Tuesday, April 17, 2007

No motive = gender violence?

Someone needs to take Virginia Tech President Streger aside and perhaps suggest kindly that he think a little more or maybe have someone else look over his statements before he makes them.

Details of killer emerge after 33 die in US campus shootings
There were two separate attacks, two hours apart. The first inside a dormitory early Monday morning killed two people. After that a rampage took place in another building, killing 30 people and leaving bodies at several points in the building before shooting himself in the head. Up to 30 others were reported wounded.

Steger described the attacks as "two very tragic events" that "may or may not" be related. "We just don't know at this point in time," he said.

"May or may not be related" sounds like they think someone else shot the people in the dorm then continued his killing spree in a class building.

I'm genuinely interested to see how this "first gunman" theory pans out since so far, it seems a whole lot like it's just a really intense attempt to explain a failure to consider a "domestic" violent offender an actual threat to society. Coulda been two. Why not. Assholes often travel in groups, don't they? Columbine had two. The shitbags who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building came in a pair.


I also can't help but notice the AP non-agentive sentences this passage starts with. The only agent I can find is "a rampage....killing 30 people, leaving bodies, and shooting himself in the head". A rampage doesn't shoot itself, nor does a rampage have a head or gender (presumably). These are the grammatical contortions people get into when they are trying very hard not to say something. I don't imagine conspiracy. I hardly ever do. I imagine society.

And back to the "domestic" nature of the first shooting.
Campus police chief Wendell Flinchum said the first shooting had appeared to be "domestic in nature" so authorities did not feel it warranted an immediate lockdown of the sprawling engineering and research university which has some 26,000 students and 10,000 staff.

No, not a lockdown but perhaps a warning - a strongly stated public emergency announcement that they are looking for an armed man on campus. I still maintain that what leads people to conclude that the perpetrator of a crime which is "domestic in nature" is a collection of unexamined, dangerous sexist attitudes.

1 comment:

TFLS said...

Glad to see I'm not the only one bothered by the use of the term 'domestic'. The first shooting was dismissed. Had it not been........