New School Politics

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Too often public opinion reacts with more emotion than reason to events of magnitude such as the Virginia Tech shooting of a month ago. Rather than take perspective on a monumental tragedy much of the public, the media, and politicians will move to use the event as an expedient for pushing an authoritarian agenda, and all the while they will remain oblivious to the fact that individuals have rights whose legitimacy does not waver with the breeze of public opinion.

Rights, to the contrary, are inalienable and they include not just the right to property, but the corollary right to self-defense. The right to bear arms proceeds from those two concepts: (a) the right to own the gun as property itself; and (b) the right to use it against anyone who threatens or attacks your own safety or property. Anyone who wishes to take that right away from you in the name of peace and public harmony are hypocrites, for, it is guns and force that the government itself must employ to keep its private citizens from having guns.

Let us first remember that crimes and violence are not committed because guns exist–crimes and violence exist because there are evil people in the world who believe that it is morally permissible–or expedient–to initiate force upon individuals at their own whim. Whether or not guns existed there would be crime–crimes occurred even before guns existed, believe it or not. Moreover there are even crimes committed without guns. Who would have thought? It is the people motivated to do so who are the driving force behind murder, and thus laws to limit murder must be concentrated on de-incentivizing criminal action–namely effectively enforcing the law, and strictly punishing violations thereof.

Re-examine Virginia Tech for a moment and recall that the perpetrator of the shootings, Seung-Hui Cho, was himself declared “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization” in 2005 and certified as “[presenting] an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness” by a Virginia judge. The problem at Virginia Tech was one with an individual, not with a nationwide policy of lax gun control.

And in this case, more guns may have actually been the remedy–not the cause–of such a grotesque death toll. Virginia Tech was notably a “gun-free zone” and as such it was against the rules for anyone to carry even concealed firearms on campus for the purpose of self-defense. By doing so those populating Virginia Tech were rendered helpless by anyone who carried a gun into the school with malicious intentions.

As we can see in the case of VA Tech, banning guns does nothing other than make self-defense impossible. When even a well intentioned administration makes carrying a gun illegal it makes it so only criminals will be carrying guns–and those criminals will not have any immediate barriers to their malicious intents. Gun control does not prevent crime, it incentivizes it.

Some feel that permitting a gun in the school is unsafe. But sometimes there is a difference between feeling safe and being safe. The fact remains, when administrations ban guns they also ban self defense, and in no way will that make any of us safer from those with the intent of harming us.

The fact remains that the right to own guns is enumerated in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Obviously it must have been significant to the framers if they made it the second of all rights enumerated in the constitution. During the zeitgeist of 1800 the notion of needing to seek approval from the government to own a gun would have been laughed at. As a matter of fact, gun registration was not issued in this country until after the War Between the States ended and the slaves were emancipated—why do you think that was?

Today, authoritarian intellectuals who couldn’t load and fire a rifle if their individual rights depended on it scoff at the idea that individuals need guns. “Collecting is childish–Hunting is cruel and primitive–Shooting at a range is pointless” are all conclusions we could expect gun controlists to make. Certainly collecting, hunting, and shooting on the range are all activities that must be protected by gun rights, but it wasn’t recreation for which the framers wrote the second amendment. The right to bear arms was perhaps the single most important check on government power written into the constitution. In light of a violent separation from an overbearing government the framers recognized that the last resort to protect the people from a monstrous dictatorship—whose power itself derived from its use of force–was to give the people the power to fight back against it. And to reserve that right it must give them the right to bear arms, because if the government were ever to effectively ban the ownership of guns there would be no power left to keep it from overrunning all individual freedom.

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United States presidential candidate Ron Paul, an outspoken libertarian, has called for removal of gun laws which he claims oppose civil liberties and encourage shootings. Paul stated that more guns could have prevented tragedies such as 9/11, or this week’s killing at Virginia Tech: “A concealed gun carried by a responsible person — that might have ended the problem that they had at Virginia Tech with one person being killed or two people being killed.”

But the key in his strategy is the word “responsible.” It requires the general public to be able to make informed decisions, and separate emotion from logic and reason, something currently only mandated to the police. Despite the large potential corruption of cops, there is far greater possible harm from arming everyone with a gun who wants one.

