Someone has spoken, at last!

Here is an article from New York Times OpEd. Finally, somebody has spoken out.
April 19, 2007
Editorial
The Silence of Politicians

There are myriad questions from the evolving tragedy at Virginia Tech. One is how such a gravely disturbed student as this killer could raise heightened concern among the authorities over a year ago, yet manage to proceed unhindered to take 32 lives. But no less pertinent is the question of how, after detailed tracking of the guns purchased for the ghastly spree, the lethal empowerment of such a troubled individual can somehow be pronounced entirely legal under the laws of a civilized nation.

But it certainly seems legal.

The guns wielded by Cho Seung-Hui were traced through the laissez-faire weapons marts of Virginia and found to be legitimately obtained. So, case closed. At least according to most of the nation’s political leadership, so studiously ducking the morning-after question of whether anything serious can be done, or least proposed, about such an appalling situation. The victims at Virginia Tech represent a mere tenth of 1 percent of the 30,000 gunshot deaths each year.

Yet the implicit, hardly sorrow-free lesson for the nation is that beyond the usual calls for prayers and closure, there’s no sense these days for a politician, particularly one running for president, to get into the risky business of even talking about the runaway gun problem.

No one who tracked the last headline-consuming gun tragedies — the Columbine high school massacre and the Washington, D.C., sniper murders — can be surprised as political leaders slide off their obligation to propose answers, or at least candidly discuss the woeful status quo of gun violence.

After those two sprees, possible remedies were proposed. But none were passed as the gun lobby cracked its whip in Washington. The most that happened were delays in the passage of an egregious proposal, signed a safe time afterward by President Bush, that brazenly denied gunshot victims and plagued cities the right to sue the gun industry for negligence.

Politicians should at least have the guts to tell the nation that retrogression is the state of gun control in America. But Congress’s new Democratic majority is a study in caginess, its leaders obviously mindful of the warning — issued by Terry McAuliffe, the former party chairman who is now a principal in Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — to avoid the subject as a third-rail loser. The question in the ’08 campaign is whether major candidates will dare to speak of Virginia Tech as anything more than an occasion to express grief (emphasis added).

V Tech Shooting

As word got around that the killer at Virginia Tech was an Asian man, all Asians in America like us must have been praying that the guy wasn't someone from their own country of origin. There was rumor that the guy was a student from Shanghai, who entered the US on an F1 visa. My intuitive response to the allegation was that it must not be true. As soon as the shooter was positively identified by the police as a South Korean national, the Chinese community (including me) seemed to have been relieved. My intuition has been proven sound, or has it?

Why couldn't a Chinese or Chinese American commit a mass murder? Why couldn't a Shanghainese man suddenly snap and become a cold-blooded killer? Should the Chinese feel relieved about the killing being not a Chinese but a Korean? Can the part of American society who are less savvy about international geography and politics distinguish a Korean from a Chinese? I can't tell the difference between a French and a German just from their looks. To the white American community, the killer has an Asian face, and he looks Asian (just like every Chinese), not Korean. Why should we feel so happy about his not being Chinese or of Chinese descent?

Why should we make a big deal about the killer's racial identity? A white lunatic can take out a whole class of students. What was so odd about a troubled Asian doing the same thing (or copycatting the whole thing)? Certainly, this incident greatly shattered (or confirmed?) the stereotype about Asians in this country, but there can be a bunch of such self-centered, desperate, and violence-prone people (I'd refrain from calling them perverts, because there is always a reason,social or personal, behind their madness) in every society and of every nationality.

If we have to address the racial issues involved in the massacre, let's talk about the first-generation immigrant experience in this country, the hardships they have to endure, and the cultural battle within the immigrant family. Let's not be afraid to renew the debate on gun control. Contrary to what Bush said about finding a later time for policy debate, there's no better time than this to tackle the gun control issue head-on. It is unmistakable how guns has magnified the damage of malicious individual actions. There was a university student in China who killed his four roommates with an ax and hid their bodies in the closet. If he had swung his ax on the students in the classrooms, he wouldn't have been able to kill or injure more than a few before being stopped (or just getting exhausted.) I believe the lesson is loud and clear. It may be impossible to eradicate crimes (and as difficult to provide counseling for every troubled person), but we're definitely able to control the impact of irresponsible individual behaviors by doing away with guns.

Gun manufacturers and their congressional supporters have already had too much blood on their hands.