I think they think it’s bad

On the 16th April, I was sat in my hotel room watching CNN as news of the Virginia Tech shooting started to come through. It was fascinating to watch the CNN reaction to it. The more the severity of the event became clear, the more delighted they were. By the time the number of dead got to 20, the female presenter was clearly sitting in a puddle of her own excitement. “And to confirm, this is the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history” she would say to her co-presenter.
“Yes, absolutely tragic” he would reply “it’s almost hard to believe, but this is the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history”
“I know” she would reply “one can only imagine what these people are going through after being involved in the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history”
“Exactly, because when you go through something like this, something like the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history, nobody can say what affect that will have on you”
“Yes, it’s truly horrifying, the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history”
“Obviously we’ll keep getting information so stay tuned for details on this, the DEADLIEST campus shooting in American history”

Unfortunately at this point I had to stop watching the CNN coverage, as I had a suspicion that this may have been the deadliest campus shooting in American history, and I wanted to find out if it was. CNN obviously weren’t going to tell me.

The next day, it was no longer merely the deadliest campus shooting in American history, it was the deadliest mass shooting of any kind in American history. Apparently it’s now necessary to catagorise these rampages as if they’re Olympic events. Pretty soon they’re probably going to be factoring in a difficulty rating like they do in the diving. But anyway, the CNN graphic department had been going nuts overnight, they had a great new logo showing the words “Virginia Tech Tragedy”, and they were fucking loving it, best day since 9/11, you could just tell. They had a queue of students to speak to, all of whom said the same thing “Yeah, I was in a building, I heard some shots, I ran away, I don’t know anything, I think it’s really bad”. Then CNN would wheel in another one who would say the same shit, grabbing the event by the teats and milking it for all it was worth.

Then came the quotes from world leaders. George Bush said it was bad. Tony Blair said it was bad. John Howard said it was bad. They were the only world leaders who I heard say it was bad, so I’m assuming the rest of them thought it was great.

This was an event that was dramatic enough on it’s own. It didn’t need fancy graphics and sensationalist reporting, and it didn’t need a quote from every person on the planet to confirm that they thought it was a bad thing. 32 innocent people were murdered, I think it’s safe to assume the default sentiment people have is one of disapproval. It’s superfluous to parade everyone in the world on camera to ask them what they think of it. THEY ALL THINK IT WAS BAD. Move on.

As with all huge news stories, the news channels find themselves in an awkward situation. They have to run the story non-stop, people are going to be tuning in to find out about it all the time, and if they’re not running it at that moment, that viewer will switch to another channel. So what they do is fill the time repeating the same information, and then pad it out with thunderously obvious comments from anyone they can think to put in front of the camera.

One of the first people I saw fill this role on the day of the shooting was a local Pastor, who true to the egocentric, ignorant, heartless and idiotic form of any good religious organisation, said that God had done it to punish everyone. You could just tell he was itching to blame it on the Gays, just like everything else. Even at this early point, it was clear that CNN were going to deal with the event in a classy and responsible manner.

As they didn’t have details on who the shooter was at this point, the next person they dragged on was a retired FBI profiler who was asked to attempt to profile him. She gave it a shot…

“He may be going through a bad period in his life, or have a mental illness”

This woman should be burned as a witch, such are her predictive powers. Imagine if she’d chosen to go further “he’ll have legs, probably two, maybe less. And definitely hands. I’m going to say no more than two hands”. Of course he was going through a bad point in his life you complete waste of time, he didn’t wake up thinking “Man my life is fucking great, I’ve got great friends, I’ve got a beautiful girlfriend, school is going great, I’ve got a great career ahead of me, life just couldn’t be better. Now, where are my fucking guns, I’m going to go and kill me some people”. You don’t need to be an FBI profiler to work out he wasn’t the happiest person in the world, any more than you need to be a chef to make toast.

When the shooters name was finally released, the excitement that he was from South Korea was almost too much for them to handle. They even got the South Korean foreign secretary to comment on the matter, almost forcing him to apologise as if it was somehow his fault. South Korea even sent diplomats over to Virginia Tech to try to smooth things over. I almost had to laugh.

I consider myself to be pro-American, I know it’s fashionable to hate them, but I don’t. Sure they display the political delicacy of a hammer in a Nazi uniform, but they mean well, and in general the society they strive for is a good one. But the reality here is that this kid being from South Korea is about as relevant as his choice of hair product or his favourite cheese. He had lived in America since he was 8 years old, he was completely Americanised. America is a country built on immigrants, when white guys shoot up schools do they make Irish or Italian diplomats come to the US to apologise? Cho Seung-Hui may have been from South Korea, but the part of him that decided to start killing his classmates was the American part. If anything choosing to go on a gun rampage proves he was a valid US citizen. It could be part of the pledge of allegiance.

And try as the NRA might, there’s no getting away from the fact that a country that restricts the sale of alcohol more strictly than the sale of firearms is pretty much asking for this to a happen. In Virginia, you don’t need a licence to buy a gun, there is no cooling off period when you buy one, and if you buy one at a gun show, they don’t even do background checks. The only way they could make it easier for gunmen like Cho Seung-Hui is to come to the colleges with them and round up children.

When the CNN reporter asked the genius FBI profiler I mentioned earlier if the lack of gun control laws could have contributed to this attack, her reply was so stupid I was left wondering if she may have been in the process of suffering a severe and debilitating stroke “You know, my son studied in England for a couple of years, and he told me of three occasions where people were stabbed, and one time someone ran through a shopping mall with a knife stabbing people, he stabbed 5 or 6 people, so you know, even without guns these things can happen”

I’m sorry, which “things” are we talking about? It seems to me that the “thing” she just described is extremely different to the “thing” that just happened at Virginia Tech. With a knife, the person in her story was able to stab 6 people. I’m assuming they didn’t all die, but even if they did, with two handguns, Cho Seung-Hui killed 32. That’s a difference of 640%, so using this as an example served only to illustrate the point she was trying not to make. She’d have seemed more intelligent if instead of speaking she’d just made a train noise then smashed her face into the table. Yes, crazy people are everywhere, but if you give crazy a gun, crazy can do a lot more damage than he can with a knife. To use the word CNN enjoy so much, guns are deadlier than knives. That’s why we give the army guns, not cutlery.

This makes sense to anyone with full brain function. But unfortunately, 40 of the 50 united states are populated by inbred simpletons who’s only joy in life is shooting things. That’s it. They don’t read, they don’t learn, they don’t have ambitions. They don’t want to develop, they don’t care about anything outside of their small lives, and they absolutely do not want to change. They just want to shoot stuff, and there’s no way they will ever let anyone take that right away from them, because they think it’s in the constitution*. This means that when losers like Cho Seung-Hui have a big childish tantrum because nobody will play with them, they can act out those tantrums with semi-automatic weapons, instead of just stamping their feet and yelling.

So private gun ownership will never be banned in the USA. But this doesn’t mean these gun rampages can’t be stopped, it just takes a bit of lateral thinking. Why not use the idea I first suggested for airline security right back when this website started. Every single chair in every single school or college in America should have a gun taped to the bottom of it. If they did that, then the next time some dorky little prick who’s got a mood on because girls don’t like him decides to try this shit again, by the time he’s fired one round, an entire class room full of students will have emptied 600 bullets into him. Problem solved.

I mean it, I should fucking be elected.

* It isn’t, they’re wrong. The constitution says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”. It does not mention guns. “Arms” in this context could mean any weapon at all, and every America house has a baseball bat or a knife in it, so you can take their guns away, and you have not stopped them bearing arms. Don’t argue, you’re wrong.