Virginia Tech

It seems almost completely pointless to point it out, but the terrible, tragic events at Virginia Tech are going to be headline news for at least the next few days, and the subject of fierce, emotionally charged debate for quite some time. And I am not sure what will be gained by all the forthcoming debate. School shootings in the US are not unique, and the simple truth that other shootings have shown is that there is remarkably little that can be learned from these spree killings.

Let me explain - the first, knee jerk reaction for me, as someone who lives in a country mercifully free of public ownership of firearms is to claim that this wouldn't have happened if guns were banned in the US. But that is just so much bollocks. Guns are banned in this country - it does not stop mistfits going out and committing (and, mercifully, on occasion failing to commit) mass murder. The relative fragility of the human form means that there is no shortage of ways and means to kill and kill again, if someone is determined to do so.

If the killer turns out to have been socially ostracised or bullied, then there will be discussions out peer group relations in schools and universities. Is is right to try to stop (or at least minimise) bullying? Yes. Is it possible to stop bullying altogether? Probably not. And even if you could stop bullying, would it end mass murders? Judging by the likes of Charles Whitman and Thomas Hamilton, almost certainly not.

Could the alarm have been raised earlier at Virginia Tech? Two hours does seem to be a worringly long time to wait to alert people to the terrible danger there were in. But then again, at what point did the authorities realise that they were dealing with a gun rampage? It is not the automatic assumptions when faced with a shooting death. And what, precisely, could they do about it? As Martin rightly points out, there is no way to safely evacuate thousands of people when they are under fire from a maniac.

There will be many different examinations of events, and many different conclusions. Some of them will be ill-thought out, some of them will be politically motivated, and some of them will be lost in the terrible emotions surrounding these horrific events. But I would be deeply surprised if any great truth emerges from these nightmarish murders.

Because the simple truth is there is nothing that could stop this gunman, and his predecessors, if he was truly determined to kill his peers and other strangers. The only small comfort to take from these terrible events is that they are mercifully rare. Those who are evil enough to commit mass murder are few and far between but this is the only real reason for these sorts of crimes: people do this because they want to. And there is next to nothing that can be done to stop them. All this talk of reasons and all the attempts to blame those other than the murderers themselves hides the bleak truth that there is real darkness and lethal misanthropy in some people.