We (i.e., America) certainly have an interesting way of reacting to tragedies.  Last month, the media flooded our information periphery with the shootings at Virginia Tech.  32 students and faculty members had died.  A lonely senior, Seung-Hui Cho, whose parents immigrated from South Korea, was the shooter and ultimately, took his life.

The nation was paralyzed with the event.  The media called it a “massacre.”  Seung-Hui was called a “madman.”  While I don’t mean to demean the tragedy in any way, I want to point out several significant implications. 

First, let’s remember that the media is a business.  “They” (I use the term loosely since it involves many mediums) are known to distort and dramatize news all for the sake of increased and loyal viewership.  The media’s repetitive showing of Seung-Hui’s video message jeopardized their role as objective information distributors.  Instead, Seung-Hui was projected as an exemplar madman, the media suggesting that by understanding him, it can help to identify future madmen.  But the latter was only implicit.  Instead, our communities were filled with fear that other teens were just as angry and just as likely to engage in a shooting-free-for-all.

Second, have we not already learned what intensified fear does to our psyche, to our adhesiveness as a country, to our reactionary impulses when confronted with fears head-on (ahem, war in Iraq anyone?)?  It appears not.  Instead, the Virginia Citizens Defense League organized a gun giveaway because its president, Philip Van Cleave, believes that guns protect people.

And third…We live in times where it is possible to do just about anything.  You can communicate with anyone in the world.  You can create a virtual identity and life in cyberspace.  You can learn how to build a bomb online.  And now you can win a free gun just by showing up at a raffle. 

We have a serious problem if we continue to solve issues in such thoughtless ways.  We must stop being so reactionary and seek alternative ways to reach out to our youth.  We should talk about complicated issues like mental illness and stop calling those inflicted “madmen.”  We need to stop living in fear, and start rejecting sources that attempt to fuel this sense of fear, so as to prevent such ridiculous representations of what we really should be concerned about. 

If anything, the gun raffle makes me even more frightened of our mental state and problem-solving tendencies.  Who are these people who won the guns?  Why do they even want the guns?  And what kind of message does this send to small children if they hear that guns killed people one day, but then everyone is having a party because they won a gun the next day?

If you’re interested in Washington Post articles on the Virginia Tech shootings, click here.