What. The. Fuck.

The opening of this article is disgusting. Short of coming out and saying, "It was Emily's fault," this is blatant, awful victim blaming.

Emily Hilscher was not responsible for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Even if she was his ex-girlfriend, she was not responsible - the man who shot her was. He's the one who picked up the gun, he's the one who pulled the trigger. He was the one with such a sense of entitlement to this woman that he went out and killed her. But it doesn't seem like this paper realises that she's the one who was murdered.

So now every media source is going on about gun control, gun control, gun control; security, security, security. To be honest though, let's face it - if the guy was this disturbed, all the gun control and security in the world probably wouldn't have stopped him from harming others. As more details come out, I'll be interested to hear more about his story and his possible motives. Maybe it was the ex-girlfriend. Maybe it was his mental health. Maybe it was bullying (yes, it happens in universities). Maybe it was a campus culture he didn't fit into, didn't understand. We don't know. But I really don't think gun control should be made into the main issue. The backstory, what was going on in this young man's life, should be at the forefront of the discussions, so that if it was mental illness, in the future people in the same frame of mind can get the proper help sooner; so if it was a relationship gone sour, that we can get information out on handling those kinds of situations - and so that dead women don't get blamed for what they weren't responsible for.

Update: Making the article I wrote about even more ridiculous, it turns out that Emily Hilscher didn't even know the guy. Though he did seem to have a history of stalking, to the point where his roommates told their female friends not to come by their room. Apparently he "saw promiscuity" in one girl. *shudders*