For every thing there is a season.....
Like the rest of the country, my heart is breaking because of the horrors that were visited on the campus of Virginia Tech yesterday. We have family going to school at Va.Tech so yesterday was especially frightening for our household. Several thoughts occured to me yesterday (as details of the shootings trickled out) and I thought I would share them with you.
The first indication of trouble hit my email box at approximately 10:15 in the form of a breaking news alert from the Atlanta Journal Constitution (one of the dozen or so e-newspapers I read). I glanced at the alert and deleted it figure it was just an isolated incident. It was not until Dennis Prager hit the air, that I realized just HOW big it was. Soon after that, the breaking news alerts hit fast and furious, as did the emails from my news groups. Because information was soooo slow to be release and what was coming out was incomplete, so speculated that maybe this was another terrorist attack and that the shooter was Muslim.
I want you to let that sink in...have random attacks by Muslims has become so "common" that people assume that the worst when attacks like this happen?
It didn't take long for the media to blame guns and call for stronger gun control. However, Virginia Tech is already a "gun free zone" and we see how well that worked for them, didn't we? Conversely, what if one of the teachers or a student had a legal hand-gun as well? Would that have stopped the rampage before so many innocents lost their lives? Some are advocating that. While we may never know for sure, there are instances where it has helped minimize the loss of life.
Many are trying to place blame.....the school should have done something more, the police should have responded sooner. However short of being mind readers just what could they have done? Others are saying we should not "politicize" this event. I think John at Powerline covers that question quite succinctly when he says:
"In general, there is nothing wrong with "politicizing" an issue. This is a democracy, and politics is the process we use to resolve conflicts. Important issues of legitimate public concern should be "politicized." When a political group says that an issue shouldn't be "politicized," it generally means that they are on the losing side of the political argument.
Nor is there anything wrong with using a tragedy to support a political argument; it happens all the time, and should. Do you remember, when the Bush administration was being criticized for its allegedly inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, lots of people in the media saying that the event shouldn't be politicized? I don't."
So in the midst of all of this - what is a parent to do? What do they tell their kids? Some say that the kids should follow school policy and comply. Others disagree. I know what I am telling the Junior Logician. We can not live in fear of "what if's". All we can do is mourn and grieve for the lost, pray for their families and thank God for what He has given us. Every day that we are alive is a great gift that we should celebrate. We can not stop those who are intent on doing evil. Nor can we totally avoid evil in this world. Evil is around us. It is how we respond to that evil that separates us. We can either succumb to the evil or we can find the good in the evil situation.
Let us mourn the lost - celebrating the heroism that we saw yesterday. Let us celebrate people like Professor Liviu Librescu - a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life so that his students could escape from the approaching gunman. Let us celebrate Derek O'Dell - a VTech student who was injured by the shooter and yet he (and several classmates) baracaded the door to their classroom to prevent the shooter from coming back in and killing the rest of his classmates. Let us remember all of the lives lost and celebrate the joy that they brought into this world, even if it was for all too brief of a moment.
The first indication of trouble hit my email box at approximately 10:15 in the form of a breaking news alert from the Atlanta Journal Constitution (one of the dozen or so e-newspapers I read). I glanced at the alert and deleted it figure it was just an isolated incident. It was not until Dennis Prager hit the air, that I realized just HOW big it was. Soon after that, the breaking news alerts hit fast and furious, as did the emails from my news groups. Because information was soooo slow to be release and what was coming out was incomplete, so speculated that maybe this was another terrorist attack and that the shooter was Muslim.
I want you to let that sink in...have random attacks by Muslims has become so "common" that people assume that the worst when attacks like this happen?
It didn't take long for the media to blame guns and call for stronger gun control. However, Virginia Tech is already a "gun free zone" and we see how well that worked for them, didn't we? Conversely, what if one of the teachers or a student had a legal hand-gun as well? Would that have stopped the rampage before so many innocents lost their lives? Some are advocating that. While we may never know for sure, there are instances where it has helped minimize the loss of life.
Many are trying to place blame.....the school should have done something more, the police should have responded sooner. However short of being mind readers just what could they have done? Others are saying we should not "politicize" this event. I think John at Powerline covers that question quite succinctly when he says:
"In general, there is nothing wrong with "politicizing" an issue. This is a democracy, and politics is the process we use to resolve conflicts. Important issues of legitimate public concern should be "politicized." When a political group says that an issue shouldn't be "politicized," it generally means that they are on the losing side of the political argument.
Nor is there anything wrong with using a tragedy to support a political argument; it happens all the time, and should. Do you remember, when the Bush administration was being criticized for its allegedly inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, lots of people in the media saying that the event shouldn't be politicized? I don't."
So in the midst of all of this - what is a parent to do? What do they tell their kids? Some say that the kids should follow school policy and comply. Others disagree. I know what I am telling the Junior Logician. We can not live in fear of "what if's". All we can do is mourn and grieve for the lost, pray for their families and thank God for what He has given us. Every day that we are alive is a great gift that we should celebrate. We can not stop those who are intent on doing evil. Nor can we totally avoid evil in this world. Evil is around us. It is how we respond to that evil that separates us. We can either succumb to the evil or we can find the good in the evil situation.
Let us mourn the lost - celebrating the heroism that we saw yesterday. Let us celebrate people like Professor Liviu Librescu - a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life so that his students could escape from the approaching gunman. Let us celebrate Derek O'Dell - a VTech student who was injured by the shooter and yet he (and several classmates) baracaded the door to their classroom to prevent the shooter from coming back in and killing the rest of his classmates. Let us remember all of the lives lost and celebrate the joy that they brought into this world, even if it was for all too brief of a moment.
Labels: VTech Shooting
posted by The Lady Logician at
10:27 AM
1 Comments:
I think we should take this opportunity to recognize that individuals solved this problem, and that government CANNOT. It is the nature of liberal government to believe there is no such thing as evil, and to believe that the nanny state can make everything perfect, for everybody, all the time. THAT is the danger here, not the occasional lone crazy with a weapon. We've already seen what happens when places like VT are made "gun-free zones" by government decree.
J. Ewing
By
Anonymous, at 11:33 AM
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