I wasn't going to post on this

[muckefuck]

I've read a lot of sad things in the wake of Blacksburg, among them that_dang_otter's bitter point that, on average, more Americans than died there are killed every day in the USA, but since they're not all killed in one place, they don't garner the same kind of attention. We can glimpse just how inured we've become to their deaths by the fact that the officials at VA Tech weren't willing to cancel classes for 20,000 on account of only two on-campus murders. It makes me wonder what their cut-off was: Four students? Ten? Would it be the same for faculty and/or staff? What's the quota where I work? And has it changed in light of Monday's events?

But I think the saddest thing I've read so far is this:

Kim Min-kyung, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech reached by telephone from Seoul, said there were about 500 Koreans at the school, including Korean-Americans. She said she had never met Cho. She said South Korean students feared retaliation and were gathering in groups.

I so dearly wish I could say they were just being paranoid, but I'm too well acquainted with human nature--and past reactions to massacres with minority perpetrators--to say that.

Comments

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I felt upset and jittery about the massacre, too, perhaps because I'm also working at a University. And I'm unhappy that so much of the blogosphere (and to some degree the mainstream media) have devolved into useless and tasteless yammering on both sides of the gun control issue.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I initially avoided the addressing the issue: Because the absolute last thing I want to get into right now is a discussion of gun control. (Well, that and the fact that I thought--and still think-- that I didn't have anything interesting to say.) In other words, I agree with Ross Douthat when he says:

I'm extremely skeptical, though, that there's actually anything significant to learn about gun policy from yesterday's violence: Extreme, unpredictable events like this one seem like precisely the kind of thing that shouldn't dictate lawmaking decisions (though of course they inevitably do). If there's a case for gun control, it's in the daily run of shooting deaths that don't make the front page; if there's a case against gun control, it's in the daily run of crimes deterred by an armed citizenry (and in more abstract questions of personal liberty), not in the faint chance that a kid with a conceal-and-carry permit might have taken the Virginia killer down.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I'm predicting a backlash not against Korean-Americans, but against young men who are too quiet and won't look you in the eye or say 'hello'. If they seem "mean" and too interested in weapons ...