What did you do? 'I prayed.'

'What did you do?' 'I prayed.' This was the response of one of the women trapped in the building at Virginia Tech where America's latest mad gunman took out 32 victims. It was described eloquently by Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, in his Thought for the Day this morning. He also said it was time for the US to look again at the constitutional right of every adult to bear arms.

The attack took place on the worldwide Holocaust Memorial Day. The gunman was Asian. These two facts are not necessarily connected. But this is one of the victims, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor and a professor at Virginia Tech. Aged 75, he threw himself in front of the gunman when he attempted to enter his classroom. The students survived, he didn't. I am indebted to Irene's comment below for this information, reported in Times Online and the Jerusalem Post.

Earlier today, Virginia Tech's Presbyterian minister Catherine Snyder spoke to Premier Christian Radio. The Episcopal Church and Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori have also responded.

Personally, I see no hope of the gun lobby being bound by the traditional ethics of Judeo-Christian morality to relinquish their weapons. They won't listen to an English bishop, nor a politician, not with the present spate of shootings on the streets of London bearing testimony to the anarchy that can still rein in a country with no automatic right to bear arms. I sympathise with Bishop Butler, but he might as well call for bombs to be banned, or for no more wars. And how many people have died in Iraq in the past days, weeks, months? How many of them innocent children? It is odd how, even in today's globalised world, it can still seem more shocking when young people die random deaths in the US than when young children are blown to bits by bombs in Iraq. I am not alone in feeling this, as Salvationist Graeme Smith writes.

Comments

[Robin Bather]

Rubbish Irene!
However much we admire Mr. Librescu's galliant actions, the fact of the matter is that the National Rifle Association lobby has the gained financial control of the House, the Senate and hence the American people.
As you well know Irene, I am strongly against lobbying which passes individual freedom into the hands of vested interests such as big business and foreign interests such as AIPAC.

(That damned Limey is back!)

[Robin Bather]

Julie Paiin has gone to the heart of the matter Ruth. The Times has castrated the bloggers by preventing us from contacting each other. The grapevine was a thriving living thing before, but now I see that many of your old blogger family members have disappeared. You have no idea how we used to contact each ther and plan attacks!
Pity.

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

Israeli TV has had a great many on-going news programmes on this event and discussed the irony of the professor being killed on Holocaust Memorial Day, when he himself, with his wife, was a Holocaust survivor.

A Catholic priest called Father Jonathan was asked how he thought God could permit such things and how could such bad things happen to good people?

Father Jonathan's reply was
that God has given us free will. The perpetrator demonstrated his free will by his negative actions and the professor exercised his by giving his life for others.

[Martin]

"But then why support state interference in the agonising (but essentially private) decision to have an abortion?"

Because such a view requires one to view abortion as just that - an acceptable moral choice which can be made privately as a personal decision. It is not. A society which regards the foetus as endowed with a human soul from the moment of conception cannot regard abortion as anything other than the murder of an innocent human being, and therefore if one cannot take a private and personal decision to commit murder without opprobrium, then neither can one take a private and personal decision to commit abortion.

[binky, webelf]

As a colonial, I was raised to straightforwardly respect and use firearms.

The attitude that says all of us law-abiding civilians should always be potential victims in a free-fire zone [like gun-free Virginia Tech] makes no sense to me. It is not a free or safe society when only the evil or the insane [and government officials] have free access to weapons, and know it.

It is an heavenly hope to see swords beaten into plowshares, a consummation devoutly to be wished; and Our Lord Jesus may say that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, but he didn't propose universal feel-good sword-control laws, or condemn his disciples (or all other sword-users) for being sensibly precautionary in having a weapon to hand when needed, in this pre-heavenly world of light and dark, good and evil.

Freedom, life, and goodness must be defended-- somdtimes in one-on-one ways, and sometimes in an unpleasant fashion. The alternatives are far worse.

We really do need more reality and less twaddle in this discussion.

