After Virginia Tech, How to Prevent the Next Mass Killing (Updated)

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting, the question of "why?" is rapidly being sorted out. 

Remembrances of some of the victims are here.

The next, all-important question is how to prevent the next shooting.

I've offered my thoughts on this before, in the wake of the awful Amish schoolhouse shooting.  The solution lies in better religious training, better character education, better social support, less leniency for small offenses that are "red flags," and, last but not least, firearms on campus in the hands of adults who are trained and ready to use them for defensive purposes.  Students should also be trained at least once a year in how to escape or fight back in case of a classroom attack.

To be sure, evils of every kind have been committed throughout human history.  And yet the increasing anonymity of daily life, combined with our highly secularized world -- one that largely forbids any discussion of religion in all public schools, most universities, and most workplaces -- are likely contributing to this appalling degree of depravity among some.

Anonymity is a major factor.  With America's population over 300 million, and many schools and universities extremely large, it is easy to get lost in a crowd.  It's even easier to stop caring very much about the well-being of the people around you.

Of course, in this age of instant global communication, few acts of extreme violence escape the wide net of the news.  If ignorance was ever bliss, those days are gone.  Besides making us immediately aware of any tragedy anywhere in the nation, instant communication also may be leading to more copycat crimes.  It is odd, and perhaps not coincidental, that the attack on Amish girls followed within less than a week the hostage taking of girls and killing of one of them in Colorado on September 27, 2006.  One man "lowered the bar" for behavior -- attacking and killing school girls only -- and another man followed within a week.

We Need More Religious Training, Churchgoing and Social Support

Religious training is clearly necessary.  God should at least be mentioned in the classroom and workplace from time to time.  God is mentioned on our currency; he certainly should not be ignored completely throughout the school day.

God should be even more prominent in our colleges in universities.  In universities where students choose their own courses of study, there is no reason not to offer courses in religion.  There is no good reason not to have chapels available.  There is no good reason not to acknowledge God on the nation's campuses.

The world's major religions encourage and even require one to acknowledge a higher power than one's own immediate gratification.  If they are any good, religions also inspire people to decent behavior.  The total blackout on even mentioning religion in most classes in public schools and universities -- and in many privates ones -- leaves kids in a moral vacuum and has the potential to undermine the religious training children receive elsewhere.

Starting in elementary school, children should receive at least a few hours of training about the fundamental beliefs of most of the world's major religions, with more emphasis put on the religions that are most widely observed in the country and in the world at the time.  If 80% of Americans are Christian, then Christianity should get more emphasis than Judaism or Islam, each of which is observed by less than 1% of Americans.  Schools don't need to teach religion as such, but they can certainly make sure that their students are Bible literate.  "God" should not be a forbidden word, and prayer should not be reserved for the moment when a pop quiz is announced or the aftermath of a school shooting (if then).

Parents also need to make sure that their children attend church and Sunday school or other appropriate religious education.  Every family should continue to bring youths and teenagers to church as well.  Kids and young adults need to be reminded at least once a week, and preferably several times a day, that there is a power higher than themselves and that being a decent person matters. 

When kids go away to college, parents should be involved and try to help them transition to a church or other religious institution near their college.  This is criticially important to provide not only a religious framework but also a social safety net for young adults -- especially young men, who commit the vast majority of mass shootings.  Life can seem very hard to young men who are simultaneously trying to get good grades, prepare for a future career, and find a girlfriend or future wife.  The stress can be unbearable.  Every form of social and religious support possible is critically important.  As James Allen Fox, a professor of criminal justice explains:

Then there's the eclipse of traditional community: higher rates of divorce, the decline of church-going and the fact that more people live in urban areas, where they may not even know their neighbors. If mass murderers are isolated people who lack support, these trends only exacerbate the situation.

Many mass murderers, for example, are people who have picked up roots and moved. James Huberty, who used a 9-mm semiautomatic Uzi to kill 21 people during a 77-minute massacre at a McDonald's in San Ysidro in 1984, had moved to California from Ohio after losing his job. When he lost another job in California, he had no friends or extended family to fall back on. They were all in Ohio.

