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Many Dead In Virginia Tech Shooting
nexuspal writes "Over 20 confirmed dead at Virginia Tech. Shooter killed some at residence hall then two hours later killed others in classrooms. Worst school shooting in US history. "
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See headline. Check favorite news outlets, or see the developing story, including people monitoring scanners, several students posting live in the thread, and people grappling with the various sources of information in this Fark thread.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I was at the University of Arizona Nursing School shootings in 2001, and know what the folks over at VTech are going through.
My thoughts are with you, your loved ones and for this world, which every day seems to spin more out of control.
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Worst shooting spree of *any* kind. 31 dead, latest count. How he got away with it again, two hours later, is a question many will be asking.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
In case anyone has missed it, Jack Thompson has already gone on the major news networks predicting that the shooter's computer will have Counterstrike installed.
How the hell does Jacko correlate the skill of properly aiming and discharging a firearm with moving a thumbstick and pressing a button on a control-pad? There is no link there!
Listen Jack, just because your addled mind cannot disassociate video games from reality doesn't mean that the rest of us can't either. For fuck sake, the bodies aren't even COLD yet, we have no idea who the shooter is, and already you're exploiting this situation to try to push your illogical and ultimatly incorrect agenda?
You are a sick, sick man Jacko. Human filth. The only person worse than you in this situation is the shooter, but at least he had the decency to get killed.
My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy, but right now I can't help but feel only rage at the baseless lies and unabashed opportunism displayed by this man.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
So far, 32 dead they say including him...they said he was an oriental fellow, with a vest on, and lots of ammo strapped to him.
Any word if he was an engineering student that may have snapped or anything?
Sad day...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
link. My question/concern is why did the police not lock down the campus after the shooting in the residence hall. 2 hours later, the SAME shooter went into classrooms and started killing students. If this is indeed the case, I believe it was gross negligence on the part of the police and I would be very disturbed if I was a family member of one of the students killed in the second shooting.
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Have some friends in the area, so our usual gang was trying to figure out what was up.
From what I heard they put all schools in the county into lockdown when the attack was detected - not just college campuses. The gunman is apparently dead, but obviously everyone is extremely nervous.
Apparently the campus had had bomb threats in the last two weeks. No idea if they're connected:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18134671/
My thoughts are with the lost and their loved ones.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
He was on Fox around 3:15 Eastern (I think. Time may be off), almost in tears talking about how HL2, GTA, and the others prepared the guy for violence - notwithstanding his name hasn't even been released yet.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I heard something on the news about this when the details were unfolding this morning. I thought to myslef "Not again.. What the fuck is wrong with people." I mean, really, what the hell would cause someone to do something of this nature? I can understand being mad, even mad enough to kill - but that is rage targeted at an individual for perceived crmes against myself. To do something of this magnitude to what basically amounts to a group of innocents is just mind numbingly awful. Fucktard. Also, my best to those affected by one persons retardation.
I submitted this story as well, and in my summary I stated that this being a tech site, there are probably a lot of virginia tech students alumni in the readership, and therefore it is appropriate to post this on /.
This whole incident makes me sick to my stomach, and my thoughts/prayers go out to the families and victims.
I got nothin'
Jack Thompson was already on the news blaming it on video games. What a sick fuck. Using this horror to advance his personal agenda. What a sick, sick human being.
http://www.judicial.vt.edu/upsl.php
10. Fireworks/Explosives/Hazardous Chemicals/Weapons
Unauthorized possession or use of fireworks, explosives, or weapons is prohibited. Hazardous chemicals that could pose a health risk are also prohibited from the campus, including chemicals that, when combined with other substances, could be hazardous or present a danger to others.
Unauthorized possession, storage (in vehicles on campus as well as in the residence halls), or control of firearms and weapons on university property is prohibited. (NOTE: Organizational weapons of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, approved by the commandant, are not prohibited by this policy.) Firearms are defined as any gun, rifle, pistol, or handgun designed to fire bullets, BBs, pellets, or shots (including paint balls), regardless of the propellant used. Other weapons are defined as any instrument of combat or any object not designed as an instrument of combat but carried for the purpose of inflicting or threatening bodily injury. Examples include (but are not limited to) knives with fixed blades or pocket knives with blades longer than four inches, razors, metal knuckles, blackjacks, hatchets, bows and arrows, nun chahkas, foils, or any explosive or incendiary device. Possession of realistic replicas of weapons on campus is prohibited. Students who store weapons in residence hall rooms, who brandish weapons, or who use a weapon in a reckless manner may face disciplinary action which may include suspension or dismissal from the university.
Refer to Section V.W. for additional information about Weapons.
Er.. aren't there some stories that transcend the typical boundaries of the Slashdot? What did we do on 9/11? The fallout of this event will affect student civil liberties all over America. Once the "we gotta do *something*" people take over, it's going to get spectacularly ugly. After they find his My Space page, this might even become a YRO issue. This is *very* relevant.
What is wrong is that the guy is insane. You can't understand what he did because (presumably) you are not insane. The brain is a machine, and in some people the machine goes haywire.
And still you fight for your right to bear arms
(Score:2, Offtopic)
Take this as (another) wake up call. Vote for the candidate that promise to reform your gun control laws in '08.
Yeah, existing laws - making it illegal to walk on campus with a gun and shoot 30+ people - really did a lot of good, no? What makes you think passing more laws is going to help?
Something like this actually makes me MORE determined than ever to fight for my 2nd Amendment rights. You can do whatever the fuck you want if some nut with a gun shows up and starts trying to kill you, but I want to be able to defend myself. I may not succeed, but at least I won't go out cowering under a desk, praying to a god that does not exist, that the killer won't find me.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
As horrifying as this sickening act of violence is, it's sobering to recognize that this kind of random death toll is practically a daily event in Baghdad. We should be equally shocked and horrified by that.
Thoughts and prayers for all victims of violence.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Jack Thompson will blame video games, Jerry Falwell will blame gay marriage, Rosie O'Donnel will say it is the proliferation of guns, Rush Limbaugh will tell us that this is the inevitable result of a a Democrat majority. This is how these people get their faces on TV.
I don't even think it is seen as grotesque by most people any more.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Yes, "extremely low": 14 dead in UofT shootings. Good job that all those who kept the shooter pinned down did not turn around and started shooting everybody at random. Get real, man - if everyone around you carries guns and automatic rifles, then don't be surprised that once in a while something like this happens. If this guy had only access to knives and similar things, he could've killed 2-3 people at most, but not 32. What an insane country. Next time we'll hear about another "record"...
Mod this comment up - incredibly important point. You know this image? http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/photoessay_1642_ images/0416071259_M_041607_shooting1.jpg
Yeah, that was just a reporter. He was released.
I see a lot of gun control comments already...I am interested, what is your solution?
As I recall it only took a couple of guys with some simple box cutters to kill 3000+ people, so what would
a gun ban do?
Got Code?
Every time a news of shooting breaks out, I always wonder why the possession of firearms is not banned entirely in this country. I am native of Japan, and where I grew up nobody but cops were allowed to carry guns. I live in New Jersey now, and I really miss a sense of security I used to have back home. Back there I never worried about getting killed and such, whereas I feel physically threatened where I live now since there have been a number of incidents of armed robberies on campus at Rutgers and in my neighborhood. (My own apartment was robbed several years ago, too.) Seriously, it makes a huge difference when I have to take into consideration the possibility of the possession of firearms when some strangers attacked me. I am aware that there are gun lobbies working against the ban of firearms, but it never made any sense to me. Could anybody enlighten me as to why people want to carry guns at all?
I suppose the usual gun control debates will ensue, along with the bashing of video games. But none of that really matters. The real question is why did this guy shoot all of these people? What made him so angry/hopeless that he felt the need to commit this mass murder? And the more chilling question in my mind is, why doesn't this sort of thing happen more often? There's a lot of pain and ugliness in the world, more than enough to produce thousands, if not millions of shooters. And perhaps therein lies the hope. As bad as things can be, they haven't reached the point where these mass shootings happen every day. Will we be wise enough to do the things we really need to do to prevent this from happening again?
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
That makes sense. I'll vote for the candidate who promises to grant me the right to carry a concealed firearm anywhere I wish, across all states of the nation, because that individual understands the second amendment.
