Violence in Virginia
Mahmood Elahi, Iris Street, Ottawa, Canada
The latest shooting by a young Korean student at Virginia Technical College killing 33 fellow students and professors brings to mind the 1991 mindless shootout at the Luby's Restaurant at Killeen, near Houston, Texas where a lone gunman, armed with an assault rifle, shot dead 22 staff and customers. Again on Feb. 28, 1993, another shootout at the Branch Davidian cult's compound near Waco rocked the nation.In an editorial after Waco, the Houston Chronicle railed against the Texan gun culture. Recalling also the massacre at Killeen, the editorial said: "These high-profile slaughters are sickening. But are they really any more so than the slow-motion mayhem going on in virtually every city? "A steady drumbeat of violence plays itself out daily, felling our fellow citizens one by one... But society seems to cruise along, largely oblivious to the depth of the problem, until one of these mega-events occurs and then society goes ballistic." While these observations are largely accurate, society going "ballistic" for gun control may be a pious wish, for most Texans, these bloody shootouts are essentially freak-shows -- something happening to somebody else. Somehow they fail to relate events like Killeen and Waco into their own lives and habits, any more than they do the routine bloodshed on the streets of Dallas and Houston. Perhaps it is because they don't understand or don't care. But perhaps the deeper truth is that Texas doesn't really want to change. Or as Harold Dutton, a former state legislator, remarked: "In Texas, we have this idea that you can mess with my wife and my dog, but don't mess with my pick-up or my rifle." A much more likely outcome may be that the every day, slow-motion shootouts will continue in Texas and there will be more Killeens and Wacos. The confusion and indifference over what to do about the anarchic proliferation of guns is not confined to Texas. In Washington, the Brady Bill (a modest gun control measure named after Ronald Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady who was maimed in the 1981 assassination attempt) was allowed to expire by the earlier Republican-dominated Congress. With Democrats now in control of the House, it is hoped they will revive the bill. The shooting at the Virginia Technical College underscored the absence of gun control in the state. Like Texas, guns can be purchased easily in Virginia and without any background check. It is time for the Americans to wake up to the damage caused by the anarchic proliferation of guns which are increasingly being used by ordinary people to vent their frustration on their fellow citizens. It is time for America to go "ballistic" for gun control.
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