February 14, 2008

• The unthinkable has happened only about 75 miles from where I live. You hear stories about school shootings over the country and wonder what it would be like if it happens in your community, but today  it happened at Northern Illinois University. Although I did not go to NIU, I have spent some time there because my best friend went there from 1995-1998. I was stunned and saddened when I came home from work and heard about the shootings. For me I've always thought that school shootings happened in some gun happy southern state or in a heavily Republican state. Things like this aren't supposed to happen in a blue state like Illinois on a red day such as Valentine's Day. Yet, tonight the blue state is feeling a somber blue after this senseless tragedy. I could go on about how sad this makes me feel but the reality is that my sadness is nothing compared with the students at the school or the family and friends of the victims.

  We are left to wonder why, although light is usually shed on these sort of things in the coming weeks. Then the debate turns to what can be done to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. The NRA and gun rights activists will say that we need to loosen gun laws and give people more and easier access to guns so that the students can defend themselves. I can't disagree more; the solution to gun violence is not more guns; its finding  a way to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have guns. You look at the history of school shootings, like Columbine or Virginia Tech among others and its always the kids with emotional or mental problems who do things like this. Of course, beefing up security is always a thought, but from what I hear NIU officials said that they had done that recently in response to the VT shootings and some other unrelated threats in December. And campus police were on the scene literally within 2 minutes of the start of the shootings, which when you think about it is a pretty damn quick response time.

  Although one school shooting is one too many, we are lucky these mass public shootings don't happen more often. We live in a gun happy society with a lot of large public gatherings; whether its school, work, sporting events, carnivals, shopping malls or many other things. Of course 2 weeks ago there were six ladies murdered in a robbery in Tinley Park, IL which is a town only about 20 minutes from me. Still there was a clear motive of robbery in that case. Its still tragic and sad. But, we know the reason behind it. These school shootings seem to be done by mentally sick people with sick and sometimes unclear motives. I guess in the end, its all still murder and its all still tragic. Damn.

  • 11:25 pm
  • 1 Comment