Oh wait, you think I should be against guns? Perhaps you should wake up and realize that the US was founded on the idea of personal freedom, while the UK was founded upon the principle of a monarchy. The UK was disarmed much earlier and people would stand for that shit. Today there are vastly more guns than people in the US. You'll never get rid of them all. And there are an absolute crapload of gunsmiths here. One person I know showed me a submachine gun he built himself. It is a truism that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
There are less guns and less of a gun mentality in the UK, and that was true from the start. But here in the US, it was formerly considered every citizen's responsibility to own a gun, for two purposes. One, to protect us from fascism. Well, that hasn't worked. But Two, to provide for the defense of the nation. Disarmed countries are easy to control.
And on that note, I leave you with the following quotation: "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest..." --Mahatma Gandhi
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm actually agreeing with drinkypoo! Perhaps if just one of the law-abiding citizens involved had been armed, much of this would have been avoided...
It sounds counter-intuitive to many, but here's a study which supports your position:
Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement
JOHN R. LOTT Jr.
State University of New York - Department of Economics
WILLIAM M. LANDES
University of Chicago Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce copycats. Yet, economists have not studied this phenomenon. Our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce normal murder rates, our results find that the only policy factor to influence multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce both the number of shootings as well as their severity, and why other penalties like executions have differential deterrent effects depending upon the type of murder.
You are an idiot. Students wouldn't have been able to "pin down" the UT tower shooter unless they were carrying rifles in their school packs. You think a handgun has that kind of range? The death toll was so low because he was sniping at distant targets, not spraying bullets w/ a semi-automatic.
When what is believed to be a single, isolated shooting in a dorm happens on a 2600 acre public, open campus with hundreds of buildings, you can't assume that you're about to have the worst shooting incident (of any type) in US history.
Yet, people are already blaming Virginia Tech.
Would we close or "lock down" a city of 40000 people if there was a shooting? Because that's exactly what a campus of this size and type is (including students and faculty/staff).
No, but people are already calling for siren/PA systems in EVERY of HUNDREDS of buildings, of varying ages and constructions, centralized door locking/control and camera systems for not just outer building doors, but ALL doors.
The University reacted in a reasonable way. Yes, a shooter was "on the loose". Someone who had shot a person in a dorm, and the University immediately sent out notifications that such an event occurred; to be cautious and aware, and to report any suspicious activity to campus police. The area was "locked down", but after over two hours elapsed, there was no reason to believe that a madman was about to go on a random killing spree across campus.
This is not an elementary school. This is not a high school. This is a massive, open research campus with tens of thousands of people spreading over 2600 acres, with private, residential, and other buildings intermixed.
The only person to be blamed here is the shooter. And yes, he's dead. But Virginia Tech is not at fault.
> Thoughts go the the families.
And to karma-whores, for the sort of pointless statement you get on local TV coverage of this sort of thing.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times.
And it was the Hokie adminstration that led the charge to dis-arm the students and the faculty:
right, because if we had the right to chicken arms, nobody would ever shoot anyone else...
and though it has been mentioned in 100 places in this thread already, if someone really wants to go on a shooting spree, no LAW is going to stop them.
There are any number of reasons, and they are all very real.
For example, imagine that suddenly your dear and loving parents split apart violently. Your once placid and happy life is sundered apart. Instead of caring, your friends (if you're lucky enough have any) shrug it off. They might have gone through divorce and think it's much ado about nothing or perhaps they simply don't understand.
Meanwhile life only gets worse. It isn't just that no one understands, no one wants to. No one makes the effort to connect and communicate, or not enough people do. You only get to watch as everyone around them appears happy and complacent. They're having fun, playing games, living normal lives and crying about silly things like how their boyfriend dumped them. Boohoo, your soul is only tearing itself apart and no one notices.
The wound festers, and before long you hate everyone and everything. They're is so happy like sheep, ignorant and uncaring about the injustices that go on around them. They don't fucking care, so long as they get to have their stupid, superficial relationships and screw each other while others suffer. They're more than willing to spend $15 a month on some remote child in africa but to actually lift a finger themselves, too hard for the bastards.
Demons all of them. They're talking about you behind your back. They're pointing you out, you're the weirdo. The anti-social ass who chased away all those fuckers who were your "friends". No one wants anything to do with you, or doesn't know you're unclean. You practically don't even exist in the feeble minds of these bitches. Some socially disfigured leper.
Damn those fuckers to hell. You play nice, you're a "primadonna" because you had a nervous breakdown when your parents split. You play rough, and you're a lowlife scumfuck without the sophistication to breed. Fuck'em all and their social games. They'll see. You'll wake them up and they'll see. They'll see themselves for the compassionless, stupid fucks they are. Yeah, it'll be sweet.
Is that how this happened? Probably not. However, it's suprising how quickly good people can go bad when there's no one willing or able to support them.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I'm against the war, and I consider shootings like this abhorrent. I cannot, however, figure out how a person could link these situations without referring to either karma (which I don't believe is generally thought to be linked to nations), the deity of your choice (e.g. the people who thought that Katrina was God's judgement over homosexuality), or a direct quote from the killer explaining that his actions are trying to make this point.
Use logic to make your arguments. Don't try to claim that these two awful situations are linked in some way to sway people to your side.
What fucked up animals we are.
Chances are, if you put an elephant in an systemically humiliating situation, it'd go crazy and fuck some people up, too.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying these people are victims. I'm saying we live in a sick society. And I quote:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
--Jiddu Krishnamurti
Shooting people is no measure, either, though.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Civilian firefights are not going to solve the problem unless you get people to wear good guy/bad guy armbands or something.
Sure, there are a few times, like perhaps this one, where a few lives might have been saved if someone had been armed, but there would likely have been more single event shootings (fight over a girl getting out of hand etc). When you work the averages, gun toting adds up to more deaths.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Every time a news of shooting breaks out, I always wonder why the possession of firearms is not banned entirely in this country. I am native of Japan, and where I grew up nobody but cops were allowed to carry guns. I live in New Jersey now, and I really miss a sense of security I used to have back home. Back there I never worried about getting killed and such, whereas I feel physically threatened where I live now since there have been a number of incidents of armed robberies on campus at Rutgers and in my neighborhood. (My own apartment was robbed several years ago, too.) Seriously, it makes a huge difference when I have to take into consideration the possibility of the possession of firearms when some strangers attacked me. I am aware that there are gun lobbies working against the ban of firearms, but it never made any sense to me.
Because in this country we - historically - believe in certain inalienable rights of all men; and that includes - in addition to the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - the idea that individuals (or groups of individuals joined together for a common good) can defend those rights, using violence if necessary. Now no sane person *wants* violence or war, or bloodshed, but our Founding Fathers acknowledged that sometimes you have to choose to utilized armed forced in order to defend your "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Case in point, the US Revolutionary War.
And to this day, US citizens generally understand that if the government ever becomes tyrannical and repressive, "we the people" have the right (and must have the means) to overthrow it.
Could anybody enlighten me as to why people want to carry guns at all?
Because there is no way to prevent crazy nuts like this guy from VT from getting guns. And some people want to be able to defend themselves when these nuts show up and start shooting.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
The shallow analysis is that this guy was insane, a random nutcase, but this is the Nth time it's happened in the US. Why isn't the same thing happening in other countries? What is it about American society which creates these young men who have so little to lose?
Deleted
Ever been in a firefight? Because if you haven't, I can assure you that having a gun doesn't make you grow a big, brass pair all of a sudden.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Look at the fucking timestamps. When I started my comment there were 0 comments in this story.
I have my own mind and can make it up on my own. Welcome to my foes list.
The Libertarians' website thingy tells me that I am an upper left centrist. Make of that what you will.
Accusing people who don't agree with you of following someone else's agenda is a sorry excuse for an actual debate. Mudslinging is easy, but it still makes you look like an ass.
Fact: Some guy shot a bunch of people.
Fact: You are not permitted to carry guns on campus.
Fact: Someone with a gun would have been in a better position to shoot the shooter than someone without a gun. In fact, once the event was confirmed, they called some men with guns and those men came and shot the man shooting people.
Fact: You are making stupid assumptions. One of them is that he had no facts before you did.
Ah yes, compare me to Rush in order to discredit me. That will work fine on the idiot sheeple who respond predictably to such stimulus. But it will not work on rational individuals who are not afraid to make up their own minds.
Also, if Rush takes the same stance on carrying firearms, then I am not afraid to stand up and be counted as someone who agrees with him on the individual point, because issues and people are different things. Congratulations on being a sheep who does not understand this, and who even attempts to use that confusion to paint me as intolerant.
