World attention should focus on what is happening at centres of learning in the U.S., which are supposed to train minds rather than allow them to go berserk.
Ive worked very hard as a student. I feel that Im committed to social justice.
Stephen Kazmierczak, the Northern Illinois University killer
YET another university shooting in the United States that killed seven students should send shivers down the spine of many Indian parents who have their children studying in that country. (There are about 80,000 Indians enrolling every year.)
The setting for the gruesome incident on Valentines Day was the idyllic Northern Illinois University campus in De Kalb, about 100 kilometres west of Chicago. The aggressor was a white male dressed in black, said to be a former sociology student at the university, who hid in his guitar-case four weapons three handguns and a shot gun and barged into a science lecture hall to commit the heinous act. After completing the horrendous operation from the stage of the hall with the ruthless efficiency only a professional could command, he turned the gun on himself. The campus police arrived quickly much faster than they did in the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007 but the whole incident was over within seconds, leaving everyone in the room absolutely numb. Many were injured and had a providential escape.
The De Kalb shooting came six days after a similar outrage at the Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. A woman student shot dead two fellow-students before ending her own life. There is no report until now why she did this. A few days later, a Memphis (Tennessee) school reported the shooting and injuring of a 15-year-old girl by an older schoolmate, and an Oxnard (California) junior high school was the scene of a shooting incident in which a 15-year-old boy was critically wounded.
Four incidents in a week are a sure indication that something is radically wrong with the American youth. This is even when the scars of the Virginia Tech massacre, accounting for 33 casualties (both faculty and students), and the murder (December 13, 2007) of two students from Andhra Pradesh at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge possibly a case of robbery killing are yet to heal.
World attention should now turn on what is happening at centres of learning in the U.S., which are supposed to train minds rather than allow them to go berserk. If thousands of young men and women from different parts of the globe gravitate towards that country seeking knowledge, it is not merely because American campuses offer quality education but because they also provide an ambience that is friendly and hospitable. We can no longer be accused of generalising if we say that these places are indeed becoming dangerous, a reversal of my own position until a few months ago.
Criminologists would naturally look for patterns in the madness that is so obvious in all these incidents. In most, if not all, of the shootings reported from the U.S. in recent months, we find the aggressor putting an end to himself after extinguishing young lives. The targets are invariably chosen at random, bereft of motive against individuals. These two factors alone suggest a mental frame that is obviously flawed and disturbed.
The North Illinois killer, 27-year-old Stephen Kazmierczak, was reportedly under some medication and had taken himself off it in the days preceding the savage attack. The Virginia Tech assailant, Seung-Hui Cho, had a history of mental illness for which he had received treatment, a fact that was grievously overlooked by those who should have known, his faculty and the campus police. We do not have any data on the mental state of other campus shooters. I would be surprised if they were not at least slightly unstable. That the shooters were invariably persons who had reported problems sometime or the other in their youth would be to state the obvious.
Also, crime flourishes at places where there is an opportunity, and the targets are soft and available on a platter. This is why eminent criminologists, such as Professor Ron Clarke of the famous Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, Newark (New Jersey), harp on target hardening. This would call for not only more intensive policing of campuses, but making it difficult for rank outsiders like Kazmierczak to gain access to classrooms. Bringing guns on to centres of learning should be rendered less easy than it is now.
Everyday physical checks are impractical to prescribe and execute with thoroughness. But the fact that such a check is in place should deter at least some prospective assailants. Standards of campus policing in the U.S. vary markedly from university to university, and depend mainly on how affluent one is. This is despite local regulations making it obligatory for the authorities to protect students and also be transparent in reporting incidents inside universities.
Fundamental to the analysis of campus violence is the fact that, in spite of mandatory background checks and a 24-hour wait to cool down a person buying a gun to wreak vengeance against an adversary, firearms are still easy to procure in the U.S. There are 192 million guns in the country which has a population of around 300 million. This means almost every other citizen has a weapon. By the U.S. yardstick, we will have more than 500 million guns in India.
This is all in the name of protecting constitutional right to bear arms, a right that has become totally unjustified to retain in the U.S. statute book. In Virginia, Seung-Hui Cho got two guns despite his mental aberration, and the system of checks overlooked him on a technical ground that he was not an inmate of a mental health centre but a mere outpatient. In North Illinois, Kazmierczak had four weapons in his arsenal. All of them were bought from the same local authorised dealer within a space of one year. Still, the curiosity of the dealer was not aroused. He cannot, perhaps, be faulted in a country where gun ownership is routine and much more than a status symbol. At least one background check was done on him, which revealed no criminal history. He had a firearms-owner-ID issued by the State Police. The cruel joke is that the magazine for two of the weapons in his possession were sold by the same Internet gun retailer, TGSCOM Inc. of Greenbay, Wisconsin, from whom the Virginia Tech killer had bought his weapons.
All media reports speak of a profile that Kazmierczak carried, something that becomes meaningful in retrospect. He had spent time at a psychiatric care centre in Chicago immediately after finishing high school. This was at the instance of his parents. But he resisted medication and avoided going there as often as he was required to. He had two short spells of employment thereafter, one in a prison as a guard, and the other in the Army, from where he got a discharge, in his own admission, on psychological grounds.
More significantly, in the recent months he started painting his arms with tattoos that were morbid. One such tattoo depicted a skull pierced by a knife, and another carried the picture of a character from a horror movie. All these point to a state of mind that was far from tranquil. Still, the federal database of disturbed persons who shall not be allowed to buy a gun did not pick him. This was again, as in the case of Virginia Techs Seung-Hui Cho, for a technical reason: Kazmierczak was sent to a mental home voluntarily by his parents and was not committed thereto by a judge. If the latter had been the case, the federal database would have flagged him as one to whom sale of a firearm was prohibited. It looks as if the parents, by not reporting their sons mental fragility to university authorities or law enforcement, were more culpable for the De Kalb tragedy than the son himself.
In the final analysis, two features of the American scene stand out. First is the liberal licensing system that makes gun availability more than abundant. The few restrictions such as a cooling-off period beginning with a persons request for a weapon from a dealer, and a criminal record check have not had the effect of keeping the numbers of firearms down. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has a vice-like grip over the situation which prevents any major efforts to tighten the procedure. It is doubtful whether the Virginia Tech and North Illinois massacres will ever persuade the NRA to come down from the pedestal.
Leading criminologist Lawrence Sherman, who divides his time between the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge University and was recently in Delhi, feels that the gun carnage in many U.S. universities could bring enormous pressure on those who believed that strict licensing was no answer. Many in this group had originally assumed the position that tragedies were difficult to prevent however complicated the licensing procedure was. Sherman feels that this group could now climb down a little to favour more restrictions on gun licensing and ownership.
I would like to end on a poignant note. Kazmierczak had a girlfriend, Baty, an on-off relationship, in the words of the latter, that was nothing to write home about. Still, on the day of the incident he sent her what could be described as a farewell message: Youve done so much for me, the note said, according to Baty. You will make an excellent psychologist and social worker someday. This was a sure indication that Kazmierczak had commendable human sensitivities.
Still, he did something abominable that no normal person could ever bring himself to do. This perhaps is the greatest irony of life. The softest of persons can bewilder you with cruelty that is beyond words.
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