Having easily available guns in tense situations is just a recipe for disaster. I do not believe that the majority of people would be “responsible” with a gun, especially in America. Frankly, I would not want to enter a country that had such lenient laws towards something as life-threatening as a gun. I can just imagine a situation with a group of people all at gunpoint with each other.

I believe that nobody should have a gun. Maybe even in an ideal society, police would only need tasers (and far less harmful ones at that). There is certainly no need for the public to have them. Even hunting, I don’t see why they exist. Why does someone feel such an intense need to kill another animal? Can’t they just go pick up a less destructive hobby, like golf? And if you live in a place where you think you need a gun for personal protection, what does that say about you, your neighborhood, local police, and country?!

I simply feel like more can be achieved through education. If a truly intelligent and altruistic society did exist, where we all got along and were really able to make informed decisions by separating emotion from reason, would there even be a need for guns? People would be able to agree to disagree, and just get on with their lives.

If there was a reformed education system in place to nurture such a society, and drugs were legalized to eliminate the gang culture that supports the destructive use and illegal distribution of guns, then there would no longer be a need for the general public to have guns for self-protection. Then maybe we can put those gentler tasers in the pockets of police instead of guns.

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The shooting at Virginia Tech is undeniably one of the worst tragedies American students have ever faced.  Stories of heroism make their way out of the situation, but the media is focused on the death and destruction caused on the campus of Virginia Tech University. One thing, however, should give Virginia Tech students, and Americans throughout the country, something to be proud of.  In the absence of professional newsmen, students took control of the media, showing an unprecedented ability to shape the coverage regarding their event.

In the wake of the worst campus massacre ever in the United States, dozens of news organizations flocked to Virginia to cover the tragedy. Before they arrived, however, the mainstream media relied on reports from those already on the ground: the college students themselves. Armed with the video and still cameras on their mobile phones, dozens of students set out to create their own coverage of an incident that was very much their own. The first audio and video accounts of the incident aired by CNN came from iReport, their citizen journalism program. The video, shot on a Nokia smartphone, made its way around the networks, all courtsey of a Virginia Tech student named Jamal Albarghouti.

Dozens of similar stories are to be told. In the hours preceding the arrival of professional reporters, Virginia Tech students had, unfortunately, the opportunity to shape the world’s news. Their coverage helped to show the world how terrible the massacre was and helped to qualm some fears about students that were safe. Twitter, a “stream of consciousness” blogging tool by Obvious Corp (utilized mostly by web celebrities such as Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk), served constant updates to the internet, courtesy of a user named Tom Markiewicz. Chris Pirillo, a web celebrity in his own right, helped to stream live coverage with a tool called UStream.tv. His conversation with Planet Blacksburg, a new student-run publication from Virginia Tech, captured nationwide attention as sections were aired on various evening news programs.

What most surprised me, however, was the caliber and tenacity of the coverage coming from the students themselves at Virginia Tech. Via the aforementioned Planet Blackburg, they helped to broadcast news of the tragedy throughout the world, becoming the go-to site for immediate updates. The Web2.0 movement, which many experts see as a bubble ready to burst, finally showcased its effectiveness yesterday. YouTube has showed its staying power by drawing users in to watch videos on their website. The entire citizen journalism movement, however, displayed its prominence yesterday with the Virginia Tech shooting. Never, in years past, would internet surfers be granted the same hard-hitting coverage as Planet Blacksburg provided yesterday.

In this day and age, everyone is a reporter. Yesterday, as CNN broadcast video from a student’s cellphone video, and as Planet Blacksburg updated faster than the almighty network news, it became apparent. The “new media” is here to stay, and, from the looks of it, it’s ready to provide better coverage than had ever been imagined. The shooting at Virginia Tech has caused incredible sadness and grief. It has, however, caused something else: the birth of a new generation of reporters.

News of the incident continues to stun the staff here at New School Politics. In the coming days, we’ll be doing everything we can to help, but for the moment, the best we can do is to give our condolences to those involved in the tragedy at Virginia Tech. On April 30th, we’ll be participating in One Day Blog Silence, a day of quiet on the blogosphere dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in this terrible tragedy.

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