Never mind that denying someone their constitutional rights is what's genuinely intolerant here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
- Computer games
- Music of some sort
- Lack of gun control
- Religion
- Lack of religion
- Educational system
- Lack of mental-health counseling
- If the person turns out to be an engineering student, expect blame to fall on H1B visas for providing too much competition for local engineers
- If the person turns out to be foreign, I can imagine a whole slew of others to blame
In short, blame everything/everybody except the person who did the deed. Personal responsibility is not even a concept in America any more."-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Yeah, great. Let's visit this alternative reality for a minute. Word goes out that a 'young guy with a handgun' is wandering around campus killing people. In response, all these students break out their handguns and start popping off at anyone matching that description. Hilarity ensues.
Sorry, I'm not willing to give up my freedom for the illusion of safety. We have enough of that going on over here already, thanks.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Warren Ellis did an issue of Hellblazer about school shootings (which DC then didn't publish). You can find the pages available here. I highly, highly recommend reading it - I feel it has serious insight into at least one aspect of why these things happen.
The scan is a bit blurry, and the server is having some trouble right now (404's - just hit refresh and it'll fix itself). If anyone can mirror it on a better server it would be appreciated.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Are they looking any better to you guys in the US yet? Seriously, this needn't have happened.
If by "gun laws" you mean the laws, regulations and statutes that create Defenseless Victim Zones like
Virginia Tech, then no, they're not looking any better.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Michael Moore's 'Bowling for Columbine' documentary looked into this and didn't actually blame the ready availability of guns in the US for the high level of gun crime. He showed examples of other countries where lots of people carry guns, such as Canada and Switzerland, countries that don't have such a culture of violence. He claims that a culture of fear is what drives Americans to arm themselves to the teeth in such big numbers, and you end up with the ludicrous situation where you can go into a shop on just about any high street and buy an automatic assault weapon, something that is not needed for self defence or hunting or any of the other uses that gun advocates frequently come up with.
There seems to be a cultivation of fear, where violent crime seems to get a disproportionate amount of coverage on the news that's way beyond the actual importance of it. So there was an armed robbery at the gas station earlier this morning. Do we really need a live outside broadcast from the scene of the crime at 7pm where all the activity has long finished?
On the radio this morning someone made a very good point about people in their neighbourhood driving their children the short distance to school for fear of abduction, even though the number of abductions in that area in the last ten years is zero. TV shows talk about an 'epidemic' of road rage, an epidemic being five reported incidents in the country in the last year. Remember the SARS outbreak? About five people in Asia died from it and it was reported as a 'worldwide pandemic.'
I don't know if gun control is the complete solution to the problem, it runs much deeper than that, but it has to be part of it. There's no way any random person should be able to walk in off the street and buy an AK47.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Guns make people safer! That's why America, with the highest guns per capita of any first-world nation, is the safest nation on Earth, right alongside such sterling examples of crime-free zones like Costa Rica and Colombia.
Get a goddamned grip. The US has more guns -- and more gun deaths -- than any other developed nation.
Clearly the solution to today's situation would have been for everyone to have guns, then people could have started firing recklessly into the fray and that would have been really fucking great!
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Did the gun sprout legs and arms and go beserk??
No, but out of curiosity I wonder what kind of weapon and or training the person had. This is the highest body count any mass murder has had on a rampage in the states.
The only higher World Wide (at least so far) was the Port Arthur Massacre with 35 deaths who used an AR-10 rifle.
I'm not pro or anti gun, but you simply can't go on a mass murdering spree like this with a knife or a bow and arrow.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I think that the point is: how the hell could be so easy for anybody to get such arsenal?!
ABC is reporting that it was 2 semi-automatic pistols. Hardly an asrenal.
Because there is no way to prevent crazy nuts like this guy from VT from getting guns. And some people want to be able to defend themselves when these nuts show up and start shooting.
Oh, I agree. I mean, it's not like the US has seen far far more of these sorts of killings than any other nation. And you know why? Because of the high level of gun ownership, of course. It is these very weapons that have prevented these sorts of things from happening time and again.
Right?
Let's give ourselves credit where it is deserved. There's probably not a person on this list who hasn't wanted to do multiple homicides now and then. But we don't. We learn to control our anger, to seek non-violent solutions.
Let's treat this incident as a baseline, and praise ourselves for having advanced well beyond it. This guy was an exception, not the norm.
Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays!
Well, for one thing it is cultural to some degree. I grew up in the south east (north central FL) and was around guns fairly regularly. I'm comfortable with them. Shoot, going out to a range with a friend and a box of 22 rounds can be a nice way to pass an afternoon. They do make it easier for one person to kill another, and especially for something like this to happen, but banning them doesn't mean the crazies won't find another way. No reason this couldn't have been a suicide bomber because you can't ban all the combinations of chemicals that can be made into such devices.
Another thing to remember is that guns have a great equalizing effect. Sure, the thug could pull a gun and kill you, but you have the ability to do the same. In this country even someones grandmother could be carrying a handgun in the big purse. She might even know how to use it. Firearms do put power in the hands of weaker people that they wouldn't have otherwise. Take a big guy who discovers he can get what he wants through force, now give the victim a firearm, big dude is less dangerous.
And let's go to the last/best argument. The cat is out of the bag. Guns are scattered through our country now. If you banned them it would have little if any effect in the short or medium term. Well, the black market value would probably go up, and law abiding citizens would be more unarmed, but neither of those is good. They've been such a part of our culture for so long that removing them now just isn't a viable option. Shoot, I know a number of law abiding citizens that just wouldn't give them up, let alone criminals.
Personally, I have very little problem with concealed carry laws. One day I may carry a gun myself. Unlikely, but I don't have a feeling of disgust about it. That said, I think people should have some very good training, regular re-examinations, psychological testing, etc. before they are allowed to carry.
We don't have the right to bare arms here in the UK per se, but I just do it anyway. Too hot for long sleeves.
Students have enough problems with getting to class on time and making terrible decisions with the largest deadliest weapons at their disposal: motor vehicles.
It doesn't take too much imagination to envision the mayhem with them carrying firearms and making decisions about shooting them.
Illusion of safety? You mean, like the illusion that owning a handgun will somehow protect you from violence? Or the illusion that, in a truly violent situation, you will have the wherewithal to use your gun safely and effectively?
This is the unedited transcript of the VT afternoon press conference at about 4:45 PM ET. Next press conference will be at 7:30 PM ET:
- I am vice president for university relations. We will begin this with a short statement by the president. All of the individuals will be available for comment. The president will identify him in his opening comments. We will stay here as long as you need us to. Afterwards, i will be available for comment. Obviously, there are an awful lot of you and there is one of me. I would recommend that we try to get as much as we can accomplish in this press briefing today.
- Thank you. Just a few minutes ago , i spoke with president bush and he conveyed his concern and condolences for everyone in washington and offered all of the help that they could possibly provide. I' ve also spoken with the governor who was coming back from tokyo. He has declared a state of emergency which allows us to access significant oth er assets at that will be required to do with this tragedy. With me today is the secretary for public service for the commonwealth of virginia, john marshall, and the superintendent for the virginia state police. Also is the mayor of b lacksburg, the chief of the blacksburg police department and the chief of the virginia tech police. I want to repeat my horror and disbelief and profound sorrow at the events of today. People from around the world have expressed their shock and their sorrow. I am really at a loss for words to explain or understand the carnage that has visited our campus. I know no other way to speak about this than to tell you what we now. It is now confirmed that we have at 31 deaths from the norris hall , including the gunman. 15 Other victims are being treated at hospitals. There are two confirmed deaths from the shooting in the dormitory, in addition to those at norris hall. We' ve not confirmed the activity of the gun man because he carried no at the dedication. We are in the process of attempting a dedication identification. We are in the proces s of notifying next of kin. This will take some time. We will not release any names unti l we are positive of this edification. We anticipate being able to release a list sometime tomorrow. We' re asking our students to contact their parents and let them know their status. Our investigation continues into whether there is a connection between the first and second incidents. That has not been decided. We know that the parents will want to embrace their children. We are not suggesting that you come to campus, however, if pa rents feel that it must come to campus, we are locating counselors at the end of virginia tech to be available. As you can imagine, security, investigation, operational, and counseling resources are very taxed at this moment. However, we are getting assistance from the state police, the fbi, the atf, local jurisdictions, and the red cross. We understand the desire and the compelling need to get information on the part of families, stu dents, and loved ones. Unfortunately, this is all of the information that we can verify at this point in time. We are posting information o n our web site as we learned it. I communication systems are taxed . We are posting information on the web site for the state police. I think we are ready to take questions.
