by Rebecca Laffar-Smith

Created on: April 21, 2007   Last Updated: April 24, 2007

I've been hearing a lot about VA Tech, the college in the US where a student killed a lot of people. Now I admit I'm not completely up to speed with what happened. Australia is far removed and while we have the issue scattered on the news it's in highlighted snippets of scare-mongering rather than facts.

The scare-mongering is what has me concerned about this issue. Everyone seems to be completely focused on the shooter. His message is blast across the screen as if to highlight what a whack-job the boy is. He's cast off with stereotypes that alienate him from the rest of his peers.

What I see when I hear his video suicide note is a boy who has been tortured and tormented. To me it looks like a serious case of bullying gone wrong. This kid, quiet, reclusive, studious wrote to get the anxst out of his system. He was compartmentalized by the education system and cast out from the peer system of other students.

His final words seem to highlight the sense of victimization he felt at that school. It points at unnamed tormentors, rich kids because of the comment about their cars. To me it sounds like those kids had made his life hell. There comes a point when we can no longer turn a blind eye to our soul being crushed by the brutality of others.

Why isn't an eye on the 'victims'? He shot those kids for a reason. I think he probably aimed very specifically for the ones that hurt him. He went in knowing he would not live through it. He'd sacrificed his life and soul in the utter hopelessness of having it decimated by others. There is the element of revenge there but I wonder if perhaps he was saving others from the same torment too.

One side story I've heard is about the man who sold him the gun he used. The man says something along the lines of, "I did the right thing giving him a gun. If all those kids had guns that day there wouldn't have been a problem."

OMG SERIOUSLY? We don't put cars in the hands of teenagers because they just can't handle the responsibility. Guns are something very few people could handle. These kids are in college, they're all under a great deal of stress. Most of them feel like their very lives hang on the result of their final year exams, on every test and paper leading up to that too. They're on low to no sleep and generally have shockingly bad diets.

You want to put guns into the hands of all of them? That would have meant more bullets would have been fired that day. Out of panic, or anger, or revenge, or even to end their own misery. Even if

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