Monday, April 16, 2007

Shooting at Virginia Tech

This morning, a young man killed at least thirty people at Virginia Tech.

Between seven and nine this morning, some sick fuck stalked around the campus, killing thirty-one students. The first shots reported were around 7:15, when eight students were killed in a dorm room. While police were investigating this first shooting, half a mile away, at Norris Hall on the other side of the campus, the final shooting took place, where at least twenty more students were killed, as well as the gunman. Nothing much is known about him now, or whether he was killed by police officers or if he shot himself. All that is known is that he's a young Asian-American, around college-age, but not necessarily a student of Virginia Tech.

While the bodies of these poor kids were still warm, blame was already being tossed around, and as is so often the case these days, nobody blamed the sick fuck himself for killing thirty people. On the students' end, understandably, they were screaming for blood from people in positions of authority for not handling this quicker. It's been reported that a lockdown of the campus wasn't initiated until hours after the first shooting, and that between lockdowns is when the second shooting occurred. Not that a lockdown offers much in the way of safety, especially when you're locking freerange targets in a small area with a murdering dogfucker with a gun, but as I'm sure most of you know, most people will settle with the feeling of safety over actual safety.

Meanwhile, the very confused and impotent FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko was already quoted as saying that there was no evidence that the shooting was a terrorist attack, but that "all avenues will be explored." What Kolko meant to say was, "even if the kid was just a Chink, and not a brown person, he could still be connected to brown people, and via proxy be a terrorist, because violence meant to instill panic isn't terrorism unless brown people are involved." You might remember an old quote of his, "in the post-9/11 world, the rules have changed." One of those rules is, it's okay for FBI agents to be ignorant pieces of shit and jerk off for the cameras instead of doing real work.

I feel absolutely horrible for these students, the victims and the survivors, their families and friends, and the faculty at Virginia Tech. Despite the actions he took, I even feel bad for the sick fuck who shot these kids and wound up dead himself, and his friends and family. What I feel worst of all about, though, is that even after they recover from this, from seeing people shot and killed in front of them, these poor kids will never be able to recover from the media-frenzy that surrounds school shootings. They'll be subject to interview after interview from glorified microphone holders asking them if the crazy asshole who killed their friends listened to Marilyn Manson and played GTA3, if he fit in or if he was a quiet mouse nobody knew, and if they thought they'd ever be safe again. And they'll answer. The kid'll wind up being a wallflower nobody knew who listened to angry rock music and played violent video games and the media'll have their fuckin' say about society and influence and blah blah fuckin' blah.

As for how safe they feel, I'm sure they'll say something reassuring for the cameras. "I never thought this could happen to me! We're such a quiet school! I'm shocked, but I'll get over it, and everything will feel normal again." When I'm sure all they'd really like to say is, "Of course I don't feel safe! I never feel safe because cameraman cocksuckers like you deepthroating your mics are always telling me there's someone out there who wants to break into my house while I'm watching reality television and fuck the eyeballs out of my skull and steal all of my shit to fund terrorism!"

God, I feel bad for those kids.

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