- Why not shut down campus after the first shooting rather g -- shooting?
- The information that we have less to make the decision that it was an isolated event to that building and the decision was not made to cancel class' s at that time.
- Can you say why the students were not notified for tw o hours?
- They were notified that there was a shooting. You have to remember that of the 26,000 is that we have, only about 9000 are on campus. When the class start at 9:00 A.M., Thou sands of people are in transit. The question is, where do you keep them when it is most safe? We concluded that the incident at the dormitory was domestic in question. This other events occurred two hours later.
- The first e-mail did not arrive
Well, if someone 'sane' in the bldg had been packing a weapon, they might have ended this asshole's rampage a bit earlier....
Or found their weapon stolen and had been used to kill even more people. Or been outgunned in a hall shootout in the same manner as the armed guard at Columbine.
This is breaking news, can we please all put down our politics until the story becomes more coherent?
Because all other countries in the world without the right to have guns have terrible gun crime.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
And to think, they had recently ensured no CCW holders could carry their weapons on campus: "Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
The *only* reason making guns illegal would not work is because there's already so many in circulation.
Forcing everyone to carry a big 5 lb lump of steel throughout their lives to "ensure their safety" from what's probably a 1 in 20,000 lifetime event is utterly idiotic - especially considering that in places like Canada and Europe the likelyhood of being shot dead is already LESS THAN your rate of gun-crime.
It's so interesting to see everyone all year long decrying the "1984" orwell state appearing in the UK, but as soon as something like this happens you have dozens of people in the forums calling for everyone in the country to be armed and for a hundred HD cameras to be placed throughout every single campus and 100 people to watch all these HD cameras - just to catch that one guy every 30 years who kills 30 people.
All this while drinking while driving is a minor first offence and 40% of everyone doesn't fasten their seatbelts.
God damned morons, all of you.
The most US-centric report about the idea that the United States is filled with gun-toting violent crazies still fails to exonerate the United States entirely. The key column here is Firearm Homicide. The rest are just there to confuse you, pointing out that violent deaths don't always involve guns. Duh. While it's true that Estonia, Brazil, Mexico and Northern Ireland have higher Firearm Homicide rates than the US; Canada, Germany, Singapore, Japan, England, Australia, Norway, Ireland, Israel and Spain have only 25-50% of the Firearm Homicide rate per 100,000. OK, so there's more violent people out there, but even statistics that are attempting to prove your point have a difficult reality to overcome.
Here's the other side of the coin, which is what most people think of when they think of the United States and their gun problem. The numbers aren't substantially different, but the presentation sure is. Gotta love statistics -- I had to read these two articles for 30 minutes before posting to be sure I didn't put my foot in my mouth.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
It would be a hell of a stretch to claim that Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans need the level of protection that we extend to African Americans. There's a whole lot less racial hatred directed at immigrants from Asia than from Africa or even Mexico.
"Oriental" doesn't remotely compare with "nigger." Try to imagine a government employee being let go for saying "oriental."
I find your comment to be disingenuous grandstanding.
As an alumnus of the university, I agree that it's silly to blame the school, especially at this point. It's really easy to play "Monday morning quarterback" after the fact.
... is just insane.
Blacksburg is a very safe environment. The police really don't deal much with major crimes, aside from your normal array of drunken college students gone bad. Actual deaths are extremely rare. When the shooting occurred earlier in the year, regarding an escaped inmate who stumbled onto campus, that was surreal and shocking. But the leap to this
I can't imagine the police and campus security were really prepared for this, since nothing of this magnitude remotely enters our minds.
-- jchenx
Jack Thompson uses this to promote his anti-video game agenda and we are all disgusted (and rightly so). Yet we find it acceptable for people on here to push their Second Ammendment agenda. Not making any judgement on whether they are right or wrong (if someone was carrying a weapon they might have been able to stop this guy vs. if everyone was carrying weapons would gun crimes in the classroom go up thus increasing the total number of gun deaths on campus). Can't we just give our agenda pushing a break for day and just feel bad for these kids and their families? Can't we just worry how the politicians (all of them) are going to over react to this and try to push stupid laws just so they feel like they are doing something? This is another sad day we have to live through. Wake up, pull your head out of your asses, and see if there is someone around you that is showing signs that they are mentally distraught. Who knows, if one person would have helped this guy out we might still be complaining about the Imus thing.
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The word for it is psychopathy, which unfortunately isn't in the current DSM. But it has a great track record of predicting future criminal behavior in current inmates. It's characterized by a lack of ability to feel empathy. These people's brains are wired differently than most. There are millions of them, but most are small-time crooks and swindlers. Couple psychopathy with something more, and you've got potential for real tragedy.
Turns out Eric Harris was a psychopath.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
No, its not "their fault" - they're nuts. Still, how do we deal with it? Lock up everyone who might be a threat? That will just alienate the already alienated, or make them hide more diligently until that fatal day when they seek revenge for imagined slights.
No. It means being nicer to people.
To friends, family and complete strangers.
Yes... I said complete strangers. We don't say please and thank you anymore. We don't hold doors for each other. We cut each other off in traffic and give each other the bird. We lie and cheat to get ahead at the work place. We gossip and ruin people's lives. We cut in line in grocery store and we try to rip off our waiter at the restaurant. We focus our lives our possessions and money and we don't give a damn to a man on the street or a kid who has had his world shattered. We say they are "crazy". We say they are "evil" and that it isn't our fault.
But it is our fault. Every single one of us have forgotten about all the other humans out there and we always trump "personal responsibility" on others without even thinking that we haven't even bothered ourselves.
I'm surprised more people don't go crazy in our society on a daily basis with the way we behave.
Everyone is about "ME! ME! ME!" without ever stopping to think about the fact they are hurting everyone else.
And I'm guilty as everyone else... But sometimes I think to myself "Maybe I shouldn't cut off that guy in traffic like that, he might go and snap."
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Well, I'm here at tech, and am still waiting for word on whether or not I've lost any friends today. One roommate of mine may have already lost one, and some friends have lost friends of theirs.
No guns are allowed on campus. We have a few full-time shrinks on campus. The engineering student was probably an american (most of our foreign students are grad students). So far the word is the kid was a senior with 3 engineering majors. We have lots of bible groups, etc on campus, but we're not really known for being very religious or very secular for that matter.
My guess would be stress. I've seen grown men cry over single assignments, several of them, over the years here @ VT. The engineering kids are pushed really hard, and many of them don't deal with it very well. 60 hours a week of real work are pretty normal, with classes that everage 27-50%, which are only curved at the end (and nobody knows the curve till then). Try that for 4 years while growing up... Many engineering students I know end up having fairly empty shells of personalities, as their entire lives so far have circled around work and thinly veiled attempts at having a life on the side.
3 engineering majors at once would break most people. Guaranteed.
So far, the big questions are:
1. Why didn't the students find out about the 7:15am shooting until 2 hours later
2. Why was only the dorm closed?
To be fair, we had two bomb threats (no bombs) over the last 2 weeks, the last one only 3 days ago. So maybe the administration was getting tired of interrupting school for non-issues.
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In some of the towns I lived in at least 30% of males on the street were carrying. Luckily almost all of those had been through military training and knew a few things about guns, target assesment, risk mitigation etc. Go into the kmart equivalent and the guy helping folk select a tie had a 357 on his hip. Quite a few people got shot by mistake.
In USA there's the problem that so few people with firearms have real firearm training. I am not that opposed to *very* well trained people carrying weapons, but am suggesting that the idea that it should be a citizen's right is broken.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And I as a journalist have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Indeed, mass-violence predates videogames and even mass-media.
Recently, the hype surrounding the business favorite pair of double-d's (death and destruction) has gone up monumentally, it would seem.
Most news outlets have restrictions on publishing news about suicides that don't involve anyone else. This is so, because mass dissemination of information on suicides has been clinically linked to an increase in suicides in the community. Likely, if this guy had offed himself in his dorm/apartment/car, it never would have been seen or heard. Now, looking at a story about some nutjob taking 32 people with him, it can't be avoided.
