Henry J. Stern
April 18, 2007

We waited a day for others to have their say about the tragedy at Virginia Tech.   Naturally people have different views about what should be done.   The gun haters say Virginia's lax gun laws made it possible for the shooter to buy the guns easily.  The gun lovers say if the students or teachers had guns they could have stopped him before he killed 32 people.  The police could have locked down the campus but they erroneously believed they had found the murderer.  The university counseling services knew about him but said without an overt act on his part, nothing could be done. His roommates thought he was crazy, but the world is full of nuts.  His parents appear to be hard working dry cleaners.  Who knows how aware they were of their son's murderous proclivities?

Certainly part of the blame falls on Virginia’s extraordinarily lax gun laws.  You can buy a gun every month simply by walking into a shop and showing an I.D.   The Virginia legislature even passed a law, L.2007, ch. 509, called the anti-Bloomberg law, which makes it a felony for a private investigator (Those employed by the City of New York are the targets of this law.) to buy a firearm, not for personal use, which has been sold illegally by a gun shop.   The Old Dominion interprets the Second Amendment as almost absolute, rejects reasonable requirements to promote public safety, and criminalizes the efforts of others to prevent sales which are illegal even under Virginia law.  The killer could not have picked a better state to make himself a walking arsenal.
 
Of course most of the blame belongs on the suicide killer. He fired the shots.  Virginia enabled him to act without difficulty, but so twisted a mind could have bought guns elsewhere.  We are fortunate that the madman killed himself, which seems to be the custom in cases like this.  We will not have to hear the pratings of bleeding hearts that he is not guilty because of insanity, or the absolutist foes of capital punishment who would support him for the rest of his life at public expense, and hope he doesn't kill anyone else because he cannot receive any greater punishment.  If he were insane, they say, he could not be responsible, and if he were sane, he could not have committed the act.  Give the man a chance to be cured, and become a useful member of society.  Sure.  It is also highly unlikely that any faculty will adopt a resolution denouncing the killer or his crime, they save their indignation for the Duke lacrosse team.
 
We note that President Bush flew to the scene and spoke to the students and faculty about the nation's grief at the crime.  Cynics and racists can say that was because the victims were mostly white. We believe he and his staff have learned from Katrina that when a national tragedy occurs, the President should be first on the scene, not last.  But we must learn more from disasters than how to mourn.
 
The shooter is not the only person in this awful chain of events who bears responsibility.  We find considerable fault with the university mental health service, the officials who said nothing could be done because there had been no overt act.  Well, they now have the overt act.  Sadly, they are more concerned with the rights of psychopaths than the rights of the public.
 
This is not a case of a normal or average student suddenly and unpredictably exploding to commit an unspeakable crime.   From what we read, people had known for years that the man was crazy and potentially violent. He left a trail of clues. He showed it in the plays he wrote and his bizarre behavior.  Students actually spoke of the possibility that some day he would be a shooter. They were more prescient than the mental health personnel who were paid to deal with disturbed students.
 
We frequently read about men killing women who had obtained orders of protection from the courts.  Do you think a man who is capable of murdering a woman out of jealousy or rage would be deterred by a piece of paper issued by a court?   There has been case after case in which specific acts of violent behavior have been threatened and predicted, but the authorities took no action because, they explained, that nothing could be done unless there had been an overt act, by which time there was no living person to protect..
 
Every disaster should teach us something about preventing similar occurrences in the future or minimizing casualties.  We predict emergency drills will now be held involving campus lockdowns and better warning systems for stores, offices and colleges.  Perhaps the Post Office should receive special attention.
 
One necessary change would be greater vigilance and initiative by mental health employees.  You have to wait until someone commits a crime to send him to jail, but there is a range of interventions that can be applied to help prevent an explosion.  Anyone who wrote the play, "Richard McBeef", now posted on the internet at the smoking gun.com is clearly in need of outside assistance.  If he resists counseling, that is an indication that the problem is even worse than it may appear.  It is the duty of the university, in loco parentis, to act or to explain fully its failure to act.  Waiting for an overt act is no defense for failure to prevent one that appears to have been so predictable a possibility.
 
There are bound to be high-level inquiries into the tragedy, what did the police do or fail to do, why didn’t the university president take action, who were, or were not, notified and why the students and faculty were not told that there was a killer loose on campus, even if it was not certain that this was the case.  How long should it have taken the police to determine that student Thornhill was highly unlikely to be a double murderer. This case will be thoroughly ruminated (digested four times, as by a cow) by the media in the months to come.  Michael Moore might make a movie as to how this is the fault of the "rich kids" whom the killer blamed for his distress. He has already done Columbine.
 
Three annoying thoughts remain, with which you may or may not agree.  It's all right, either way..
 
 1. Explosions and suicide attacks occur in Iraq every day, killing just as many innocent people, including children.  It is not primarily America's fault when Iraqis kill each other, although we certainly have some responsibility for the situation.
This is not intended to start a discussion about the war -  it is just that this brings home the tragedy.   What to do about it is another matter entirely.
 
2. A system which protects killers until they commit murder is seriously flawed.  If the shooter were a terrorist, muttering about jihad, there would have been much earlier intervention.  If he threatened an airliner, he would be arrested on the spot.

 We must be more aware of the dangers to others caused by mental illness.  People should report threats, and professionals should be more aggressive in dealing with these cases in order to avert tragedy.   For example, if a head of state says he will destroy another country with nuclear weapons, that means something, whether he has the current capacity to do so or is the process of acquiring such capacity.   Nations who ignore such threats do so at their peril.  On the local side, authorities who ignore threats and psychotic behavior, or act as if they were powerless to deal with them, endanger the public they are sworn to protect.

3. Justice William O. Douglas wrote in 1949, "There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."   He was a liberal with sanity.
 
 
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