Its difficult to be away from home when tragedy happens. Its especially hard to be out of the country. I've been watching the news about Virginia Tech on TV, and because I am from Virginia it hits hard. A large number of the students from my high school went to Virginia Tech, and it is one of the major universities in Virginia with the most students. Luckily I don't think I knew anyone who was killed, but I do know people whose friends were killed. And I know plenty of students at VT who are dealing with complete emotional shock.
What's especially difficult is that while I'd like to be able to mourn with my country and feel sad about what happened, I've had to watch the Australian news' take on the event, where John Howard says something like "It was tragic, we are quite sad, luckily our gun control laws in Australia mean it could never happen here, poor Americans."
And instead of being able to mourn the loss of the students, I end up being asked question after question about gun control and gun laws, and many Australians seem eager to tell me how they thing our gun laws in America are crap and how if we restricted guns things like this would never happen.
Its not that I don't know these things, and this conversation will happen in the US because of what happened. But when something like this hits so close to home, it would have been nice to be able to simply feel sad that such a horrible thing happened, sympathize with the students, and attempt to wrap my head around what happened before the political blame game begins.
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