This guy has made a name for himself that will be remembered for a long time. Since he wanted to die anyway (presumably), this was an easy way to do it. It's much harder to become famous by inventing a longer lasting lightbulb, or by taking pictures (trust me) than it is by doing something really 'out there'. In this guy's head, fame and infamy are the same thing.
I wonder how we should be treating mass tragedy in the news? Part of me wants to let it go entirely. Certainly not ostrich syndrome-style, but as a means of not making it glamorous and copy-cat worthy.
I think if all news outlets in general tried harder to present the full perspective on life, not just DD sensationalism, we'd all be in a better place.
But maybe I'm wrong. What do I know?
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I think the original poster is correct. We all have it in us to do something horrid--believing that you are better than this shooter is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human condition.
How is saying "I'm better than this shooter" different from some fundi saying "I'm better than all you non-believers..." Both have a belief system that says that others who behave or function differently are inherently worse.
We're all humans, and we're all horrid, or at least equally capable of horrid acts... and, to some degree, capable of wonderful acts as well.
Look, whatever. The issue at hand isn't terminology. It's the murders.
If the students were armed, as provided for by the 2nd amendment, someone could have dropped that guy early on and saved 30 or more people. Chalk up another bunch of deaths to the pussification of American citizens by the mommy government. There will be no correction, though; instead of people going "well duh, I should be armed in case some crazy bastard shows up in my face somewhere", they'll just take a bunch more of your civil rights away at the schools - restrict your movements, require papers, stick RFID tags to you earlobes, x-ray your colons... and a year or so from now, some crazy will do the same thing again, perhaps slightly more cleverly.
Ah, it's so frustrating to hear news like this. All those people did not have to die. Learn to defend yourselves, and be willing to. Seriously. The government cannot protect you from crazies; you have to do it yourself. The government always arrives after these events - only you can stop them as they happen. Get licensed. Practice. Carry. Be a protector instead of a victim. When the government says you can't carry here or there, fight like wildcats to reject this weakening of your ability to defend yourself and those you care about. The government is not your friend.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In reality there is no clear and permanent classification of people into "good" and "bad". The "good" person from yesterday might be a "bad" person today because of the circumstances they were put in. The "good cop, doing his job at work, might go home and beat his wife", and so on. Our society, our legal system though wants to make that binary classification because it is less painful for us to admit that we could also do "bad" thing once in a while and we surely like to think of ourselves as "good people".
A lot of the criminals when asked why they commited the crime would answer "I don't know why I did it." Notice I am not advocating that we should not punish the offenders or that individuals should not be responsible for their actions (those damn genes made me do it!), but rather that we shouldn't hastily judge and categorize people with permanent overgeneralized labels such as "he is evil" and "I am good". In case of a habitual offender or were a clear pattern of bad behavior occurs perhaps such labels are valid, however there are moments and circumstances were even the sanest and "best" of us can do pretty bad things.
Of course, we should never get that far in the first place. The fact that a healthy adult can be made to feel so isolated as to not seek help for their violent delusions until it's too late is the real problem. And it's not like there aren't symptoms for years before such a break. Excessive anti-social behaviour is present, always. That doesn't mean everyone who exhibits such behaviour will snap, but it certainly means something should be done.
I've seen kids who were badly abused by their parents, even to the extent of showing physical scars from their beatings, who never received the help they needed. Every one of those people has since had serious social problems. Promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, gambling. All too common, and all too preventable. But, as usual, it's not my problem. No one ever reached out to any of those kids and got them to a counselor, or in some cases a psychiatrist. If those kids were treated when they were 12, they would have grown up much healthier, realizing that weaknesses in character are natural, and that people generally have enough goodwill to reach out to those in need. But that doesn't happen. Usually, they just sink into whatever hell has been prepared for them and no one talks about their issues until something happens. That's inevitably going to be far too late.
And for those who are younger, or who have parents: for God's sake do something! If someone bullies your child, go to the principal or the bully's parents. If it continues to be a problem, get some family counselling for you and your bullied child. If your child is a bully, then find ways to discourage such behaviour. Our society has lost these social niceities; everything either ends up in a courtroom or it's perfectly acceptable behaviour. If there were some middle ground where people actually treated each other as humans, we'd probably find far fewer anti-social kids in the first place.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Almost exactly, I would say. I used to be kind of like that.
Life sucks when every day is a mind-numbingly boring routine at school, and all of your friends live life like a sitcom because that's all they know. I saw cruelty and injustice pretty much everywhere, and it pissed me off, but nobody I knew even cared.
That is exactly how these kinds of things happen. I didn't break, because when it came down to it I had one real friend that stuck with me. But when I see another kid going postal on the evening news, I'm never surprised. It's just another guy who wasn't as lucky as me.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Sure. It happens quite often. http://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html Even the very conservative estimates put the number at over half a million per year. The most thorough survey puts it at around 2 million per year.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You shouldn't fear people with guns, you should fear not having a gun when crazy people want to kill you.
Actually, I fear crazy people who can just walk into K-Mart and arm themselves.
You can look at this situation and say that the problem is that none of the other students had guns.
But you can just as easily look at this situation and conclude that the problem is that the nutjob DID have a gun.
So your solution is 'Give everyone a gun!'. My solution is 'Don't give crazy people guns.'
Your way the crazy guy only manages to kill 3 or 4 people before someone else shoots him. My way, nobody gets shot.
paintball
If the gunman had pulled his psycho bullshit in a crowded Virginia mall, the shooter's life may have ended a lot quicker, but that does not mean that fewer people would be dead. If someone started shooting back, there would have been more bullets flying around, and with more bullets flying around, there's a lot higher chance that people will get hit, especially if this is taking place in a mall with a lot of people.
The problem with Col. Cooper's statement is that killing people is seen as a bad thing, and is something that should be avoided. That is why soldiers and/or cops have to be authorized to use lethal force. A rifle is a tool, but it's purpose is, basically, to kill. So, while a rifle may have no moral stature, it is a tool whose purpose it is to effect a morally wrong action. Because, even if evil men can be "corrected" by men with rifles, those men with rifles have done something that we as a society frown upon.
As for your assertion that gun-free zones are in effect "unarmed victim zones," think about the fact that in our legal system there is a difference between manslaughter and murder; in order for murder to be committed, malice and forethought must be proved. If you piss someone with a gun off, they could very easily kill you, even if they weren't justified in their action. Without guns, it is a whole lot harder, involved, and personal to kill someone, and that means that fewer people will die. It is very true that people kill people, and as long as that is the case, people will continue to kill people, no matter what weapons we outlaw. However, removing weapons from the market makes it much harder, and that means that fewer people die; hence, why some people place their personal safety in front of their right to bear arms, and call for tighter gun control.
It has been a nervous year, with people beginning to feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.
I would mod the parent up if I had points. Note that VA Tech does not allow students or faculty to carry guns on school property, even if they have a concealed weapon permit. One armed student could have ended this right at the beginning.
There are many things that make me sick about this story, and others like it (the fact that there are "others like it" is one of the things that make me sick).
Please, DO NOT add to it with talks of "worst" or not worst, of "top three", and of "body counts". This ISN'T a game. There is no high score. There's no achievement or rank involved.
This kind of talk always bothers me. I guess it's natural to try to categorize and make sense of it - but it even bothers me for natural events like earthquakes or floods. The difference is, natural events don't care one way or another.
I guess we'll never know the shooter's motivation. But is it that far-fetched to assume that the immense amount of attention previous shootings got played at least SOME role in his mind? That the temptation of immortal infamy made him choose THIS way to go, rather than another?
And now we put him in a "top 3"?
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No, but having a gun on you if you happen to "flare up" strongly increases the chance that you will use it. If you don't have a weapon you can hurt someone by punching and kicking, but the chances are that you will not kill them. When you bring a gun into the situation, the chances that someone is going to get killed greatly increase.
...do people at your school seriously bring guns to class? OSU didn't have a gun policy and was in a state with a conceal/carry law without requiring a permit. Pretty much as lax as possible. Yet, no one I nor any of my friends knew *ever* brought a gun to class, and this is in an urban campus in a relatively shitty part of a relatively big city. So, basically, it doesn't matter what law virginia tech had. Frankly, I'd be frightened of anyone so worried about a random massacre happening to them that they feel they need to carry a gun around in the middle of the morning to every class they go to in a school in some backwoods town that almost never sees a murder and has 1/4 of the countries per-capita level of violent crime.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Short on time, so short comment:
;) ) - while gun control can probably not help US gun crime stats in a major way in anything approaching the short-ish run, gun access is incredibly important to events such as the Virginia Tech massacre. Kids snap all over the world over lots of silly (and not-so-silly) things - but those that have access to semi-automatic weapons when they snap are many, many times more dangerous. In the larger scheme of things, however, massacres make up a tiny proportion of murders, although they are much more spectacular (and hence garner more media attention, feeding future massacres, etc.) than the average drug hit.
