Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Talk of the Town

The Virginia Tech shooting is only one of the many shootings of the sort to occur in America's history. The aftermath of these events are always devasting; families and friends of students and staff are worried sick about their loved ones and praying that they are okay. The first paragraph of this article illustrates the effects that shootings like this have on the community and eventually on the people all across America. Once people get over the intial shock and horror of the shooting itself, they start to bring up the motives people have to commit such a terrible act of violence and how to stop things like this from happening again. As mentioned in the article, a common solution people jump to is advancement in the treatment of mental illness. A good idea this is; however, there is evidence to a quicker and more effective resolution: much stricter gun control. I think this is a much better solution considering there are always going to be metally ill people that are prone to violent behaviors, and research to better the treatment of these types of people will take years. Gopnik includes plenty of evidence leading to the conclustion that stricter gun control will signicficantly lessen the chance of shootings like this from reoccuring. Mass shootings like Virgina Tech occur all over the world, and countries that have made weapons of mass killing more difficult to get ahold of after such events have had almost no more similar incidents occur. The concept is logical; the harder it is for killers or people in general to obtain guns, the less violence will be able to occur. We just need to get people to see that connection and be able to put it into action.

Sontag's article was a good addition to Gopnicks. It adressed a similar issue, but in a much more broad sense. It talked about people's false sense of reality and ignorance to what's going on in Iraq. The message being drilled into American's heads is that everything is fine and that we are a strong nation that can't be hurt. As Sontag wisely says, "Who doubts America is strong? But that's not all America has to be." It is clear that there is a problem, and that we as a nation need to do something about it, and it's going to take more than just strength of a nation. There needs to be awareness and a specific action plan. The article does a good job informing the audiance of the problem but it lacks how to fix it or the "action plan." I definately don't have enough information to even form an opinion on what should be done, but there are plenty of people that do, and it's their job to educate the public and form a solution.