In the weeks following the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007, I wrote my thoughts in a blog. I found myself thinking more and more about in the wake of the Tuscan shootings 2011 Jan 08. Upon re-reading it this week, I found that a great many of the points I made are still relevant.

The text of the blog is below

Negative Energy

I think sufficient time has passed since the Virginia Tech incident for me to make a few points.  Hopefully, now that it isn’t on every freakin’ channel ever minute of the day, we can close our emotional wounds and look at this unpleasant event somewhat objectively.

Remember that long, self-aggrandizing, ramble I sent out a while back about the Power of Prayer?  Well apparently you people are not doing your part by passing along my egotistical, incoherent e-mails and blogs because Seung-Hui Cho didn’t get the word.  This Bozo is a prime example of what happens to people who wallow in NEGATIVE energy.  He and the GG Allins* of the world are examples of people who are completely unable to accept responsibility for their own actions.  They constantly project their own failings outward toward the world at large until all that negativity consumes them to the point where they are (in my humble opinion) no longer human.  How does this happen?  As compassionate, feeling people, it would be far too easy to fall into the finger pointing trap and play the blame game in the wake of these horrific events.

• It’s the legislature’s fault for not passing anti-gun legislation. 
• It’s the NRA’s (one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington) fault for not letting the legislature pass anti-gun legislation.
• It’s the gun shop owner’s fault for selling him the gun. 
• It’s the school’s fault for letting that maniac enroll.
• It’s the health care system’s fault for not proving adequate screening and cost effective health care for mental illness.
• It’s the parent’s fault for not raising him right, for not recognizing his problems and not getting him help before he snapped.

 So much blame, so little time… 

Let me start with the guns.  Our Forefathers provided us the means to defend ourselves through the Second Amendment.  Having read it, I believe it was their intention - 200 years ago - to provide us the means to overthrow an unruly government – much the same way that the colonists organized and gained their independence from England.  Just as an aside - the boat’s already sailed on that one.  Over the last 200 years we’ve given up way too many rights as we fall further and further into the governments trap.  We do this with the false hope that they can actually legislate away Natural Selection and protect us from our own stupidity.  Case in point: seatbelt laws, helmet laws, drug laws, etc.  To quote one of the wisest men I’ve ever met “…believing legislation is always the answer while large corporations keep giving us cancer…”  But, that’s a soap box for another day.  As I was saying, the Second Amendment was intended to provide the People with the means to defend themselves and feed their families.  (It was not intended to provide sport hunters the means to slaughter unsuspecting woodland creatures for fun but, once again, that’s a soap box for another day.)  In recent years the casualties and fatalities have been increasing in these mass shooting incidents.  I believe it has less to do with a shift in our collective morals and more to with an increase in population and proliferation of fire arm technology.  In the past, these mass murders were called ax murders.  The ax (being less efficient than a gun) slowed these knuckle-heads down a little bit.  It didn’t take the potential victims long to catch on to the maniac’s intentions and disarm him.  However, at the risk of sounding like a cliché, “Axes don’t kill people.  People kill people.” 

Is the NRA a way too powerful lobby in Washington?  Yes.  Would I have it any other way? No.  Our justice system was designed under the theory that it was better to have 100 guilty men go free than to have one innocent man jailed.  Not too bad a concept in a time when your average citizen lived miles away from his closest neighbor and the average American life-span is 30 to 40 years.  Mom stayed home and was able to more closely monitor her children’s influences.  It’s a scarier thought in this day and age of over population, two working parent and single working parent households, not to mention longer life spans – more time for people to loose it.  I own two handguns and a shotgun.  I’m not giving them up.  Not as long as I live and work in the same vicinity of other human beings.

You can’t blame the gun shop owner either.  As far as I can tell he followed all the guidelines laid out by federal law.  There was nothing in Cho’s background (according to the Feds) that should have prevented him from legally possessing a fire arm.  It was only after the incident that it was discovered that he lied on the mental health question.  There is no law that says the gun shop owner has to make customers take lie detector tests.   

As for the Mental Health Professionals; should they have known he was dangerous and locked him up before he snapped?  Unfortunately, you can’t lock someone up (Guantanamo Bay being the exception that proves the rule) because of suspicion.  Mental Health Professionals are bound by “Privilege.” Unless the patient actually admits to a plan of violent action or confesses to actively abusing someone, communications between Professionals and their patients are private.  And I for one am glad they are.  Were it not for that privacy, I might never have sought out the help (most would say) I desperately needed.  I’ve said it before, there’s value in sitting in a neutral space with another human being (one well versed in human nature) who has absolutely no stake in your success or failure outside that room.  Someone whose job it is to listen, not to judge.  And if this person can dispense some objective advice along the way, so much the better.