Michael Moore goes wrong in a number of areas with his "culture of fear" model of US gun crime. Highlights follow:
- First, while many nations (including my own, i.e. Sweden) have plenty of legal guns (hunting is a huge movement here and tens of thousands of reservists have FN-FAL assault rifles at home), those are usually of models not well suited to crime, are registered, and required to be stored in a safe fashion. The same goes for, say, Canada (his chosen comparison).
- General US gun deaths are extremely concentrated to certain demographic groups (Read: black & latino bangers in inner-cities.). For instance, a little more than half of all US killers are black, despite making up a bit more than a tenth of the population. (I.e see the bureau of justice statistics: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm) The gross murder rate for US lily-white suburbia is much closer to Europe than stats would let on, despite spillover from the inner city wars.
- In short, the main general problem with regards to guns in the US are not trigger happy rednecks in Arkansas or scared soccer moms killing people by mistake. The "culture of fear" theory just comes up short when confronted by reality.
- Gun accessibility, however, is probably important. The banger wars are hardly helped by the plentiful and easy access to guns. It is unrealistic at this point, however, to see how even a total gun ban could yield short-term results in this department. Bangers would hang on to their illegal guns no matter what laws are passed, and only a long battle of attrition could bring major crime-drop windfalls. In the meantime, the law-abiding population would be stripped of percieved and real protection, and political pressures to ease gun access would mount.
- Making things even more complicated, the main benificiaries of a gun ban would in the end be white city liberals, while the hunting 'n guns culture of the rednecks would pay a big chunk of the price. The political problems are obvious.
- Finally (lots more to be said, but I have to go to bed...
That it for today. Goodnight!
The solution to school shootings is *more* guns in the classrooms?
That kind of escalation strategy is what kept the cold war going for so many decades, have you learned nothing?
Holy crap! I was thinking of sending my son to the states to uni, but if that's the kind of response you come up with for this tragedy then I'll be rethinking that.
First and most importantly, how do you stop him from illegally obtaining a gun? As another poster pointed out, we still have large amounts of drugs in the country, which is just as illegal as you want to make this guy having a gun. (Did he even legally obtain the ones he used in this case anyways?)
Secondly, how do you determine who a "crazy person" is, and how to you stop that definition from becoming politically "malleable"? Are you crazy because you are justifiably upset at your child getting killed by a drunk driver, even if you don't (currently) intend to kill anyone? Are you crazy because you hate George Bush, even if you don't (currently) intend to kill him? Are you crazy because you exercise your right to free speech regarding guns, as you just did in your post?
Omnes stulti sunt.
There are a few different types of people who don't feel empathy and we shouldn't confuse them. There are sociopathic types who are generally the small-time swindlers you mention. They enjoy manipulating people and probably aren't the mass-murdering type. There are also schizoid (not schizotypal) people who generally don't feel any emotions, but don't care, don't need other people, feel fine alone, and are very unlikely to go on killing sprees. And then there are the Antisocial types who want to and try to fit in but cannot, feel very empty inside, and become very angry about it--angry against the world in general. These are the most likely to go on mass killing sprees.
People experiencing the kind of psychopathy you seem to allude to are more likely to be serial killers who evade detection than mass murders who also commit suicide.
Look, whatever. The issue at hand isn't guns. It's Hypnogenic Ninjitsu.
If the students had been trained as ninjas with the power to hypnotize their attackers, as provided for by Bob's Ninjitsu and Hypnosis College, someone could have done the Stare-of-Freezing to that guy early on and saved 30 or more people. Chalk up another bunch of deaths to the anti-Ninja agenda of American citizens by the mommy government. There will be no correction, though; instead of people going "well duh, I should take Hypnogenic Ninjitsu classes in case some crazy bastard shows up in my face somewhere", they'll just take a bunch more of your martial arts education away at the schools - restrict your hypnosis lessons, require Ninja-study permission slips, make you wear "guns don't kill people, Ninjas do" T-shirts, ... and a year or so from now, some crazy will do the same thing again, perhaps slightly more cleverly and with more throwing stars.
Defenseless Victim Zones
- psycho students around me? Yeah sign me up for classes... in some other country. Fortunately I'm already there.
Nice. So when all of my fellow students are packing guns, who defends me exactly? All the stressed-out/teen-angst-ridden/misfit/jock/random
I don't shoot anyone for holding a gun. I only shoot if I see someone shooting unarmed students.
If someone runs into your car in a parking lot, who do you blame? Everyone with a car? Of course not. Only the person you know hit your car. Stop trying to caricature armed citizens as twitching bundles of indiscriminate reflexes. We can think as well as you can, and about the same things.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
MeanderingMind and Vertinox have eloquently made two points that I would like to see brought to focus in the mainstream.
When kids pick on each other, some people seem to think that it's a positive thing - "real world lessons" and such. While children do need to, at some point, come to grips with the sometimes inharmonious nature of the world, *abuse* is neither healthy nor helpful, to anyone.
I take it as a truism that no one is born evil. Some people take a lot of shit, and win through it. Some take shit and end up written off for whatever reason. Some people take a lot of shit, and then decide that the only way they can cope with existence is to unload some shit on someone else.
If you kick a dog enough times, that dog will either crumble, or it will bite back.
We owe it to future generations to make the world a better place, as did each generation before us. Why do people hurt each other? What can we do? It's not easy, but it is worth thinking about.
My good will goes out to all affected by this incident.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
If the students were armed...
But what if the assailant WASN'T armed?
Maybe you shouldn't say anything until you know where he got his gun. If he bought it at K-Mart at 7AM and was shooting people at 7:30 AM, that might be a pretty strong indication that the problem here wasn't the availability of guns to the other students, the problem was the availability of guns to the assailant.
Also, it's premature to blame the law for the lack of guns in the possession of the students. Not only would the law have to be different, we would also need to know if there were any students present who would have been carrying a firearm themselves if it was legal to do so.
But, the reality of the situation is we're screwed either way:
Not all gun crime is the same. Some gun crime is impulsive - people who are impulsively violent are more destructive when they have ready access to a firearm. In these kinds of gun crimes, eliminating ready access to firearms would reduce the effects of gun crime. And some gun crime is premeditated - the criminal is going to get the gun they need to commit the crime. In that kind of crime, reducing ready access to firearms creates an opportunity for the criminal.
So you can't solve the gun problem, you can just favor one kind of gun violence over another.
paintball
NO GUNS - NO DEATHS its as simple as that, how many people can you kill with just sticks and stones?, in the same amount of time you can take out 30 people with a semi automatic? US society is based on fear and buying a gun only adds to it, until someone flips and kills 30 innocent.
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
The question, I think, is if you are more frightened of someone that goes through the process to carry a concealed weapon (and infact does so) than you are of some fuckin' nut who goes around shooting people? I for one can gladly say that I'd rather have the former.
Also, to date, no legislation has been very effective at keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals (you might note that historically no prohibition has been effective). Most legislation is more of a burden to an honest person owning a gun than to a criminal (who often will just steal a gun). And at most, such legislation only cuts down on the number of accidents involving firearms. Note, drowning kills more people and no where in the Constitution does it mention a "right to swim."
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
Almost every building on campus has underground passages. However, the 2nd floor of Norris Hall has double wide, wooden doors with handles that can be held with chains. I've never run across to the attached building to see how they are connected, but the ones I've used are easily 'locked' with chains. The door of Norris is also VERY big and heavy, made of solid wood about 10ft high, it actually requires a bit of strength just to open, so if that was chained from the inside, it would be almost impossible for a single person to open that door.
It's like the mis-use of the term African-American. African-American is a cultural distinction. Not all blacks are African-American some are from the Caribean, some are Pacific Islanders, some are African. The term 'black' is offensive very few people... and very useful in describing race and society.
But what do you do about Asian/Oriental? You could try to be specific on country of origin... but Chinese isn't very good as there are many different races/ethnicities from China. If you're going to distinguish between Han Chinese and Korean, you might as well distinguish Tibetan too.
