Numbers..

We go to war because of possible WMD's in a country and eventually justify the war by saying 140 people in a village were killed by chemical weapons and the tyrant who killed them must go and the country must be democratized.

All of you know my feelings about how Americans are taught (subconsciously) that their lives are somehow worth more than the lives of people from other countries..  My kids growing up in here somehow get that "holier than thou" attitude inspite of my working constantly to bring them back down to earth.

28 lives is not far off from 140 and if you factor in any mutliplier for the Chuck Norris factor, it is even closer! An automatic weapon that can put out bullets at that rate is a WMD. Cannot understand why we would let these weapons be so easily accessible to anyone be it a sane person or an insane person.. because you never know when it can get in the wrong hands. 

So what are we going to do about automatic and semi-automatic weapons?

On the day of the shooting rampage, will go through the following reactions:

1- I will write a blog post which will practically be a copy of what I wrote after the previous such shooting and will realize it after going through archives and ask myself "when will I get the courage to do something about this other than write a blog post?" and will console myself saying "next election I will vote for guys who say they will bring in gun control" and also get frustrated after realizing "wait a second.. that is what I said last time".

2- Indian friends will say something about "too bad. America still a great country? My heart goes out to an almost great country.. etc. etc." 

3- My  Desi US Citizen friends will write about how their heart bleeds, how we have to take a stand against gun control, forward a few standard facebook articles that somehow articulate an equal percentage of truths and untruths that will actually weaken a stand for gun control, send some chain mails that urge you to share a hallmark card of sorts which say "1 share = 1 tear, 1 like = 1 hug for the victims" or some such thing.

4- A few friends who actually do some fact checking and are the intellectual types will either write articles which put forward "why gun control never happens" and the real facts behind guns in the US, statistical correlation of semi automatic weapons vs. number of mass shootings, etc. etc. and will be critiqued by some other friends who out of fear of losing their rifles and pistols will accuse them of focusing on gun control while we should really be grieving. There will be posts about how not all gun owners are insane killer etc etc.

5- My kids will freak out. Jr. usually throws up when she gets graphic descriptions of violence and the little one will sulk for a day or two and be angry at anyone and no one in particular to a great predictability.

Just yesterday morning there were helicopters above our house because the local high school which is four blocks away had a bomb threat. They closed two of the four schools that are within a 4 block radius of our house.. (no, kid you not.. there are really 4 schools within a four block radius from our house.. two elementary, one middle, one high school) and we had to wait to see if our kids school was going to be open or not. The local roads were blocked by cops and TV crews and we were glad that the whole thing turned out to be a false alarm. The kids were already spooked by this yesterday. 

We had gone through a similar experience recently with someone killing a bunch of co-workers at the Quarry up the mountain and more folks in the parking lot of the same high school and he was eventually shot by cops the next day..

So it was difficult for them to hear that school kids got killed by some insane gunman. 

Yes, we have it easy compared to the parents who have lost their kids today or have injured kids today or have to explain to their kids why their friends are not going to be back in their class when the school eventually opens.

Yes, our hearts go out to those folks. 

Yes, I cried after hearing this news and came home and hugged my kids a little tighter. 

But NO. There is no reason to stop voicing our opinions on gun control policy out of respect for the victims. That is non-sense and it is not trying to sway opinions on gun control by "exploiting" this event.

While driving home NPR was interviewing three people who were experts on "such matters" and one of them said "schools in the US are extremely safe and what happened today while horrid is a rare event!"

Seriously?! It is rare compared to what? There are more mass shootings in the US than any other country in the world unless you normalize it with the number of automatic weapons sold and even that statistic might be beat by some other country for all I know. 

Every week some bozo goes on a rampage and while controling said bozos is not practical, the damage will definitely be limited if he had to shoot one bullet at a time or use a knife. 

If we cannot stop these rampages, the least we should do is make killing less easier.

To all those folks who tell me to hold off on voicing opinions on gun control out of respect for the victims.. 

go shoot yourself!

We all react to events and things like this that get no real action towards a solution, will get a voice only for a short time after the event till Paris Hilton poses naked outside the Louvre or Justin Bieber gets his next girlfriend. Things like this trend on twitter and facebook for much shorter times than trivial matters. 

The human brain is amazing in the way it selectively forgets bad things and moves on. We all die peacefully or tragically and our brain figures out how to move on amidst facing death. This too will be forgotten by the public except for the folks who are impacted and next year the media will dig that up to do an anniversary of the event and things will fade away.  

Nothing wrong in talking gun control NOW while there are still a lot of folks who want to stand up for it.

ps. I am planning to recycle this post after the next mass shooting rampage in the very near future, as my heart is filled with so much optimism that we the people will do something about it now all of a sudden, given the age of the victims. 

