News Review: Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace

4/22/07

This discussion was about the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, where 32 students were murdered by a lone assailant which later killed himself, the shooter being named as Cho Seung-Hui. The discussion began with Chris Wallace expressing his disbelief that the shooter had not been removed from the college campus prior to this tragic event. He was, after all, referred to psychiatric counseling by several officials of the campus.

Lt Gov Bolling replied, "Well, Chris, I think that is a very legitimate question that we have to ask and answer in the wake of this tragedy, especially given what we now know about the problems that the one who committed these crimes had experienced in the past...and looking at these mental health laws and how the interaction took place between the university and judicial system, and the judicial system and Mr. Cho, is going to be right at the center of the work that that commission does." (He was referring to the "diverse commission" being formed by the Gov of Virginia).

Mr Trachtenberg was then asked about a student which was removed from his campus by campus officials for mental instability and the university was sued. The college had to pay a settlement. He was asked, "Are school Administrators now hamstrung when they want to try and protect the student body?" He answered in so many words, an emphatic yes. He admonished the FERPA laws and the Buckley amendment which state that colleges cannot disclose grades and student behavior to the student's parents. He also said that something has to be done in this regard because "I don't think we ought to do this episodically."

The interview went back and forth about concealed hand gun licenses and several what-if scenarios which basically have no true definitive right or wrong answers. They bantered about gun control and this evolved into constitutional issues and that stricter gun control laws have proven to be ineffective in the past. The law-abiding citizens are not the problem.

My own take of this is skewed in many areas. First of all, the criminal elements are going to get the weapons whether they are banned or not. Stricter gun control laws punish the wrong elements and law abiding citizens. Banning private ownership of guns, severely hinders law abiding citizens from defending themselves against the criminal elements. Gun control begins with education into the proper handing and use of firearms. Also, guns do not kill people. People kill people. If the criminal elements don't have guns, they will use knives, sticks, clubs, screwdrivers, hammers, vehicles, bottles, laptop computers, rocks, baseball bats and a plethora of other implements in which to inflict serious bodily injury and/or death. What do we do? Ban everything or do we enforce laws already on the books and toss the multiculturalistic nonsense to the four winds and punish as harshly as possible those that would do others harm?

This event was an act of evil and not the tragedy it is purported to be. It is a matter of semantics, I guess. Had the multiculturalistic "privacy" loons been silenced long ago and Cho's alleged psychiatric problems been addressed and contained, in my opinion, 32 of his fellow students would be alive today and Cho would be alive and well in a home for the criminally insane. This discussion would also have not taken place.