To Use or Not To Use
It's happened again -- only much worse this time in terms of numbers than we are used to dealing with. The proverbial "loner" gets a gun (or two), fills his pockets with extra ammo, and mows down the innocent as a way of avenging his sorrowful life. Monday, April 16, 2007, will go down in infamy at Virginia Tech and across this nation. The previous Friday, April 13th, I was there with my daughter on a college search visit. Little did we know as we sat through an introductory address in Burruss Hall and later walked among the proud academic structures built of "Hokie-stone" that just hours later this would be the scene of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Two observations in the way of media analysis: The students who spoke to the media in the immediate aftermath and in the coming days did their school proud. They were, to a person, articulate, compassionate and remarkably composed.
And then there is the issue of the "multimedia manifesto" sent by the gunman to NBC. A great deal of criticism has been leveled over the decision of NBC's news division and others to air excerpts from the shooter's video ramblings. While there is no question that seeing these images has been painful for the victim's families, it also brought important information to the public, all of whom are at least secondary victims of the bloodshed. Many of us are tempted when confronted with such unspeakable horror to blame it on a person who just "snaps" and begins firing randomly. Watching the few carefully chosen portions that were aired showed us without question that, while the gunman may not have specifically targeted any or most of his victims, he nevertheless had planned his mission carefully, perhaps over a period of weeks. It is right that we should remember the victims in lieu of giving vent to a madman's ravings. But, if we are to honor these victims' sacrifices by doing what we can to ensure that this does not happen again, we have to understand what caused it in the first place. We can't turn away from evil -- we have to face it down squarely.
