DisSuggs4u

So, all of the talk from US news outlets and water coolers is revolving around the shootings that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech yesterday. Over thirty people were killed when some nutjob with a pistol decided to chain a campus building shut and then off a bunch of their fellow students and teachers before feeding himself a lead salad.

All of the reactions to this event I have seen or heard have been similar to:

• “Can you believe it?”
• “This is just horrible. How can a thing like this happen?”
• “I am in complete shock. What a tragedy.”

Truth be told, it is sad and unfortunate that this occurred. And I truly feel for the family and friends of the victims of this heinous act. It will take a very long time for their psychological wounds to heal, if the ever do.

I, however, am not all that phased about this — primarily because I tend to look upon things of this nature with more of a holistic perspective. Yes, it is a horrible event which should have never occurred. But how does this event compare to, say, the multiple, multiple times 30+ people have been killed in Iraq over the last four years? Or, the hundreds in the Darfur conflict?

Or, better yet, the tens of hundreds of people who are stripped of life after losing the battle with cancer.

Yet this school shooting is what gets people all up in arms?

I imagine that a large part of the (American) public’s reaction to this is that it happened “in America.” After all, how can something like this happen here? Are we not protected from these types of things?

The truth is, that is a pretty naive perspective. We are no more “protected” from these types of things (or worse) than we are of an asteroid falling out of the sky. The difference is that our society is a bit more civilized that some parts of the world, so these events do not happen very often… but they do still happen.

Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, life will go on.