The quest for understanding

The nation once again mourns.

Once again, a deadly shooting has claimed multiple lives of innocent victims, this time on a college campus. Once again we will look for answers, and once again we will come up short.

There are no answers that will satisfy, and no blame that will resolve, the quest for understanding that inevitably follows a tragedy such as the shootings at Virginia Tech on Monday morning.

At least 33 people are left dead as a result of one man's brutal, inhuman decision to use violence against unarmed people as a means of telling the world how unhappy he was. It makes no sense.

Trying to make sense of it will only lead us to conclude that the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui - a 23-year-old senior majoring in English - was mentally unstable. It will only tell us what we already know - that there are people who cannot cope with life for a variety of reasons, and that they can become dangerous to themselves or others.

There will be voices heard in the coming days blaming guns for what happened at Virginia Tech. Don't believe it. This is about human beings, not about guns, and if we are going to try to prevent future tragedies, we must be willing to admit that the people pulling the trigger are the problems, not the guns.

How as a society can we deal with that?

Surely, we must admit at some point that there are many people among us who are mentally unbalanced and who pose a threat to their neighbors, acquaintances and, yes, even strangers.

But how can our society, which prides itself on liberty, ever expect to eliminate such a threat? Will we lock up everyone who needs to take psychiatric drugs such as Prozac or other anti-depressants? Will we lock up people, such as Cho, who have written violent fantasies? Can we ban teenagers from spending hours each day playing video games whose sole purpose is to shoot as many people as possible, especially cops?

Probably not.

In fact, a free society is confronted with the same problem dealing with random gunmen that it has in regard to terrorists. In both cases, we cannot eliminate the problem without eliminating our freedom.

Terrorists will always be able to kill people, because they have endless patience and no consciences. Random killers are the same way - because they have no specific target in mind, they cannot be anticipated. They will wait until they can accomplish their evil purpose, and then they will strike.

Nor would eliminating guns end the problem. There would always be black-market guns, and there would always be alternative ways to kill multiple people.

One last thought. Another thing which a free society cannot control is the mass media, but we need to think about our responsibility not to create more killers. We should ponder just what effect the non-stop cable television coverage of the Virginia Tech rampage will have on the minds of the next generation of random killers.

Will they be impressed by how easy it is to get your picture on TV? How much attention is paid to violence? Will the seed be planted for the next killing? Or the one after that?

There is just one thing we can say for sure - the next time a mass killing of this type happens, no one should be surprised.