On to the school; I know nothing about college admission standards and practices beyond the fact that if you’re a white male from a good home with high grades and test scores you have less of a chance of getting in than a minority with lower grades and test scores thanks to bullshit rules like “affirmative action.”  In this society everyone (whether you were born here or immigrated is entitled to an education – it’s the American Dream) But I do know that had he been denied admittance to Virginia Tech based on his mental health, the ACLU or some other bleeding heart, lets help the underdog group would have been up their ass so fast they wouldn’t have known what hit them.  Cho would have been painted as the victim of discrimination, not the self-pitying, narcissistic, ass hole that he really was.  I can’t help but believe that the same people blaming the school for the incident would be on the same line with the ACLU persecuting the school had he been denied enrolment.

Well, that just leaves the parents.  All I can say is there are no guarantees.  I was raised by loving parents who guided me down a path of tolerance and morality.  I was taught not to judge people by rumor, race or gender.  The lesson is never completely forgotten - just occasionally overlooked when a racial slur bypasses the brain and exits the mouth in the heat of a moment.  I was told I should get to know individual people before judging for myself weather I should associate with them, not to distance myself from them based on their appearance or ethnicity.  The same parents who (somewhat) successfully taught me this lesson failed to get it through to my brother.  The same parents who taught me right from wrong and to give of one’s self in spite of our own selfishness, failed to impart the same lesson to my brother.  The bottom line in the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate is this:  Regardless of how good a parent you are or how nurturing or loving the environment is, there are people in this world who are built messed up and wrong.  No amount of parenting and nurturing is going to fix them.

Now that the blame game is over and there is no clear winner, let me lay down the truth.  Life Sucks.  As long as human beings have free will, there are people who will choose to do evil.  The only way to prevent it is to completely strip everyone of free will.  As a human being I find this solution completely intolerable…and so should you.  You can’t legislate away stupidity or Natural Selection.  As long as human beings have gas, there’s always going to be some dumb son-of-bitch who wants to set his farts on fire in the living room and ends up burning down the house.  As long as we have weapons, people will use them to commit crimes and horrible acts of violence.  As long as we have free will, you can’t change any of these facts.  All you can do is focus on the positive things in your own life, keep yourself sane and move on.

When you have a moment, please review the Power of Prayer theory and pass it on.  And keep positive thoughts in your minds for the families and students of Virginia Tech.

* NOTE: I realize that GG Allin is a very dated reference to most of you since he died (of a heroin overdose) in the summer of 1993.  However, his brother Merle is still beating the dead horse of GG’s memory by promoting their band (The Murder Junkies) and the extremely negative message GG liked to beat people over the head with…literally…I’ve seen concert footage…he beat people over the head.

For those of you who don’t know who this asshole was, let give you a brief history;

My first introduction to GG Allin was on the old Geraldo Rivera Show on FOX.  Don’t ask me why the hell I was watching Geraldo.  The man irritates the hell out of me.  I think it was one of those, “I can’t find the TV remote and I’m too lazy to get up and change the channel.  This will be over in an hour and hopefully my IQ wont drop to an irreversible level in the mean time…” situations.  But I digress.  Geraldo, being a paragon of high concept news and information, was doing a show on the underground music scene.  And he paraded this chuckle-head out on the stage as an example of the extremes.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that GG (Punk Rocker and Performance Artist) was an idiot, but the fact that he was center stage on a (pre Jerry Springer) day time talk show spouting racist and hateful bullshit blew my mind.  It made me wonder what rock he crawled out from under.  How difficult would it be to get him back under it?  How long would it take to cordon off one square mile around it?  And, how much concrete would it take to encase that entire area (like they did to Chernobyl when it had it’s melt down) so that no more contaminated mutants could crawl out from under it?  But, as always, I digress…

Years later, I found a movie on amazon.com called “Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies.”  It was a documentary about GG’s life and music.  Naturally (being the sick pain in the ass that I am) I bought it.  Among the biographical information revealed about this King of Rock and Roll, in the movie was the fact that he violated his parole in Michigan by traveling to New York to make the film.  Incidentally, he had been convicted in Michigan for assaulting a female minor on stage during a concert.  As disturbing as it is, I highly recommend it to anyone with kids.  It is a prime example of why parents (no matter how much they trust their kids) need to be vigilant.  Parents need to constantly monitor the influences that their children (especially the ones they choose for themselves) are exposed to.  This is the best way to make sure they don’t become desensitized to the brutality that exists in the world today.  I’m not saying wrap them in cotton and put them on a shelf.  Just pay attention the music they listen to, the TV shows and movies they watch and the video games they play.  And if you ever have the opportunity to watch “Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies” available on DVD through Amazon.com) do so!  It’s important to know people like him exist.  Even though he’s been dead for 14 years, as it turns out GG Allin still has (present tense) a HUGE underground following.  Don’t believe me…check out the “Official Site of the True King of Rock and Roll,” www.ggallin.com

It was updated by the guardian of his memory (his brother Merle) in April of this [2007] year.