Is “Electronica” to blame?
This article was written at a student at Loyola Marymount University in response to the Virginia Tech shootings. This is a similar article from our own UCF Future.
I see something wrong here. The article from the Loyola paper points to “electronica,” the continuing immersion of our society into electronic devices and pass-times, as the reason that the shooter was so deranged. UCF’s paper suggests that also. One thing that I don’t enjoy about the fallout from events like this is that personal responsibility goes out the window. Yes, more should have been done by others to get the kid the help he needed, and its probably our disconnected society that may have forestalled that. However, we shouldn’t completely forget about personal responsibility, either.
UCF’s article mentions how FSU has publicly announced its new and improved security committees, including a loudspeaker and 3 task-force committees. Yay. Loudspeakers don’t work, especially in bad weather. All you hear is “blah blah blah blah blah” more so if you’re right under the thing. And additional committees wouldn’t make response time faster. If anything, they’d just bog down the decision making process.
Personally, I think the VA tech administration did all that it could do. Who could’ve possibly guessed that a domestic incident would turn into 30 people dead? The fact that they did email everyone is astounding. Talk about a university up on the times. And honestly, what student is going to allow their university to send them text messages? If its anything like the emails I get on a daily basis from my university, it’d be ignored.
Then there’s the gun-control people, for and against. I’m of the belief that guns should be a little better controlled and regulated, but when a bad guy wants a gun, he’s going to be able to get it. Yeah, the store that sold that gun to the kid is probably going out of business now but that doesn’t help the kids who got shot, does it? And in this case, we really need to examine our society. Lack of guns won’t do anything in a society that is violent, arrogant, and selfish. People will find other tools to murder each other with.
The violence and nastiness permiating our society does come, in part, from media like video games and movies, but again - personal responsibility. Who lets the little kids SEE these movies and play these games? There are ratings on the things for a reason. When I had a job at Gamestop for a summer, more than once I would alert a parent to the rating of a game (say the parent is buying an M game for their 8 year old) and they’d shrug it off. These parents are a danger to their children, if only because they don’t care!
Before we go blaming the standard scape-goats, I think we all should take a look at the examples we’re giving our younger generations. Personal responsibility means keeping the kids from the violent games and movies until you know they’re ready for them, instead of blaming the media for the violence later. Sure, the violence will still be there, but it’s not really the problem is it?