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He dejado pasar un tiempo, antes de desbrozar estas reflexiones sobre la matanza en el Virginia Tech, situada en la ciudad de Blacksburg, en la que eran asesinados treinta y dos estudiantes, y se hería a otros veintinueve. La escena debió de ser dantesca. Alumnos que saltaban por las ventanas, se arrastraban por el suelo, improvisaban barricadas o se hacían los muertos, mientras un profesor -superviviente de los horrores del Holocausto-, perdía la vida, al tratar de bloquear las puertas. Y lo he hecho de forma premeditada, pues deseaba asegurarme de si mi primigenio análisis seguía pareciéndome correcto. Pues bien, mi criterio no ha variado; lo más, la presencia de las oportunas posteriores matizaciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

Era previsible. Cho Seung Hui era un taciturno solitario, de humor cambiante, inestable. Cuatro de sus profesores habían mostrado su preocupación a la vista del contenido de sus trabajos académicos o de su conducta en clase. Tras las quejas de dos alumnas, los servicios de seguridad del campus y un consejero de los servicios psicológicos del instituto politécnico de Virginia (Virginia Tech) hicieron gestiones para internarle en una institución psiquiátrica. Sin embargo, un médico se mostró en desacuerdo con el juez en el sentido de que representara un peligro para los demás. En Estados Unidos es fácil adquirir armas (aunque están prohibidas en el campus de Virginia).…  Seguir leyendo »

If people noticed anything at all about Cho Seung Hui, it seems, they were struck by his silence. He wouldn't respond in class. He wouldn't talk to his roommates. Making his way across the Virginia Tech campus, he was quiet as a ghost.

But when he was alone, at a keyboard or in front of a camera, he had volumes to say. "You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he proclaimed in the video he mailed to NBC News between Act One and Act Two of his rampage. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why do we have the same futile argument every time there is a mass killing?

Advocates of gun control try to open a discussion about whether more reasonable weapons statutes might reduce the number of violent deaths. Opponents of gun control shout "No!" Guns don't kill people, people kill people, they say, and anyway, if everybody were carrying weapons, someone would have taken out the murderer and all would have been fine.

And we do nothing.

This is a stupid argument, driven by the stupid politics of gun control in the United States.

In other spheres, we act reasonably when faced with new problems.…  Seguir leyendo »

La espantosa matanza que, a manos de un estudiante, ha tenido lugar en una Universidad del Estado de Virginia (Virginia Tech) hará que se intensifique el debate sobre la libre venta de armas en Estados Unidos, instalado nuevamente en los medios. A preguntas de los periodistas, el portavoz de la Casa Blanca ha respondido que éste no es el momento de entrar en tal asunto, sino de pensar en las víctimas y acompañar en el dolor a sus familiares.

No se conocen los motivos que han llevado a Cho Seung-Hui -un estudiante surcoreano de origen humilde, criado en Estados Unidos- a cometer este asesinato masivo.…  Seguir leyendo »

In my day, Fort Dix, N.J., billed itself as the home of the Ultimate Weapon. That weapon, depicted by a heroic statue at the front gate, was the lowly infantryman armed only with his rifle and appearing to shout something like "Follow me!" This was the Army's way of countering the glamour of the other services, particularly the Air Force. It took boots on the ground -- not planes overhead -- to really win a war. It took, in short, the ultimate weapon. No one could kill better.

Now from Blacksburg, Va., comes additional evidence that there is nothing as dangerous as a single man and nothing as unpredictable as the mind of man.…  Seguir leyendo »

Not everyone concludes that tighter gun controls might prevent more gun deaths, although this has been the common conclusion on this side of the Atlantic. As the fatal shooting of 32 people at Virginia Tech sent the US into new analysis of one of its most controversial personal freedoms, some American commentators argued that if only students had been allowed to take their own arms into classrooms, they could have fought back.

Michelle Malkin, a well-known conservative blogger, attacking The New York Times’s call for tighter gun laws, declaimed that “apparently it’s creepy to call attention to legislative efforts that prevent students from arming themselves in self-defence on campus, but there’s nothing creepy about the Times jumping the gun on gun control”.…  Seguir leyendo »

The global image of the American school was once of wholesome youths laden with books and cheerleader pompoms. More recently it has become one of over-armed and overweight policemen racing to take up firing positions while students run screaming with terror.My first response to Monday's horror at Blacksburg, Virginia, was please, let it not be an Arab. The particular would instantly have become general and a madman a terrorist. Such is the degradation of public response to violence these days that nothing is allowed to be what it probably is, the random act of a mind deranged. It must be a sign of war and subject to the language of war.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cada vez que sucede una matanza indiscriminada como la que ha tenido lugar en la Universidad Politécnica de Virginia se alude a la enorme permisividad que existe en EEUU con respecto a la posesión de armas por parte de personas particulares, así como a los intereses de la industria armamentística para que las cosas sigan igual. Eso, sin lugar a dudas, es así, pero no sé si eso sólo explica el hecho de que a algún venado le dé de vez en cuando por coger un rifle y emprenderla a tiros contra los estudiantes.

A los extranjeros siempre nos llama la atención esa especie de veneración por el arma que tienen muchos americanos.…  Seguir leyendo »

By the desensitising standards of routine American gun violence, yesterday’s shootings at Virginia Tech university were shocking only in their scale. Over more than 20 years, Americans have got grimly used to a ritual that plays out on the cable news every few months. The initial news is sketchy, reports of shots fired at a campus or in a schoolyard. Then, the first confused images of students running terrified from classrooms, black-clothed Swat teams gingerly pressing into doorways; the press conference in which some dazed school principal or university president mutters the first incomplete details, with casualty estimates and emergency phone numbers for worried relatives to call.…  Seguir leyendo »