Ten years ago this coming Tuesday, on May 20th, 1998, fifteen year-old Kipland "Kip" Kinkel killed his parents.
The next morning, at 7:55 a.m., he arrived at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon carrying three weapons – a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle, a .22 caliber handgun, and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol. As he walked down the school’s hallway heading towards the cafeteria he shot Ben Walker and Ryan Atteberry.
When he reached the cafeteria, where as many as 400 students were gathered, he calmly emptied out the remainder of the fifty-round clip from the handgun and one round from the pistol. By the time Kinkel was wrestled to the ground by five classmates, one of whom had been shot, one student was dead – Mikael Nickolauson, who had just days before enlisted in the Oregon National Guard – and twenty-five others were wounded.
Just nine minutes after arriving at school, Kinkel was placed into custody. Another student – Ben Walker – would die of his wounds later that morning.
Each moment we live never was before and will never be again.
And yet what we teach children in school is 2 + 2 = 4 and Paris is the capital of France.
What we should be teaching them is what they are.
We should be saying: “Do you know what you are?
You are a marvel.
You are unique.
In all the world, there is no other child exactly like you.
In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child exactly like you.
You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven.
You have the capacity for anything.
Yes, you are a marvel.” ~ Pablo Casals [Cello player, Conductor 1876 - 1973]
(Posted as a new diary because the diary where I originally mentioned the topic was deleted)
As much as I hate to admit it, extremely strict gun control probably would reduce the frequency of mass shootings. I say this as someone who is strongly opposed to virtually all gun control. Just as monitoring all phone calls and e-mails would prevent a lot of crime, I accept that taking guns away from people would also prevent a lot of crime. But I don't support gun confiscation any more than I support a pervasive surveillance society.
What I DO support is getting to the bottom of these violent crimes.
MSNBC is reporting a shooting at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL that occurred about 3:00 PM CST. Local hospitals have been advised to expect up to 15 victims. No confirmation yet of any fatalities. Initial reports are that a gunmen with a shotgun opened fire in a geology class on campus. The gunmen may still be at large. Evening classes have been cancelled and the campus is on lockdown.
UPDATE: Link to MSNBC story here. Reports are that the shooting occurred in Cole Hall.
UPDATE 2 (4:27 PM CST): CNN is now reporting that 2 people have been shot and several injured. The gunman is reportedly dead.
Some more sad news today. Shortly after 2pm today, at least two teens shot six people as they got off a school bus. It looks like 2007 is ending in a flurry of violence on the homefront. This story talks about a "gang-related argument" but there's not much to go on at this point. The students were returning home from Mojave High School. All six victims were taken to the hospital, two are in critical condition. The shooters remain at large. Let's hope that all six pull through and that we get no more of these incidents in this season of peace. I cant help but feeling a sense of national despair. I know Omaha and Colorado and Las Vegas are different stories but it's hard to keep from feeling we live in broken times. If you have any further news please post.
The House is holding hearings about the evils of rap music. Haven’t we been here before? There was Tipper Gore’s anti-rock campaign of 1985, and Lieberman and Clinton’s noise for the last few years about video games. Don’t these people have anything important to do, like end the war, lower crime, improve education, save our infrastructure, deal with global warming...nahhh, you get more airtime attacking hip-hop.
Republicans AND Democrats like to vilify popular culture, good or bad-—it’s a potential vote-getter, and you don’t have to deal with the real causes of violence in our country, like the fact that we have more guns than people. Rappers and video game companies don’t have a lobby. The NRA is going to beat "NWA" every time.
Does the price of a small domestic massacre matter?
Is $8 million a fair price for 33 dead and 17 injured? The price does not even make a nick in the trillions we are paying for a non-domestic bloodbath in the sand; how could a measly $8 million matter?
This diary explores the cost of only one small, domestic massacre. Only one Bad Guy with a coupla guns, about 175 rounds of ammunition, and a depthless rage.
This killing spree, this small domestic massacre, is different for me only because the bull's-eye was painted where it mattered most.
Last night, The Dave Matthews Band and other artists performed at Virginia Tech. The concert was designed to serve as both a remembrance of those killed and injured on campus in April 2007, and as a defiant affirmation of life for the people spiritually decimated by the shooter’s actions.
The Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Phil Vassar, and Nas have graciously offered to Virginia Tech a free concert for the members of the university community. ... It’s about a celebration of spirit. ... a way to help students, faculty and other[s] ... move forward in the aftermath of the April tragedy at Virginia Tech.
-- Virginia Tech concert website
I want to tell you about Rapunzel.
She did not die on campus that day in April. Neither did her father. So I was lucky. I didn’t have to join the thousands of grieving and celebrating people in Lane Stadium last night. I didn’t have to listen to Dave Matthews sing for my daughter.
Shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings, I wrote a diary entitled Why Gender Matters: Putting the VA Tech Shootings in Perspective. I felt this was an important perspective to analysze what happened in Blacksburg because gender and the impact of male violence is so prevelant in our society and we may be missing a crucial element here in ending mens' violence against women, children, and other men. It is my hope that someday men will look to each other, step up, and act in positive healthy ways to end this crisis.
The following is a YouTube presentation of Jackson Katz, a leading anti-sexism educator. He recently received an award from the Western Mens' Resource Center and gave the keynote speech.
I mentioned some of his work in my diary but felt you all should see & hear what he's really all about.
Even though it has been conclusively documented that the Virginia Tech shooter did not own a single video game and did not play them, the shootings are of course once again sparking the anti-video game hysteria that so categorized our response to the columbine shooting.
I went running this evening and had time to think over and reflect on a lot of things and there about a half dozen diaries I want to write right now, but I will start with the first one, and then post others tomorrow. My first subject is the Virginia Tech Massacre and how pro-gun control lost the debate over Virginia Tech being used an impetus for more strict gun laws.
Even in the wake of a shooting as horrific as the Virginia Tech massacre, the gun lobby still looms very large in Washington. Neither the congressional leadership nor any of the leading presidential candidates have indicated that they're going to bring up gun control legislation that could prevent guns from getting into the hands of people like Cho Seung-Hui - or the criminals who used guns to kill 11,624 Americans in 2004 alone. "I hope there's not a rush to do anything," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.
It's not that most Democrats think that common sense gun control measures don't make sense. It's that they've bought into the notion (peddled aggressively by the National Rifle Association) that any support at all for gun control is political suicide.
But public opinion data suggests that the gun lobby has played only a very small role in determining election outcomes; indeed, there's a strong indication that support for reasonable gun control measures actually boosts performance at the polls, even in relatively conservative districts.
There seems to be a controversy regarding causation following the mass killing of students at Virginia Tech. Let me state my bias plainly: I’m of a mind that guns don’t kill people. Well, occasionally they do, especially when used as adjunct to the bayonet. We can all agree, however, that bullets kill far more people than guns do.
If recent events demonstrate anything, they serve to show that a chief policy concern should be to limit the number of bullets that are put into motion. We as a society seem willing to accept the occasional chance firing of a bullet (whatever the cause) as the watering of "the tree of liberty" as Jefferson frankly put it, "with the blood of patriots and martyrs". We seem nonetheless inclined to minimize the number of unaccounted for bullets in the air at any time. The more bullets that are fired at once, the greater the probability of bullet victims. It is therefore vital that we ensure that any bullet in the air at any given time is fired with accuracy and precision—a caveat explored by way of examples below. To allow otherwise should be criminal.
The MSM, and to a lesser degreee the blogosphere, has steered clear of a serious discussion of gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings . . . because it's a "lost cause." I'm going to talk about it anyway because lost lives should not be the result of a lost cause. The truth of the matter is that Seung-Hui Cho, despite many warning signs of being severely troubled and potentially dangerous, bought guns twice. Easily. Legally. He bought a semiautomatic 9 mm Glock with a 15-round magazine, which would have been illegal under the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. He also bought a Walther P22 and a box of 50 cartridges.
And Virginia has actually been identified by the FBI as the state that is BEST at submitting mental health records to the FBI NICS database from which background checks are run! Now imagine who is buying guns in other states. . .I'm going to talk about this subject anyway even though it will raise the ire of Second Amendment absolutists. We can't sit on our hands while the gun lobby is willing to shoot itself in the foot and re-load.
