I had some of the same thoughts, including the self-referential bit at the end, and I blogged them on flickr a couple of days ago.

It is just human nature to seize any stage to put our own ideas forward. People use their Oscar acceptance speeches to promote utterly unrelated political and moral issues. A student at VT read her poetry at one of the memorial services and said, yes it's a tragedy that these people died senselessly, they didn't ask to die, but neither did the babies who die of AIDS in Africa. She was using her own moment of prominence to put forward her own ideas.

I don't think we can any of us help doing that sort of thing. The first press release I got about the massacre was from the AAJA, an Asian journalists association, urging those of us in the media to not prominently feature the killer's race in reporting. I thought how funny it is, a thing like the AAJA, a group that focuses on race obsessively in order to eliminate racism. A quintessentially quixotic American group, of which there are many others. But there they were, piggybacking on the tragedy and publicity to put forward their own agenda.

Someone I spoke to said, rather irreverently, but also in a thought-provoking way, that the AAJA might note that this killer did more to eliminate the stereotype of the geeky Asian student than the AAJA has done. He also said that "there's a positive story here," and went on to explain that a massacre like this isn't really possible except in a society that has created a successful, peaceful culture. He was only able to herd a bunch of people together and shoot them because we have succeeded in creating a culture. "If he'd walked in on a group of Oakland gang-bangers," he said, "and started shooting, well, they would have shot him right back. But you can't really live in a community with a bunch of gang-bangers."

I've foolishly read a number of comments posted on news blogs and news articles and have blanched at some very brutal opinions, young men posting that if they'd been there, been armed ("I'm licensed to carry a concealed firearm and regularly do" and other such comments), then they would have heroically stopped the killing, etc. etc. As a resident of Oakland, I have to say that having a lot of people carrying guns around doesn't make society more peaceful. Not in my experience. Nor did the Wild West turn out very peaceful, though many folks had guns all the time. (Will we one day romantically celebrate and re-enact those Oakland drive by shootings like we re-enact the gunfight at the OK Corrall, etc.?)

In another conversation, someone offered the idea that Iraq is a place where lots of people have guns and go around wary of everything, yet that doesn't stop massacres from happening.

Then I read a very hateful editorial in a New York paper saying, "Still love those guns, Virginia?" The writer really rubbed Virginia's face in it, showing no compassion. It was self-righteous, I-told-you-so anger at its very worst.

I don't think banning guns nor letting everyone carry them will prevent these kinds of massacres. We have to find some other way to change this part of our culture.

What's to change? I appreciate the desire to turn this horrific event into something of consequence, but to be realistic, it is an isolated incident. I think there are no lessons to be drawn here at all. This was a freak occurrence. A young man went crazy and shot some people. These things happen. Other things also happen. People get married. Mountains grow old and crumble. Birds hatch from eggs, spread wings and fly. So it goes.

The assertion that one sees life as "cheap" because they believe in evolution over so-called "creationism," as the fellow in the article says, assumes that people find significance and meaning primarily in God. Of course, this is not biblical Christianity.

This is just another case of folks using this tragedy as a way of beating up on folks they don't like. Gun control advocates do the same thing but not with the viciousness that many creationists and "pro-life" folks do.

But try as we might, we won't be able to stop every trouble, homicidal maniac from killing innocent people. These sorts of evens should bring people together in grief, not as an excuse to beat up on each other. That just makes the world a worse place to live.

kgp