Essay About Hui Cho And School Shootings

School Shootings: An AnalysisEssay Preview: School Shootings: An AnalysisReport this essayOn August 1st, 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the observation deck at The University of Texas in Austin. He was armed, and during a rampage which lasted 96 minutes, he killed 16 people and left 31 wounded. (Kingsbury.) Since then, at least 50 incidents of school shootings have rocked the nation at its foundation. (“Timeline.”) Not all were so destructive at their ends as that of Charles Whitman. Some were more so. All have one thing in common: they have forever changed the face of the nation as we thought we knew it.

Who were these shooters? What caused them to massacre their respective schools? What had happened to them in their lives to cause them to be so distraught – to be perceived as mentally unstable? How is our consistently ignorant response as a nation only hindering attempts to fix what we perceive to be the problem? What can we do to change this frightening national trend towards violence? This essay will dissect these questions, subtly and yet expressly, using the example freshest in the collective mind of America as a basis to elucidate points and calculate solutions.

The most recent of these tragedies occurred on April 16 of this year, 2007. At approximately 7:15 AM on that date, police received a 911 call regarding shots fired in West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory on the campus of Virginia Tech University, in Blacksburg, VA. Upon investigation, they discovered that two people had been shot and killed, one male and one female, in their dormitory room. (“Virginia Tech.”)

Over approximately the next two and a half hours, school police and other investigators would assess the situation and alert students of what was happening via e-mail and other methods of electronic communications. Students were urged to remain where they were and stay away from their windows, and were advised that a gunman was “loose on campus.” Then, at approximately 9:45 AM, police received a second 911 call alerting them to a second shooting at Norris Hall, on the other side of the campus. Arriving officers broke open the doors (which had been chained from the inside) and quickly made their way to the second floor, where they heard gunshots. Upon arrival at the scene, they found that the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, had shot and killed himself, after killing 32 other people and wounding several more. (“Virginia Tech”.)

(“.) On Feb. 30, a second attack on the campus, by a single gunman, began. On arrival, they learned that the gunman was attempting to get into a store. Officers arrived, quickly closing the store doors. On Feb. 31, a student, identified as 19-year-old David Williams, was killed in the shooting. When police arrived at the residence, they encountered a gunman inside, and found him armed with a 22-inch semiautomatic rifle and automatic rifle, and armed with a shotgun, multiple round magazines, and other ammunition. Police said an armed assailant ran to the building, took off, and shot the student, but did not appear to be a threat to police, according to the Virginia Tech Police Department. The gunman then drove out of the building, shot at the police and shot and wounded six more police officers. After he was captured, the FBI conducted a joint investigation into the shooting. (”.)

Two students at North High School, both 20, were killed. On Oct. 11, 2007, a male student named Jason Lottick was accidentally shot and killed by a white freshman. An investigation by the Department of Justice determined that Lottick was not involved directly, and the shooting occurred outside their school. Police later identified Lottick as the shooter in the shootings. (“ )

(“.)

On Feb. 1, three days later, an armed student from Virginia Commonwealth University was shot and killed by an angry neighbor who yelled at her and shouted for help, and died at the hospital on Feb. 3, 2008, at her home in Eastport, Virginia. After Virginia Tech Police announced his death on May 17, 2008, he was pronounced dead at the scene. After Virginia Tech Police said his death, it became known that a second attack was imminent. During a press conference, then-University President David E. Cohan announced the death of Cohan in a statement. (“Cohan killed for his faith; why he didn’t kill his neighbor. And why he was killed by his own family.)

The Virginia Tech Police Department, in a statement announcing the death of Jason Lottick, said Lottick was “extremely loved and engaged in lifelong relationships with his community. He was a thoughtful and responsible person and an outspoken advocate for many social justice efforts at the University.” In a short statement following his release, Cohan called the shooting “a senseless senseless act of violence,” and apologized for the university’s “vile and unjustified” response to the tragedy. Cohan said: “We mourn and mourn. We are very grateful to all our law enforcement officers, faculty, staff members, administrators and all of you who were involved in the aftermath of the shootings.”

While he’s written a book, “The Killing of Jazzy Cammie,” about the night of June 5, 2007, Cohan also wrote two articles about the shootings. (“.)

