experienced this feeling. So they do not understand. And by the way: could the Holocaust have happened in a people armed?
Dirk R Bode, Hamburg, Germany,
TomTom, 23 is a perfectly normal age for an undergraduate. I will turn 22 during my finals, and although most finalists on my course are 21-22, a significant number are older, having taken some time out to earn money to pay for their university years. Perhaps Cho's course was longer than the three years common in this country for humanities degrees.
On a different note, it frightens me how many Americans I know personally have responded to this with "well it wouldn't have been so bad if all students were allowed to carry guns". American gun laws are terrifyingly lax; think how many mentally ill people there are in this country who have only had outpatient treatment and would therefore not show up on a background check States-style, but who would be a clear danger to themselves and others if armed with a lethal weapon.
It is also terrifying that the NRA wields such immense power over politicians...
Charlotte, London,
Did anyone report his illness to his parents?
Tim Carter, NYC,
Again in the aftermath everyone is knocking the Americans.
Thomas Hamilton the Dunblane killer had had complaints registered against him with the local police and still he had a gun license. Considering the number of gun licenses here that the police had to deal with......
the government then stopped anyone having guns (except criminals) cutting the police out of the link..
Steve Byrne, Ft Lauderdale, USA
If you read the story carefully a fair number of the students are far too old to be at school.
I assume VTECH specialised in Mature Students.
Peter Scarlett, Whitley Bay, uk
the rejection of expulsion seems at least reasonably likely to tip a suicidal or pyschotic student over the edge. surely, it would make more sense to deal with the student's problems through mentoring and counselling? if someone feels bullied, excluded, rejected and unvalued, how hard is it to include him, get to know him, take him seriously as a person and show him some respect? all most people need is attention and to understand that everyone goes through the same emotions to some extent.
jem, london, uk
Sounds par for the course. Just how did he get into University and why was he still an undergraduate at 23 ?
TomTom, Leeds, England
Are these the only "missded chances"? A year ago, Virginia Tech was thrilled when the State legislature had rejected a law that would have allowed university students and employees to carry handguns on campus.
"I'm sure the university community is appreciative...because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus," said university spokesman Larry Hincker.
A few months earlier, a Virginia Tech student had been disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit.. Later, the school's governing board approved a "violence prevention policy reiterating its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus facilities."
Obviously, the trustee's plan was an utter failure!
Bob Evans, Anaheim, California
Why do Americans love their guns so much? It may not have prevented this tragedy but one will never know. Not one political leader dare says anything for fear of the gun lobby. If one requires a license to drive a car why not a gun?
Melinda Huntley, Vancouver, canada
It would be dangerous to now start a precedent of suspending and kicking people out of colleges because of 'mental illness'. After all, those who are the 'evaluators', psychiatrists, in the main, have no idea what causes a person to be psychotic, have no idea how to handle it and the only thing they do do is give drugs to people that make them even more psychotic. I bet Cho was taking "anti-psychotic" or "anti-depressant" medication -if he was, the drugs certainly didn't cure him - and it is now known that these drugs can cause people to have suicidal and homicidal thoughts. I think the school is not to blame. It is the psychiatrists who put themselves in a position of 'knowing' what to do with troubled people and then consistently foul it up because they actually DON"T KNOW what they are doing. II would call that criminal negligence.
Angela, LA, CA