Interesting view of things

Today in the letters to the newsdesk section of the news on public radio, a listener had pointed out an interesting fact.

The student who went on a rampage at Virginia Tech., was being showcased as a "Korean kid"! What is interesting is that he was born in Korea, but he lived his entire life here, went to school here, went to college here, was raised as an American and for all practical purposes was predominantly exposed to American culture.

The newscasters are trying to imply that his actions have something to do with his "Koreanity". Scary part is that, it is simply a question of time before someone in the media actually publicizes the word "Koreanity" and someone else misspells it as "Koranity" and before you know it you have the President triumphantly declaring that he has found the connection between the shootings and the Koran!

The USA today is scary. Over the years I have spoken to many teenagers and college students here, from the time I came here as a graduate student to the the present day. I just thank my stars that I managed to grow up in India in the eighties, an environment where students focused on their studies, were too young to chase the other sex when they were in high school (had no peer pressure to lose their viriginity before graduation !) or had to work and study at the same time.

Kids in this country have a tough time for the most part because they share the financial burden of their education (partially or completely), have peer pressure to do things that distract them from their studies and their future, do not have good examples and role models to keep them focussed and have a system that is more than happy to dole out overpriced student loans, condoms and depression pills to school kids as solutions to their problems as opposed to getting to the root cause.

The lucky ones do get to have role models, parents or relatives that support them during their education process and have the ability to focus and prioritize their goals. It is a fact that the most brilliant and creative people I have met over the last decade are of American origin. If a person has to succeed in spite of all these distractions and responsibilities, they have to be really good. Maybe that explains that creativity!

I have already written many a post on raising my kids here. I can only hope that if I support their education, keep them focussed , put them with kids whose parents share the same hopes and fears (yes, fear works at a lot of levels here) , then they will succeed!

Time and place do play a part in how people grow and develop, probably more than their birthplace or nationality. The media has a lot of growing up to do!

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Guns anyone ?

Over the last few years, every now and then a news piece comes along that does not have Iraq or George W. Bush on the headline. The sad fact is that such news has almost always been associated with a severe tragedy, either in terms of numbers and magnitude like the asian Tsunami or the utter hopelessness and despair in the situation like todays University Shooting.

This steals the joy of Iraq and GWB not being the number one headline day after day and instead plunges you to new depths of sadness. On an average we are losing tens of lives (American) and probably hundreds of lives every day in the middle east. These are guys who signed up to fight for what they believe in, or people who believe in following orders. People who wake up knowing that they might face a bullet that day. If wartime casualties are depressing, University kids attending class dying no reason, is simply gut wrenching.

During my India trip, an anonymous blogger wanted me to take responsibility for the Gun Culture in the US. I wrote a strongly worded post(the only post I think I have retracted) saying "not every american owns a gun, or at least no one I know or interact with goes around with a gun!". I also stated that I vote against this gun culture every chance I get. In retrospect, this is a losing battle. Lets face it. I cannot do diddly squat to keep guns away from the killers.

Apparently guns don't kill people. People kill people. (This, according to the National Rifle Association, which is usually credited with keeping up the access to guns active in the USA). My interpretation? People with guns kill people. Somehow the guns always have a way of finding themselves in the hands of these people who have an intent to kill! This seems to be one of those things where you say "Duh ?!". What is the probability that a person who owns a gun intends to use it? Why would that person own a gun in the first place?

At the end of the day, you cannot argue with these guys because there could be this one bloke who holds on to the gun with the intent of self defense. This is like saying we should take all candy away from all kids because they cause cavities. In the process we could be killing some kid who has low blood sugar and relies on the candy for his very life. Better have a thousand kids with cavities and have a pediatric dentistry business flourish and improve the economy than have that one kid die. I do accept that logic, in spite of all the sarcasm.

In a country plagued by teenage drinking, highly stressed out kids, peer pressure that runs rampant, high instance of drug use in college, etc., the last thing you need is for college going kids to have access to guns! So many people smoke and kill themselves and others in the process of smoking, knowing that there is a warning label on the box of Cigarettes. So many drink and drive. So many make accessing guns easy for others who plan to take innocent lives. How do you make these people responsible for their actions? Sometimes I just think "it is just the luck of the draw" and keep going and at other times I feel :
angry at what happened which
instantly changes to frustration by the fact that the anger does not help, then
panic that I am going to be raising my kids here and finally
console myself saying "nah. this won't happen where I live!" and fear takes over again saying "what if I am wrong ?".

If a guy who is so far removed from the events today at the University can go through this rollercoaster of emotions, I just cannot imagine what the people at V.Tech must be going through. My heart goes out to all those affected by what happened today.

I really wish there will be a news story tomorrow with GWB in the headlines where he does something about people shooting people!

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