My vote is to simplify skin color just like eye/hair color: Whites, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, and Reds.
oh... and for those of you on this thread who think 'oriental' is as bad as the n-word... you have not seen/experienced real full-force dehumanising racism if you can honestly claim that. There are racist terms equavalent to the n-word, but 'oriental' isn't one of them.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Until the next time
Absolutely correct and shown by numerous real world (Abu Ghraib) and even a couple of experimental situations like the Stanford Prison Experiment. Some of the 'animals' who perpetrated crimes against the other prisoners in the SPE were exactly the same kind of college kids who died today.
It is precisely what was described by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Its people who think they could never ever do that who are the most dangerous.
If New York City and Kennesaw, Georgia had the same population, New York would have hundreds of times the number of shooting homicides
Guns are tightly controlled in New York. In Kennesaw, every household is legally obligated to keep a gun. So explain to me again how gun control saves peoples' lives?
Or maybe, just maybe, you can't compare two very different places and assume that gun control is the difference!
I'm not arguing for or against gun control, but as someone once said, "your argument is trash".
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I never said I'm for banning guns. In fact, I'm in support of conceal/carry laws (though I think a permit should be required). People think *I'm* a nut for thinking that arming yourself around OSU is a good idea. I just find the idea that people would be bringing guns to class at 9am in blacksburg virginia to be strange, regardless of what laws they have, especially considering my experiences at a much much more dangerous college (we'd have a student or two killed almost every year, and countless assaults/rapes).
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
*snicker* Heh, yeah, guns for everyone would have solved *this* particular problem. And yet, it would have created a million other problems. Such as, every minor quarrel could turn into a block wide shoot-out. Look, your approach has been tried. It was tried right here, in this country, and not even that long ago. It was called the Wild West. Where "law and order" was enforced by which group had the biggest/most guns. Where heroes were made out of people for such things as bringing federal order to remote towns.
People like you have no idea what it means to live in a society where everyone has a gun. All you have is your little pornographic power fantasies. Yeah, completely banning guns is no recipe for global peace. But neither is giving everyone a gun.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Doubtful that this guy bought the guns for the massacre. His effectiveness with them indicates he probably had them for quite a while, and practiced shooting fairly frequently.
Seriously though, people bring up this bizarre "man gets angry, buys a gun, shoots people, all in the same day" scenario quite frequently, but I have yet to hear of a single incident where anyone has actually done that. Most shootings are committed by people who already have guns, and have usually had them for quite a while. Face it, the time it takes to go buy a gun is usually long enough to cool off any normal "hothead". If the law considers a couple hours ample time to "cool off" when making the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder, then why do some people think it should take 3-14 DAYS (varies from state to state) to "cool off" when trying to buy a firearm? It's absurd.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And I'm guilty as everyone else... But sometimes I think to myself "Maybe I shouldn't cut off that guy in traffic like that, he might go and snap."
That in itself is part of the problem. You aren't really giving a shit about him, you're showing courtesy for your own benefit. How shallow is that?
How about you start giving a shit about someone else?
The illusion that the availability of firearms or the lack thereof will have anything to do with the desire of one person to kill another. The desire to murder is a far greater problem in an individual or a society than the capability to follow through on that desire, and so long as we insist on ignoring this sociocultural problem and instead focus on reactive, stopgap measures that seek to prevent access to lethal tools, those desires will always be able to find a new outlet.
As an analogy, which is worse: someone using drugs, or someone's life being so miserable that they turn to drugs?
Your post reminds me about a case I saw in the papers a while back.
A man from Newfoundland decided for whatever reason he was going to go out in a shooting rampage. He decided he'd commit the rampage in Toronto because he thought people weren't very nice there. So he was at a park in Toronto, car full of guns and ammo scouting out the scene before starting his rampage. As it happened a woman was walking her dog ended up having a friendly conversation with him. The man then decided that people were too nice to kill in Toronto as well and so he turned himself into police.
I stole this Sig
I'd like to send my thoughts to the shooter, as well as the victims.
College is a time of unthinkable often unheard sacrifice for many people. People give up everything to go, working terrible jobs for years to save enough to get started, leave everyone and everything they know to live in an isolated world, and find their isolation enforced by bitter poverty and relentless work. For a lot of people, this is their only chance at a future; If they fail, they'll be trapped with a minimum wage job and tens of thousands of dollars of debt they have no way to pay back and nothing tangible to show for it. For a lot of people, this time is an amplifier, sending all their insecurities, all their fears, all their self-hatreds into overdrive, changing it from something indistinguishable from the background noise of life to a roar, deafening and all-encompassing.
If this is the truth for the shooter, I'm sorry you couldn't be saved. You have ended your future and stolen others. I'll shed a tear fall for you and your fallen life, and your senseless, useless, meaningless death.
For anyone reading this, facing the same path, please know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that there are people who know what you're going through. It's the hardest thing you'll ever have to do, but persevere, and don't become like this wasted life, because those who fight for the future they want are the ones who carry the heaviest burden, and the ones who shine the brightest.
It's been a long time.
What happens if you see someone with a gun shoot someone else with a gun, then turn and point their gun at another guy with a gun? Is that person the original shooter, or did they just kill the original shooter? Should you shoot that person to protect everyone else in case they are the original shooter? What happens if you're the person they point their gun at next, do you shoot them because they just shot someone else and now they're about to shoot you? Or do you lay down your gun because they're just confused because you still have your gun out after they shot the original shooter?
Oh yes, and did I mention, you have approximately 1/2 a second to evaluate and answer the above questions.
Speak before you think
Train to act when needed, to have the peace of mind to destroy your aggressor and the medicine to help others around you. wu, ch'an, yi. War, Meditation, Medicine. Five and half years after 9/11 and Americans still line up to die? Our ancestors must be ashamed, we have become sheep.
.357 under your arm, go for it. Carry a knife or Leatherman. Take CPR and trauma classes. Practice Kung Fu. Call your Representative. Everyone should know how to "safe" a hot gun. Do whatever it takes. Be Ready. It's your duty as Americans.
These students today, I don't want to be harsh on the injured, but they should have been READY. Everybody should be ready for anything. If this means carrying a
Fight back!
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Here you go: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/Firearms.htm 1. Guns and homicide (literature review). We performed a review of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on homicide rates. Major Findings: A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide. In other words, owning a gun makes you more likely to be killed by a gun ...
2. Gun availability and state homicide rates, 1988-1997
Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period.
Major findings: After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
In other words, the more people "packing heat" in your state, the more likely you'll be shot to death
3. Gun availability and state homicide rates, 2001-2003
Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003.
Major Findings: States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.
A gun in the house means you're more likely to kill yourself or someone is more likely to kill you.
Srolling down, we come to this:
RECENT FIREARMS RESEARCH
Harvard Injury Control Research Center 2001-2006
Firearms Research Archive 1990-1998
Firearms Research Archive 1998-2003
Firearms Research Archive 2004-2005
The Firearm Research Center:
David Hemenway, Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael, Beth Molnar, and Lisa Hepburn
Funded by the Joyce Foundation
(unpublished material is not to be cited w/o approval of authors)
BOOK: Hemenway, David. "Private Guns and Public Health" Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004. This book summarizes the literature on the relationship between guns and injuries and describes the public health approach to reducing firearm-related violence. More information at the University of Michigan Press website: http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=1 7530
ARTICLES:
I GUNS AND DEATH
A: HOMICIDE
1. Guns and homicide (literature review).
We performed a review of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on homicide rates.
Major Findings: A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
Publication: Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David. "Firearm Availability and Homicide: A Review of the Literature." Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 2004; 9:417-40.
2. Gun availability and state homicide rates, 1988-1997
Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period.
Major findings: After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
Publi
Well, I'll tell you what. Why don't you go tell these kid's parents and friends that it was ok, because it was rare. Go ahead. I'll wait here for you. With a first aid kit. Hopefully, that'll be sufficient.
Agreed. No guarantees. However, at least they would have had a chance, one that improved in direct proportion to the number of armed and trained people in the group. As it was, however, they had none, because the rules required them to be defenseless. Now they're dead, and we're not talking about "chance", are we? No. because we're certain they're dead, and we're certain they had no way to defend themselves.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I find it amazing that even in the face of such horrible events, human nature is such that it can find humor.
