A Few Thoughts About VA Tech

During my commute I either listen to sports talk radio or play CDs. Every now and then I’ll flip over to the news or your run of the mill talk radio. I do it because sometimes I need a break from the news. I spend hours connected to the net and manage to read most of the newspaper so I don’t feel the need to drown myself any further in news.

But on special occasions I’ll give up listening to Ray Charles or Laker Talk to hear your standard radio broadcast.

It didn’t take long for pundit and person to begin trying to come up with reasons why this happened and ways to prevent it from reoccurring. That is not surprising and I am not issuing any sort of criticism or judgment.

In light of the tragedy it makes perfect sense that people would try to focus on things that they can control. But the problem here is that this goes beyond the scope of control. It is not a simple fix. There is no simple solution.

Apparently they have found that the gunman had been identified by university teachers and other students as being troubled. This information was enough to convince a few of the callers that the massacre could and should have been prevented. Their rationale was that someone should have alerted the authorities to his behavior.

If only things were that simple. People say a lot of things. People write a lot of things and quite often never follow through on any of it. Do we really want to live in a police state where your thoughts are enough to get you jailed.

Certainly it is true that free speech is not unlimited. You cannot yell fire in a theater, advocate for the violent overthrow of the government etc. Nonetheless the reality is that for the most part you can say some pretty outrageous things and have nothing happen to you. Personally that is how I want it to stay.

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