Many factors help clarify why 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui went on his shooting rampage at Virginia Tech university on Monday morning, assuming he alone was responsible for all the deaths and injuries. The easy availability of lethal handguns in Virginia is undoubtedly one of them. So is the prevailing anxiety, insecurity, embitterment and violence currently felt in this cultural centre of the US military as the war in Iraq turns so sour for its troops on the ground. None of this can explain, much less excuse, the reprehensible action of this young man or what drove him to it. He alone is responsible. But such conditions certainly facilitate the resort to random violence and are a valid concern of public policy in the wake of this disaster.
Research shows that homicide (and suicide) rates are lower where access to guns is restricted by law and higher where they are more freely available. The rates are far higher in the United States than in other developed countries. Within the US the same pattern applies from state to state according to whether weapons are more or less strictly licensed to individuals of differing backgrounds. Public attitudes likewise vary hugely in the US, even though overall they too are much more permissive towards guns than elsewhere.
The second amendment to the US constitution famously reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". The amendment was passed soon after independence, when there was still a widespread fear that the British might attempt to subvert it; and a people's militia is one thing, unrestricted individual freedom to bear arms quite another. This historical and circumstantial account of the amendment is disputed by the National Rifle Association, whose home state is Virginia. It has a formidable public relations armoury, which helps to explain why even comparatively liberal US political leaders respond so tamely to the political case for restricting arms availability. The argument frequently heard that, had some of the students attacked had guns they could have defended themselves, makes sense only within a flawed case for their widespread availability. In fact guns were banned on this campus.
It is to be hoped that this terrible episode enables these arguments to be publicly aired and debated more rationally than before. That must be done even as more details on what drove Cho Seung-Hui to act as he did are awaited. Little is known about him so far other than that he was a lonely, isolated and resentful person. Civilised societies must protect themselves against such projections of violence by making it difficult to get access to the type of automatic weapon he used. In Virginia it is ridiculously easy to get hold of them, since there are few checks on individual backgrounds or restrictions on retail outlets or gun fairs. Such measures would make it much more difficult for another tragedy like this to occur.