Monday, April 16 scared me for many different reasons. The first is the sheer number of deaths: 33. That is more than that of the Columbine shootings in 1999 and the University of Texas sniper shootings in 1966 combined. And the fact that this happened on a college campus scares me even more.
Any college campus could have been a target regardless of size, location, politics or prestige. This issue affects us all. The second reason I'm scared is that people will use this as an excuse to attack gun rights, which is a mistake.
My point of view about gun rights is in the minority, and although many disagree with me, this is an important point of view to consider. There was a point in my life where I was strongly opposed to firearms. Guns are dangerous, as evidenced by this tragedy.
I openly mocked acquaintances who were National Rifle Association members. How could something so dangerous have any use?
The idea itself is contradictory. But the fact of the matter is that guns have an important use. If every single firearm in the country could be seized overnight my argument would be different, but that's not going to happen.
Currently, there is still wild speculation about why the shooter did this and I will not contribute to that. However, we do know one thing to be true: someone who kills 33 people in what can only be described as a planned mass execution would have done something very, very bad with or without a gun. The same can be said for many, if not most gun crimes.
In 1966, Charles Whitman described his total inability to control his violent actions in a suicide note. There is an old clichAc that holds truth: guns don't kill people, people kill people.
There were acts of great violence and malice long before there were firearms and they continue today. Gunpowder changed nothing fundamentally in how humans treat each other.
I changed my mind about guns when I realized that my fear was not of guns or of law-abiding people around me who owned and carried them.
What I was afraid of was what truly dangerous people might do with them. It is safe to say that this man, Cho Seung-Hui, was a dangerous man.
The sad fact is that there are dangerous people in this world. We cannot escape this reality, just as we cannot escape the reality that there are guns in this world. That doesn't mean that people cannot live safely with guns.
Twice as many people drown in home pools than die in firearm accidents almost every year. There is a responsibility that comes with owning a gun, and there are millions of people who live with that responsibility. There are also thousands of people in this country who have used guns to protect themselves.
I am not suggesting that what happened this week should spur us all into a pro-gun frenzy. Gun ownership is a choice and choosing not to own a firearm is fine.
I challenge anyone to go target shooting and not enjoy themselves. Then maybe you won't laugh so hard when you see a Charlton Heston movie. Or more importantly, maybe you won't judge gun owners because of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
