Friday, April 27,2007 12 a.m.
As the dust begins to settle in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, the issue of gun control is becoming prevalent across the nation. Sadly, this issue became a personal one for me two months ago when my cousin, Nicole Schiffman, and her friend Carol Kestenbaum were senselessly shot and killed outside the Arizona State University campus. When the facts of this inconceivable tragedy surfaced I realized the accessibility of firearms in the US.
Unfortunately, the news of the Virginia Tech shooting did not surprise me.
It is a frightening truth that it takes a tragedy of this magnitude for people to recognize the dangers existing in our society today. The ignorance prior to this wake up call is illustrated by John Markell, the store owner who sold Cho Seung-Hui his 9 mm and .22 caliber guns. “He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won’t sell a gun if we have any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious.” How can a college student purchasing a gun not be suspicious?
11,000 homicidal shootings are committed each year in the United States. The 32 murders that took place on April 16, however, have brought the issue of gun control to the forefront. A similar situation occurred in Australia in 1996. After 35 people were shot to death in Tasmania, Prime Minister John Howard instituted a strict gun control policy that eliminated 600,000 guns from the street. Laws also mandate that a gun can only be purchased with possession of a hunting license. Since then, only 70 gun related homicides have occurred per year, not one of them a mass shooting.
Violence has been built into the American culture because it is a daily occurrence. Americans have become desensitized to gun violence. I can only hope that my cousin’s death and the events of the horrific Virginia Tech massacre will bring nationwide awareness and radical changes to our gun control laws. If we allow this tragedy to become more blood shed in vain, our country will be suffering a loss much larger than that of those 32 innocent lives.