For every man who commits a mass shooting, there are many men and women who live in despair and even commit suicide.  Some of this is preventable with better religious and social support.  Churchgoing or other community religious observances should be strongly encouraged throughout our society. 

We Need More Character Education Too

Another partial solution is secular character and values education in all schools and universities.  Some primary schools, my daughter's included, are putting greater emphasis on character education, making it a part of their curriculum.  That certainly cannot hurt and may help. 

If your school does not have a basic values curriculum such as a teaching of the "six pillars of character" starting in the early years of school, ask why not and urge that such training be integrated into the curriculum.  It need not cost anything, nor need it take any time from the core curriculum.  Children learning to write need topics anyway.  One such topic can be to write about how they demonstrate one of the traits of good character.  Children learning history can find a famous character and learn what was admirable about them.  The opportunities are endless; they should be grasped.

The Killers: Study, Medicate, Lock Up

We need to closely at look at the killers, unpleasant though that is.  What, besides a lack of adequate religious grounding and character training, brought them to the level of depravity at which they were willing to harm and kill other human beings without mercy?  As adults, were their earlier offenses treated too leniently by the criminal justice system or the mental health system?  If we are not locking people up where they belong, or not locking them up long enough, it's time to get more serious.

We Need Defensive Weapons in Schools and Self-Protection Training for Students

Given this pattern of attacks on schools and universities, it is time to make sure that every school has at least two on-campus security officers, principals, or teachers with access to a locked up, but loaded, weapon.  At large universities, there should be at least two in every building.  Those individuals should be carefully screened and rechecked annually to make sure that they are not themselves mentally unbalanced, depressed, or of questionable judgment, and they should be trained to make sure that they can use their weapon effectively if needed.  This also will provide protection in event of a terrorist attack on a school like that which happened in Beslan, Russia.

The availability of 911 calls and local police officers off campus is not an adequate substitute.  As every school shooting demonstrates anew, too many can be killed before off-campus help arrives.

The fact that schools are known to be weapon-free zones is surely a factor in this developing pattern of violence.

Children should also be trained, at least once a year, how to escape or fight back if there is a classroom attack.   In at least one Texas school district, kids are being taught to fight back if a gunman storms their classroom.

Who Is Ultimately Responsible -- And What We Must Do

We will never prevent every act of violence, nor does the responsibility lie primarily with us to do so.  The person who does evil is the one responsible for that evil, and nobody should fall into the trap of blaming "society" or the government first when something like this happens.

That being said, for our own mutual protection, we should take another look at what we can do to make this kind of violence less likely to happen and, more importantly, less likely to succeed when it does happen.  If we can address these questions wisely and well and make some course corrections, we will save innocent lives. 

Update:  The Carpetbagger Report argues that there are lots of religious groups on the Virginia Tech campus, including these:

African Christian Fellowship at Virginia Tech
Ambassadors for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship
Christ Gospel Ministries
Christ’s Church at Virginia Tech
Christian Concert Planning
Christian Leadership Network
Cornerstone Christian Fellowship
Episcopal/Anglican Christian Fellowship
Friends Adventist Christian Fellowship
Graduate Christian Fellowship
International Christian Fellowship
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship
Korean Campus Crusade for Christ
Korean Christian Fellowship
New Life Christian Fellowship

I'm glad to hear it.  But how often is God actually mentioned in the regular classroom at Virginia Tech, outside of a religion class?  Virtually never, I'm willing to bet.  We have become a highly secular society, particularly in our schools and universities.  This, in turn, is based on an expansive interpretation of the constitution's establishment clause.

If students aren't receiving regular encouragement to act in a godly way on campus unless they go out of their way to seek out a campus religious group, are they receiving religious support anywhere during their college years?  Too often, the start of college represents the end of churchgoing for young adults -- at a time when students need religious social support more than ever. 