[An Observer]

I would say that it is a society in which the right and responsibility to bear arms is forbidden, that one finds people de-humanised to a greater extent than one in which people do have access to personal arms. Tomorrow, 18th April, commemorates the ride of Paul Revere (and of William Dawes and Dr Prescott) who rode through the Middlesex county of Massachusetts, warning that 'the British are coming!' and 'for the folk to be up and to arms.' They duly were, meeting and fighting the British Army at Concord Bridge and Lexington Green. Their ability to shoulder arms immediately in defence of their freedom is the major factor in gun ownership, not 'macho' nonsense or imagined national psychosis as spoken on this and other blogsites: the Swiss actually require every man to serve in their army and to keep a weapon at home, fully loaded and prepared to use it. A madman and/or criminals always have access to weaponry: hadn't you notice how the violent crime of every category has soared in Britain since the knee-jerk reaction to the Dunblane tragedy? You are even in the immoral condition now whereby anyone defending himself against attack is fined or even imprisoned and sued by the criminal and pilloried by the government! Statistically, those states in the US which have the highest rate of gun ownership are also those which have the lowest rate of crime: the possibility of facing the working end of a shotgun seems to be a mighty disincentive to burglars, for one example. And the fact that in a town several citizens may not own weapons but a few do, is also an indication that the many often depend upon the few to preserve their civilisation. I understand that the students at Virginia Tech were forbidden to carry hand guns: that may have sealed the fate of them all. I saw a poll a few days back of all European nations: the overwhelming majority view certain countries like Iran to be major threats to world peace and strongly approve of military steps to end such a threat but, guess what? They don't want European countries to be the ones to do anything about it. As for a man, so for a nation: if you are not prepared to defend yourself, you are even less likely to come to another's aid.

[Julie Pain]

Actually, Holocaust Day was on Sunday April 15th this year though the commemorations take place on the Monday when it falls on a Sunday.

CNN has reported that the gunman has been identified as one of Virginia Tech's students -Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major from South Korea.

There's a history of racial tension at Virginia Tech, with meetings of a Task Force on Race and the Institution being held at the Dept of Engineering, where many of the shootings took place - see this blog for information: Campus
Watch. The blog also indicates that some students have wanted the right to keep guns on campus as a means of defending themselves following an incident near the campus last year.

This will just make the gun lobby stronger - I have already seen one US blogger finding the massacre a reason for Virginia Tech students to be allowed to keep guns on campus in order to defend themselves.

__________

It's a shame to see how The Times has recently reduced all of its blogs to the status of opinion columns which allow comments. No fun at all now that readers/commenters can't contact each other or look at one another's blogs unless someone goes to the trouble of leaving their URL within their comment. It would be interesting to know if that is an editorial decision or if it is up to each Times blogger to allow or disallow blog links or e.mail addresses via commenter names.

My blog is here, visitors and comments are always welcome.

[Frank Schnittger]

I have never quite understood why the American Christian Right seems to be united around a number of apparently contractictory positions: Pro-Guns, Anti-abortion and anti Gays.

I can understand why a Libertarian philosophy might favour individual action over state protection and thus favour citizens engaged in armed self-defence over more effective (and better funded) policing. But then why support state interference in the agonising (but essentially private) decision to have an abortion?

I can also understand why the macho culture associated with the gun lobby should look askance at "poofters". But how is such a culture consistent with the ideals of Christian forbearance and Self-sacrifice?

Could it be that Christianity is just a convenient fig leaf for a macho, gun loving, abusive, domineering, fearful and hate driven agenda?

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

Ruth, The Times has an article which mentions that an Israeli professor saved lives by protecting his students and being killed in the process.

The Jerusalem Post tells us that the professor was a Holocaust survivor. Plus the event happened on Holocaust Memorial Day, which we have just commemorated.

It's all here:
http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/holocaust_survi.html

[graeme]

The sooner we value all human life the same regardless of whether we are from the same country, or hemisphere, or side, the sooner some of the deep injustices of the world will be solved.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if the media started to portray this type of standard rather than the current value system!