"Why did this happen?" is one of the many questions surrounding the tragedy of 32 innocent deaths in Blacksburg, Va.
Like the Columbine incident, people are recalling what seems like an endless line of red flags noticed in the perpetrator (I refuse to recall his name while writing about this, not because his life didn't matter, but only because it adds to the unwitting glorification of his act).
It was the act of an unstable person. Former classmates and professors of his recall how uneasy he made them, how he always wrote of violence and alienated himself?
So who's fault was it? Was it the fault of the professors who knew he had issues but never did anything beyond removing him from class an recommending counseling? Was it the fault of the classmate who suspected he had violent capabilities and did nothing? Is it the filmmakers who made the gratuitously violent movies with which he was so obsessed?
I think, as with the Columbine, a vast majority of the blame is on the indvidual how commited the act. He was encouraged to seek counseling, but refused.
Although, I strongly believe that society, as a whole, does share a percentage of the blame.
We have become immune to violence. Top grossing movies which glorify murder and torture such as Saw and it's successive sequels, TV shows that show graphic depictions of wounds and corpses, war movies which depict decapitation, disembowelment, and other mortalities of battle. These have all become acceptable. People demand realism in movies. Movies aren't about realism -- they're about escapism, they were originally inteded to capture the imagination. How can you use your imagination when the story being told is showing all the details?
He sent a package to NBC, containing vidoes, photographs and writtings alluding to his rampage. These depicted him in poses remeniscant of movie posters for the blood-bath films he was so fond of.
Now, before anyone sits there and says I'm conradicting myself or digressing, read on. I'm not saying these movies were the reason he was disturbed. We're talking about an already disturbed individual who was encouraged by these movies. His already warped mind watched these movies. Going off the deep end here, I'm tempted to say that perhaps he even studied these films, gleaning ideas until they came to a head in the days leading up to April 16th.
Like i said, he carries a good portion of the blame. And possibly, his liking for the macabre was a symptom of his problems, though I can say for a fact, they didn't help him.
(As I write this, I am remindind of a verse from the KJV of the bible:
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. [Matt. 7:18])
As for what NBC did with the package? They aired it, of course. They aired some of the pictures, experpts of the writtings. So now he is imortalized. Who will remember his victims, though. After the media storm is over, and VT graduation has come and gone? Will it be his name on a vast majority of the lips of people? Of course it will, the media will focus on him. They will inadvertantly make him a martyr for those outcasts and twisted individuals who want to be remembered for something big. A majority of them won't act, but in his act, he took 32 people with him. One person did this. That's all it takes.
The following have been identified amongst those killed. I will add the rest of the names to the list
- Ross Abdallah Alameddine
- Brian Roy Bluhm
- Ryan Christopher Clark
- Austin Michelle Cloyd
- Matthew Gregory Gwaltney
- Caitlin Millar Hammaren
- Jeremy Michael Herbstritt
- Emily Jane Hilscher
- Jarrett Lee Lane
- Matthew Joseph La Porte
- Henry J. Lee
- Liviu Librescu
- Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan
- Lauren Ashley McCain
- Daniel Patrick O'Neil
- Juan Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz
- Minal Hiralal Panchal
- Daniel Alejandro Perez
- Michael Steven Pohle, Jr.
- Julia Kathleen Pryde
- Mary Karen Read
- Reema Joseph Samaha
- Waleed Mohamed Shaalan
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