That's why I recommend that parents help their children find a church or other religious home near their university.  They will need it more than ever during their college years, even if they think they don't need it at all.  Nobody can force adults to attend church or to practice their faith, but parents who care about their children's well-being certainly are within their bounds to try to help their college student find a church near their college, and even to attend that church with their adult child once or twice.  If parents are paying for their children's college education, they have every right to request that their children go to church at least occasionally.

Can regular religious observance prevent every form of mental illness or evil?  Of course not.  But it helps.  There are many aspects of Christianity that help.  Among them are a belief in forgiveness, encouragement to love one's neighber as oneself, and the belief that it is important to forgive others when they trespass against us.  All of these things were clearly lacking in the life of the Virginia Tech killer. 

Update 2:  Glenn Reynolds weighs in on another aspect addressed in my post -- the fact that we need decent, law-abiding people with guns on campus.  As I've written, I believe there should be two professors or security officers with access to a locked up, loaded weapon in every building on a large campus.

Update 3:  Captain's Quarters has an update based in part on a package Cho sent to NBC between the first killings and the second round of killings.  Apparently at the time he committed these heinous killings Cho "hated Christianity," which might help explain why he violated every tenet of Christianity starting with "thou shalt not murder." 

Cho also signed his mail to NBC as "Ismail" or "Ishmael," which correlates with the name "Ismail Ax" tattooed on his arm and suggests a possible Islamic component to the violence.

Obviously, it's still too early to be certain what religious faith, if any, Cho had at the time of these murders.  Maybe he was still a practicing Christian who completely lost his mind, though early reports point to the opposite. 

But as a matter of general public policy, we have just about reached the far extreme of exclusion of religion, and especially Christianity, from our schools and universities -- and this has not served us nearly as well as the alternative of allowing God to be mentioned freely in schools and universities by teachers and students alike, while avoiding the establishment of any one official state religion.  Students today spend most of their time in a moral and religious vacuum that does not serve anybody well. 

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Tags: virginia-tech vt killings shooting shootings dead children fight back amish

Comments

[Daniel DiRito]

Is This A Symptom of our "Chain Letter Society"?

Read an analysis of the influences in our "Chain Letter Society" that may be precipitating events like the tragedy at Virginia Tech and how our focus on winning and being number one may be fostering a generation of children with fully inadequate coping skills who have a misguided sense of self-worth...here:

www.thoughttheater.com

[benning]

You've pretty much covered it all, Gina. So much needs to be done, yet I fear it will be business as usual. The "usual suspects" will be spotlighted by the MSM, the usual cries for gun control will be raised, the "culture of violence" - as Obama has boringly droned on about - will be decried, and nothing will be done save that most of us will be further restricted in our daily lives with our Constitutional rights curtailed for the convenience of the governmental elite.

Prayers will help, and so will training. But getting to know who your neighbors are, while not always desirable, may actually relieve someone of the feelings of abandonment that could lead to such horrific acts.

Well done, Gina!

[David I]

We need to stop reacting to every isolated tragedy as though we are now all implicitly at risk. It's terribly tragic that these events occur, but perhaps more so when in their aftermath school kids are subjected to ever harsher security measures and wacky paranoid attitudes. These ideas are turning our schools into prisons rapidly. That's leaving out the obvious fact that training our kids how to react to these assaults will only cement the idea OF these assaults in kids' minds. It may have no further effect than inspiring that one susceptible child to take action. NOT a good idea.

These events are terrible. But no matter how hard we try, we never can prepare for them. Am I saying we should not try? Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm saying. I am saying WE SHOULD STOP TRYING to "protect" our children when it only adds to their stress and fear, and suffocates them. Give the paranoia a break already.

Meanwhile, the calls to religious training may ring true to you, a believer. But to me and millions of others, "faith" is really a suspension of disbelief; a willingness to believe what you're told, stop asking questions, and blithely flow along on a stream of golden hope, or whatever. An altered state of reality, if you will. A drug. There is no reason to believe that religious training will have any measure of difference in the lives of those whose troubles (or their reactions thereto) drive them to these acts. In fact, there are many examples of people whose very religious fervor IS the driving cause of their violence (i.e., Charles Manson, Jim Jones, any number of Islamic terrorists). It has also been the root cause of many, if not most, of the wars and genocides in human history. Not a great record of harmony to run on in my opinion.