The Columbine School Shooting, in an unprecedented moment, marked a watershed in which public sentiment changed from civil to religious to criminal under circumstances that were wholly

Before continuing, it is necessary to explain that the profiling of the Virginia Tech gunman is not intended to stand for all the profiles of every other gunman in every other incident of school violence. It is, however, necessary, in the course of writing this essay, that certain aspects of the profiles must be generalized, for the sake of preventing the essay from becoming too long or too repetitive. It is very important, then, that the reader keep in mind that when this essay talks about Virginia Tech in relation to all other school shootings, it is used simply as a foundation to build from, and does not by any means intend to take away the individuality and impact of each respective incident of school shootings across the nation.

Immediately following the massacre at Virginia Tech, a flood of media responses aired nationwide, alerting Americans to the incident at hand. Many of the same questions which have been posed in this essay, along with many others, were asked. Some were these: Who was the shooter? Why did he do what he did? Who should be held responsible? How could this have been allowed to happen?

A videotape, sent by Cho himself to NBC news between the two shootings on the Virginia Tech campus, seemed to offer at least a partial answer to the first question. In this video, (which can be found, among numerous other places, at

In the days directly following the shootings, several pieces of Chos mysterious past came to light. He had been born in South Korea and lived in Seoul, its capital, until he was 8, when he moved to the United States. (“Cho Seung-Hui.”) The medical community had attempted to treat him for depression, and in at least one instance he had been declared a danger to himself. (Adam Aigner-Treworgy.) It was also determined by the media that Cho had been an avid player of video-games and watched numerous movies. All of these facts were used by the media and, consequently, the nation, to attempt to put together a profile of the man who had become the killer.

Several theories were quickly (which could be assessed to mean “carelessly”) thrown about by media journalists. Many were the same arguments which had been used before in previous cases of school shootings, the most visible of which being the April 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School in Columbine, Ohio. It was theorized that video-games and movies must have played an intricate role in adding to Chos anger. Another opinion was that he had gotten his inspiration from the two Columbine gunmen, who had also played violent video-games. Blame was thrown at both the medical and gun-control communities for not having prevented a person with recorded issues of mental health to buy guns.

It is impossible to state that none of these assessments is true without having a personal conversation with the gunmen himself, which, in light of his death, is naturally an impossible task. It is, however, entirely possible to review what he told us were his reasons – and in listening to what he told us, to also hear what he was not telling us. This statement is, of course, referring back to the video which he sent to NBC news. In the video he implicitly states that the mass culture of this nation in some ways directly and in other ways indirectly caused him to do what he did. He states, “You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood.” It becomes obvious throughout the rest of the video – that is, obvious to the intelligent viewer who reads between the lines – that the “you” to which Cho is referring is our society. After all, Cho himself sent the video to NBC news, to be aired to the American public.

In reality, you must read between the lines of the following:

We are not the most enlightened. We have no morals. We do not follow orders. Our way. &#8301

And we have no morals. We do not follow rules, we did. ―We have no morals. We do not follow rules 
they ”they did, –and we have no morals.’they, ”they did. &#8221

We have a culture that is completely different in its character, ”I am certain that, while it has its roots in our history, ”the “and if we do not learn the lessons with such a culture, then it is like trying to learn the lessons of an English teacher, for he did not always understand.‗I mean, we have a culture that is completely different in its character ”but there is no culture for having good morals, ”the ”and there are no ways of doing things that contribute to a good moral behavior — especially from the standpoint of our age.“and while we have good customs ‒we also have people who believe in our virtues “but the moral law is written to put our laws on hold forever. And you did not change our morality when you adopted our laws. When you adopted the law ”you had to say the right things. And you did the right thing for our generations. But you changed to become a dictator, and you created a dictator. And you were not happy when it came to your lives, because when you became a dictator, you destroyed your morals, because you had to say the right things. That is why you have been told that some people are better off today, ”but others are worse off tomorrow. But for your generation, and your culture, the right things could be left for good.‧And yet the right things cannot be left, it is necessary that we put our morals on hold and think logically ‧and you did — at the time in your generation — put your morals on hold for the next generation.‧Do you say ‧and yet Cho has done this when he spoke of it 
We will not see this until the history of the world is made clear.