Bang

It seems to be everywhere I look - everyone seems to be discussing gun control laws and how we can keep this from happening again. What happened at Virginia Tech was a tragedy. There's quite simply no denying how horrible the events that recently occurred there were. They were, to say the very least, disturbing to our nation. It makes sense that people would now be discussing it and appalled by it. Every media outlet seems to be able to use the tragedy for something. Some are exploring the lives of those that were lost, interviewing their families. Others, are intensely arguing for and against gun control laws. Others are questioning whether the school officials failed to take adequate measures to prevent or minimize this tragedy.

In short, everyone seems to be grasping for answers and trying to make sense of the actions of someone that obviously was not thinking in sensible terms. People want to make sure that something like this never happens again. They want to insulate themselves from those people out there that may seek to do them harm. "There must be a way," they opine. I wonder if it makes things better or worse if they are able to solve this problem over a cup of coffee on a Wednesday morning.

I wonder what the lost children would have wanted us to take from this experience. I wonder if they would have wanted us more insulated or more exposed. Maybe they would have wanted someone to reach out to the kid that killed all of them before he went on his tirade. Maybe they would have wanted him arrested and locked away, given that several people did try to be friendly with the shooter before he became "the shooter". Maybe there really is no easy answer that will be derived over the cup of coffee this morning. Maybe the underlying problems run too deep and the questions of which liberties do we sacrifice and how we cope with other people.

I wrote a paper in law school about approaches to criminal justice. It was not really an area of law that I ever seriously considered practicing but it was something I found interesting. There was this new old approach to handling criminal offenders that was being applied in other countries (and certain areas of the United States) with surprisingly positive results, if you subscribe to the theory that criminal sanctions are meant to punish and rehabilitate. It was an approach called restorative justice. Unlike other punitive measures, this process was more holistic - involving the victim, the victim's family, the local community, everyone, in the entire punishment process. Not only did this approach have the statistical effect of rehabilitating the offenders (incidences of recidivism dropped dramatically), but the victims and the victims' families felt better with the process. Everyone actually seemed to feel more healed from it. Unfortunately, the approach did not comport with what Americans seemed to traditionally believe would solve crime, tougher sanctions, longer prison terms, and more laws. As such, these approaches were often never pitched by a politician running for election. I wonder what those students would have thought of my paper.

Please note that these are just my random musings and thoughts. It is not meant to be a political commentary or something to spark debate, even though I know it might.