TheVirginia Tech Shootings

Goodness. What the hell is wrong with people, in this country, with Western society, with this world? What is UP with the violence?

I got to work this morning and was greeted by my boss saying "Did you hear about the shootings at Virginia Tech? It's on T.V. There's 22 dead."

You know what came to my mind first? Students protesting the war or something, and getting violent, you know breaking stuff, throwing rocks around. Then the police showing up and confronting them with tear gas and cubs. Then, the logically consecutive man to man fight and agression between students and police, which would, very probably, end up in a dead students.

So I asked: "What? How? Why?" My boss had no answer.

So the second thing that popped in my head was students fighting, you know how that kind of conflict can escalate, and you never know who has a gun and is willing to use it. Maybe gangs.

So I tried to be more elocuent: "What do you mean a shooting? The police or students against students?" "I have no idea."

It wasn't until then that the memory of that documentary about the Columbine High School massacre came to my head. One student armed with a gun killing other students and then killing himself, a pattern that now seems repetitive in this country, and, it seems, no where else, did not come to my mind until the third try!

I think that says a lot about me, and therefore about my background, my culture, my country, all of us ... and about this culture, this country, and all of us here.

Really. I seem to have been in Panama mind set. If someone said in Panama there were 22 students dead at la Universidad, who wouldn't think of el Fer 29 "tirando piedras" protesting something and it getting totally out of the hands of a repressive police force (read antimotines)? So, what does that say about our country? Or about Latinoamerica, for that matter, because I think the scene applies to all of the other Latin countries too? Hell, it even applies to China.

But, then again, given that the scenario is Virgina, U.S.A., and not anywhere else, the first thing that should have come to my mind should have been Columbine, ergo the student shoots others and then kills himself situation. And, what does that say about our country? Yeah, I have, recently, started to talk about the U.S. in the first person. I have lived here for five years now. I finished growing up here. I feel certain social responsibility for what goes on inside these borders, and for what goes on outside these borders because of us. And I am not sitting around about it, by the way. I have become as much of a political/social activist as I have been able to, mind you. But that is besides the point. When will we, this country, figure out that guns are too freaking accessible even if the president supports the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," as an individual's right, and not as the right of "el pueblo" to rise to arms to defend itself against the tyranny of an unjust government, or an exteranl invasion. Gun politics in the U.S. are ridiculously bureocratic and are not getting us anywhere despite of the huge rate of gun violence, and possibly because of gun culture, which is so ingrained in American society. When will we realize that the violence inside our borders is not only spilling out to the rest of the world, but running rampant inside?

I am not sure why this Columbine type of thing doesn't happen in Latin America. We are embedded in the same violent media that dehumanizes our children before they can tell right from wrong. Then, what's the differnce? What is the rest of the world doing right, or the U.S. doing so wrong that these kind of thing is becoming so common? Oh, please, if you have any theories - share them! Something's gotta be done in here. Soon.