Virginia Tech Considered

David Aikman

David Aikman considers the factors surrounding the massacre and makes a suggestion for workable gun control.

More than two weeks have passed since the bloodbath on the campus of Virginia Tech University (officially Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) in Blacksburg on April 16 2007. The President of the U.S., George W. Bush, expressed horror at what happened and the Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, returned early from a trip to Japan, declaring in Virginia a state of emergency. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is, of course, Korean, sent his condolences, as did Pope Benedict XVI. An entire army of counselors descended on the campus from various corners of the U.S., and some of them are still there.

Much of the world press drew predictable conclusions: the Virginia Tech massacre, European newspapers said, would not have happened had it not been so hideously easy to obtain guns in the U.S.; or, the culture that has romanticized gun-ownership and gun-usage played into the hands of a deranged, alienated psychopath. Britain’s Economist tried to straddle the fence with the subhead: “The horror might have happened anyway. But gun control might have made it less easy.”

It is certainly true that the worst gun massacre in U.S. history would not have happened if its perpetrator, Korean-born student Seung-Hui Cho, had not been able to purchase the weapons to carry out the vicious act. But according to U.S. federal law, he should not have been permitted to purchase the guns in the first place. Federal gun laws updated in the 1990s deny the right to purchase a firearm to anyone considered to be suffering from a mental illness. In response to incidents of Cho’s stalking other students—no charges were filed—and a series of bizarre behaviors on campus, Cho was indeed declared by a Virginia special court to be of psychological disposition that was a danger to himself and others. He should have been denied permission to purchase either the Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol or the Walther .22 semi-automatic that he used in the shootings. But by a tragic bureaucratic fluke, the Virginia state regulations define mental incompetence in firearms purchase cases as requiring evidence of involuntary commission to a psychiatric facility, or a ruling of “mental incapacity.” The special court judgment in Mr. Cho’s case included neither.

Even more bizarrely, several states refuse to turn over to the federal government medical records that reveal bizarre psychological behavior. Evidently, they consider the privacy rights of mental patients to outweigh in importance the rights of society to be protected from occasional deranged actions by mental patients; it is a classic case of important constitutional rights canceling each other out.

All domestic and international observers seem, so far, to concur that the Virginia Tech massacre is unlikely in any way to restrict the rights of ordinary American citizens to obtain firearms, including hand-guns. Most Americans favor overwhelmingly a continuation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, “A well-regulated militia, being essential to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Well-known lobby groups like the National Rifle Association ensure that the political opponents of people who would like severely to control handgun usage, are well funded. It is a political truism in the U.S. that opposing the National Rifle Association can amount to political suicide for a politician. In fact, though, the National Rifle Association is itself emphatic that existing gun laws should be more effectively enforced. It strongly supports a ban on gun sales to people who are judged mentally impaired and in particular to anyone who has have undergone involuntary admission into a mental health facility.

There were many ironies present in the Virginia Tech massacre. One of the most tragic victims was Dr. Liviu Librescu, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who died trying to barricade the door to his classroom while his students escaped through the classroom window. Several students, on hearing that a massacre was happening, immediately sensed that the perpetrator might be Mr. Cho, whose surly, silent demeanor and whose truly disturbing essays as an English student had worried many of his fellow students. Why it took two hours for the university authorities to alert faculty and students by e-mail, or any other means, that a tragic shooting had taken place at 7:15 that morning remains a mystery.

In the interval between the shooting of the first two students and his return to the campus, Mr. Cho had time to go to the post office and mail off to the NBC TV network his deranged and egotistical suicide video film containing an 1,800-word rant about “rich kids,” “debauchery,” and “deceitful charlatans.” There was also a suicide note in Cho’s dormitory room with similar nihilistic sentiments.

Mr. Cho was a 23-year-old immigrant to the U.S. from South Korea who had arrived in America when he was eight. His parents owned and operated a dry-cleaning establishment in northern Virginia, an occupation so normal for Korean immigrants it is almost a stereotype. There was some speculation in South Korea that Mr. Cho’s psychological problems may have stemmed from early difficulties in his speech development. American newspapers in the days after the massacre also noted that Korean-Americans are typically subjected to two mutually opposed social pressures: the Korean community esteems and promotes obedience and conformity to cultural and family cohesiveness; the surrounding American culture constantly reinforces the values of individualism and differentness. Emotional tensions even of this variety, however, are certainly no predictors of psychopathic behavior.

In the end, perhaps the greatest irony of the Virginia Tech massacre is that the blame for its occurrence has ended up at the place it started: the enigmatic Mr. Cho.

Could the university authorities have warned students about a dangerous incident on campus in time to warn professors and students of a psychopath at large? Perhaps. Could the Blacksburg mental health professionals have taken stronger action to restrain Mr. Cho after investigating his campus behavior and English compositions? Perhaps. Would other students or professors have been able to tackle Mr. Cho if they had been permitted to carry guns on campus? Perhaps. The fact that the entire campus is a gun-free zone didn’t stop Mr. Cho from acting out his vengeful fantasies.

At any rate, the U.S. is exceedingly unlikely, any time soon, to tighten severely the right to buy firearms. Tragically, neither Mr. Cho’s shootings nor indeed any further incidents of mass shootings by Cho copy-cats will curtail firearms access by virtually anyone who wants to obtain them. And tragically, too, the worst civilian firearms massacre in American history almost certainly will not be the last.

No one, however, seems to have suggested an obvious alternative to changing or abolishing the Second Amendment: enforcing it by requiring that all gun-owners be enrolled in a local militia. Watchdog sergeants and corporals in such organizations would not take long to observe that Mr. Cho would not be a soldier any man or woman would like to fight alongside. Peer-group disapproval, in effect, would be a better filter to keep psychopaths like Mr. Cho away from firearms than mental health tests devised by the entire faculty of Harvard Medical School. I’ll take the peer-group approach.  

Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, Good and Evil, Society, Fri 11 May 2007