The shooting spree on that Virginia campus has confounded people’s expectations. It’s not about American culture and it’s not about the influence of violent computer games. It’s not even about somebody with a grudge against society in general. The killer wasn’t American; he hadn’t even been in the US for that long.

He was a South Korean undergraduate student, with “resident alien” status, and his motive appears to be the time-honoured cliché of revenge and anger against a young woman who rejected him. He went to the dormitory, shot her and the young man she was supposed to have been seeing, then walked to a lecture room, secured the doors so that nobody could escape (some of them did, by jumping out of the windows), and massacred those inside.

So why isn’t it the influence of computer games? That’s simple – these things have been happening since long before the invention of computers and violent games. As long as there have been guns, there have been gun rampages. Before the Virginia massacre, the worst such incident was in the 1960s, when a young man shot and killed 15 people and wounded many others, in Texas.

The only ones who are a little bit right in their remarks about this mess are those who blame the easy availability of guns. If that Korean student had not been able to get hold of the right kind of gun, with no questions asked – simply by going into a shop and buying it – then he might have tried some less dangerous method of getting his revenge on that girl. He might have succeeded in ending her life with a knife, as frequently happens in places where men can’t get hold of guns with ease, but all those other students would still be alive.

But even then, we can’t assume anything of the sort. Considering that in the USA any adult can buy almost any kind of gun without the need for a licence to carry it, or a permit to buy it – and considering the vastness of the USA and its huge population – these crazy shootings remain isolated cases. The last three bad cases were the Columbine school shooting in 1999, the killing of 10 Amish children just a few years ago, and the Texas shooting in the 1960s. Compare that to what happened in Scotland, where gun control is very strict: 16 little children and their teacher were shot in their classroom in Dunblane in 1996.

Compare it too to a case that happened in Malta some years ago, when a man – who has since been given a life sentence – flipped and rushed out into the street with his gun, chasing and killing the family he accused of insulting his son, then shooting wildly at others. There is another Maltese case that I remember: when a man got onto a public bus and started shooting. In Malta you cannot go into a shop and buy a gun just like that – but still there are guns, and where there are guns there will be this kind of thing. When a person flips and he has a gun available, the consequences are going to be horrendous.

We’ve had lots of gun crime in Malta – let’s not bury our heads in the sand about this and say that this kind of thing only happens “in big countries” or “bad places like America”. That’s not how it is, at all. If we cast our minds back over the past decade or so, we will realise just how many cases of gun crime there were: how many people were killed or maimed, how many people faced trial for doing it. The crimes range from the policeman killed outside a bank by robbers, to deeply upsetting cases of domestic violence in which men shot their wives.

There are thousands of guns out in private hands in Malta. And that is why there has been so much gun-related crime. Let a person take up his gun when he is angry and has lost all control of a situation, and the consequences are going to be obvious. When we rail against hunters and bird-shooting, we are missing one of the most important points: that guns in themselves are very dangerous, and that having so many thousands of guns in private homes is not a desirable situation at all. It’s just asking for trouble, and sooner or later more of that trouble is going to happen.

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There’s a “stop shopping” movement afoot in some of the most urbanised countries in Europe – most notably in Britain. It’s getting a lot of publicity. Curiously, those who promote this cause see it as being done in the general interests of humanity and the environment. We should forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. There is no way that a reduction in or cessation of shopping can contribute to the welfare of human beings. Shopping is what makes the world go round. When people stop shopping, the consequence is recession, spiralling in the worst-case scenario into economic depression. How that can be said to help anyone at all is beyond me.

Yes, the environment will be fine, just as it was fine in the days when life was nasty, brutal and short for everyone, and people survived on the edge of disease and starvation, dying of cold, hunger and misery and with little or nothing to liven up their dreary existence. But it is arrogant insanity to suggest that people should go back to living a horrid life just to “protect the environment”. And failing to make the connection between not shopping and economic recession is just sheer ignorance.

The only sensible reason to cut down on shopping is that you can’t afford it, or wish to save up for some sensible investment. Billions of people the world over depend on a continuation of shopping to eat and to stay alive. Every time there is a cutback in shopping, people lose their jobs, their income and their livelihood, not just in the country where shopping is stopping, but in other parts of the world where people are thoroughly dependent on selling the things they make for export. These are usually some of the poorest people in the world and the ones who cannot do without that money.

Calls to stop shopping are yet another example of the selfish and narrow-minded arrogance of those who live ultra-privileged lives in some of the most advanced societies in the world. They think that by not buying things, they are helping the environment and scoring green points. They haven’t the imagination or even the economic education to understand that buying things keeps people alive and fed, and when you are well-off, shopping is a civic responsibility, because it is the money you spend that goes into the pockets of those who need it.

The world has come a long way, and people’s lives are so much more comfortable now, because of the surge over the last few decades in consumer shopping. Those who wish to return to the 19th century can go there alone. They needn’t drag the rest of us along with them.