You may not be advocating for religious indoctrination, but for coursework addressing what various religions believe, from a secular point of view. The tough part in that case is how to ensure that such courses do NOT in fact become, if not indoctrination classes, at least advocacy. It's too difficult to pull off, and would never work. Meanwhile, I don't know of a single university that doesn't offer such classes to any student that wants them. Do you?

To sum up, no one knows why these events occur, but they are so staggeringly unlikely to occur in our own lives that to move heaven and earth to protect ourselves from them is a big, fat waste of time and energy. It does more harm than good. And looking to religion to solve the world's problems has a proven record of failure that should be obvious to anyone.

[trrll]

Lack of religious training? Charles Whitman, who committed the worst school shooting prior to Virginia Tech, was an altar boy. The notion that religious training protects against the sort of mental illness that compels people to commit a suicidal crime of this nature makes about as much sense as expecting religious training to protect against the flu. - trrll

Editor's note from Gina Cobb: True as far as it goes, but incomplete. Several months before the shootings, Whitman told a family friend that he had lost his faith and no longer considered himself a practicing Catholic. This is where my recommendation that parents help their children find a church near college that they can remain actively involved in comes into play. College students need social support and regular reminders to act ethically, to forgive others, and to accept that they are forgiven. Christianity provides just that. Sadly, Whitman's life turned murderous after he left the church.

[highplainsjoker]

Gina: Ref: Whitman; true as far as it goes, but why did he leave the church? Was it not adequate to his needs, whatever they were? Too situational for analysis.

I want to second what Benning says. And add that God is on campus, he is everywhere, and he did nothing to stop this very troubled person, that he made in his image, from killing 32 young people, who he created in his image. I suppose that his was all done for the betterment of us survivors that we may contemplate his glory and be tested in our faith so we will love god more?

I applaud your apparent goodness, and you appear to be a very fine person. I am an atheist, and can be moral, ethical, and kind without religion. I believe in the Golden Rule. If you really commit to it, and accept it, its more personal and requires as much commitment as most religions.

[LeftWingPharisee]

You say "Schools don't need to teach religion as such, but they can certainly make sure that their students are Bible literate."

I'll send you an official portrait of President Jackson if you can tell me what the first sentence in the Bible is.

I'm guessing strongly that I'll check that $20 bill...

[LeftWingPharisee]

I'm going to take the silence as a no. The first sentence in the Bible is "B'reishis barah Elokim es haShamayim v'es haAretz" (Ashkenazi pronunciation, the Name of G_d aliased).

When you learn the Bible through English translation (particularly those done by Christians), you wind up knowing less than nothing, because what you know is wrong. It amazes me how so many people in this country can pretend to love the Bible, yet are too lazy to learn how to read it.

[X: THC]

Question Marks
-------------------

"This didn't have to happen", Cho Seung-Hui said, after murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University.

And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn't have to happen, if we'd only listened.

But we never listen.

We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don't try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them.

And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.

Words like "creep", "deranged misfit" and "psycho" devalue this killer's humanity so we don't have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of "how could he have been stopped" are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words "how could he have been listened to" are never considered.

Because we don't want to listen.

We don't want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we're all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don't fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don't care to understand anything about them.

This man who clearly needed help, Cho Seung-Hui, devalued himself so much that he called himself "Question Mark".

There are more "Question Marks" out there. There are millions of them. And if we don't listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more "Question Marks" every day.

Most "Question Marks" don't become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call "normal". They may be someone you know, someone you love.

This "Question Mark" was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.

How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn't fit in, the one in the corner, the one that's different? When all we have to do is listen, before it's too late.

But we won't.

Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.

To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.

And the "Question Marks" will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don't listen.

We never do.

---------------

http://www.x-thc.com