Because this is the thing: Life isn't terrible. Yes, very bad things happen. People do horrible things. Always have, always will. This one is worse than many. But we cope, and continue, and manage to find beauty and companionship and humor despite it all, and that's amazing.
So, thank you for your humor. I think that it is a necessity in tragedy, a good grounding to prevent us from getting wrapped up in our mourning, or at least to prevent us from being swept away in wave after wave of media-induced panic - they tend to not report the good things, you have to use your own eyes for that.
I know this post is old, so there's little chance of people reading this, but somebody needs to recap the gun argument. It's gotten short-changed. First, for those who say "It's too early to use this tragedy for political purposes" I call bullshit. For any other political purpose -- violence in games, the Iraq war, boxers or briefs -- yes, you are correct. But all of us (and I speak as someone who lives close to VT) can put ourselves in those student's shoes. We can imagine being hunted down and killed while we wept, shaking against a wall. This emotional feeling, this empathy, is _exactly_ what is required to understand the gun argument. If we wait 'till later it will be too late. I don't own a gun. To me, they're a good way to hurt people accidentally. But I undertsand that the purpose of gun ownership is to empower the citizen. It's not crime control, it's not to prevent the evil overlord from conquering the world. Guns are about freedom and personal power, and they represent everything that is right with the United States. In this country we proudly give people the power to hurt themselves and others. We drive cars, we fly our own airplanes, we skydive, we smoke, we own guns, and we eat cheeseburgers. We give these freedoms freely, understanding that, yes, people are stupid and citizens will misuse them and some harm will occur. We do NOT weigh the deaths that would occur one way or another in some sort of better-than-you morality equation to take our freedoms away. The greater good is served by the productive chaos of people having greater personal powers. That's the theory of our government. Yes. If we had a prison society there would be less crime. But if we had a prison society our society would be about as useless as some of those old European countries that we left to begin with. We left them because -- they took away too many freedoms. How quickly people forget. The reason that today is exactly the right time to have this discussion is that just like you, I would want a gun if I were one of those kids. I might hurt somebody innocent. I might run like a frightened child (most likely). All sorts of bad things _might_ happen. But I know that if I were going to die, I would want the personal power to stop that from happening. Looking at our constitution and our wars for freedom, we should be absolutely ashamed that we would sit idly by with our thumbs stuck in our mouths while we take that power from folks and then say something to the effect of, "well, people are stupid, so we know we can't give them dangerous things. They'll just hurt each other." Such paternalistic balderdash! It's a load of tripe that can't pass the real test -- how the commenter would _really_ feel if they were in those kidss' shoes. That's why the gun argument, of all arguments, is the one that is most appropriate for today.
I'm not saying it was OK because it was incredibly goddamn rare. What I'm saying is that to allow students to arm themselves for the 1 in 1 million chance of a school shooting, or attack on campus is insane.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I was waiting for this kind of non-thinking attitude to surface, and I didn't have to wait long.
Sigh....
The firearms industry, throughout the world, is already one of the most highly regulated industries. The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right, not a privilege, and it comes with grave responsibilities. It is a right born unto every American citizen, save for those that have forsaken their right due to felony conviction, domestic abuse, drug use, or mental incapacity. Gun control laws have repeatedly shown themselves to be ineffective, and even worse, they allow oppression to go unchecked. If you think that the current political climate is oppressive, what with the Patriot act allowing for warrantless searches, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, "National Security Letters", etc., just wait until you've given up your right to fight back. Time and time again, states have passed concealed carry laws, and the lies from the anti-gun crowd have been shown to be just that... lies. At worst, there is no increase or decrease in crime (by people who don't care about gun laws), and at best, people have been freed to protect themselves when necessary, without having to fear prosecution.
Just this weekend, the NRA annual meetings occurred in St. Louis. Do you know how many people were shot?
That's right... zero. Anyone want to guess why? Because potentially everyone there was armed. Perhaps no one was armed, but at least criminals were kept guessing.
I'm quite sure that my retort to your ill-thought-out post will be met with visceral reactions from people who believe that the government knows best and is most capable of protecting me, but I'm not buying any of it. I have respectfully refrained from cursing at you and calling you names, because I believe that to be unproductive. My best allies in this argument are truth and history. History shows, that the best way to control a populace is first to disarm it. The only way the anti-gunners will be successful in disarming this populace will be to lie and spread FUD.
If you wish to waive your freedom in the interest of a little perceived security, you deserve neither. I, on the other hand, will protect my freedom and security by practicing ALL of my rights under the constitution, and would fight to the death to protect yours as well.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
However the USA has fallen behind with the rest of the world with it's attitude to gun ownership. It's definitely behind with it's "fear" of tougher gun regulation.
Numerous other countries have introduced tougher gun laws(England, Australia, Canada, etc) and introduced programs that allow certain types of weaponry but not extreme items such as semi automatics, which aren't required to hunt deer for example.
The trend that has been observed in these countries is this:
Increasing gun related crimes leads criminals to seek more aggressive weapons to stay ahead of the curve.
The gun restrictions are introduced with programs to cash in guns for money or desirable items (such as the Guns for Guitars program.)
Criminals begin to brandish lesser weapons such as knives, because they are cheaper, easier to obtain, and the criminal realises that their target won't be packing a semi-automatic.
The strongest upside to this is that you can't massacre a crowd with a knife in the same way that you can a semi-automatic weapon.
What is observed here is instead of one-upmanship: where individuals are trying to get more sophisticated weapons so they stay on top of the arsenal game. There is an erosion of the basic level of arsenal held by the community, defense is still possible with simpler items, but the ability to do massive damage such as rampage shootings is reduced. The easy access to wilful weaponry is removed, making it difficult for a regular person to carry out large scale massacres. Yes, a massacre can still be co-ordinated, but it requires a great deal more work, often with elaborate criminal connections to obtain the weapons, this gives policing organisations time to prevent the act from happening(and a psychologically enraged person is not likely to complete these steps before calming down). This contrasts to a situation where excessive weaponry is freely commerced, where an enraged person has easy access to a high-end weapon, which allows them to quickly carry out a massacre.
The United States has a great foundation myth of the ragtag band of civilians in the woods with substandard civilian weapons banding together and winning themselves a country (the now hated French have no role in the myth despite having a very major role). This story in my opinion is being used as an excuse for people to hide military sidearms in their jackets and just so they can feel strong. Your guns have not protected you from a ruler that has more authority than George III ever had, and your guns will not get rid of him, laws setting term limits will do that.
I really do not understand the obessession with the second amendment and with civilians carrying military weapons around even though I learned how to shoot a rifle at the age of seven.
Yeah, quite interesting readings.
c rime-murders-per-capita (to say the truth, this is data from 2000, so quite old):
. pdf), quite up to date, uh? Well, let's see 746 murders in that period (including the 57 victims from the 7/7 London bombs), which makes 14.0 per million.
But sorrily they forget about a very "little and simple" fact: chances to be violently killed per million inhabitants. One would think that's an easy and clear number, isn't it? But, hey, they seemed to forget about it in the NRA-supported articles you kindly cite.
Well, here come some numbers http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-
United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
France: 0.0173272 per 1,000 people
Australia: 0.0150324 per 1,000 people
Canada: 0.0149063 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
Germany: 0.0116461 per 1,000 people
Japan: 0.00499933 per 1,000 people
So, your chances to be killed in the USA were x3 those from "wild Australia", "violent UK" or "mad Canada", or x10 those from "samuray Japan".
But, hey, this is old data!
Well, here comes the "2005/2006 Home Office Statistical Bulletin for England and Wales" (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207
And what about the USA? Well, disastercenter (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm) says there were 16,692 murders in 2005, or 56 murders per million. Hummm... how much it does 56/14? Well, it's even WORSE THAN DATA FROM 2000! Your bets of being murdered in USA are 4x those from the "wild UK". Isn't it soooooooo strange after the "facts" from our friends of the NRA?
As an Australian where gun control is in effect a gun -being fired- makes the state, possibly national news. THAT is what happens when you have gun control its not exactly mysterious guys.
"And to this day, US citizens generally understand that if the government ever becomes tyrannical and repressive, "we the people" have the right (and must have the means) to overthrow it."
I seriously doubt that mate. A random armed rabble will not overthrow your government by force. You have invented the most powerful Military on the planet. Each time I see something like this happen over there it just reinforces the fact that we have made the correct decision. I don't in the slightest fear my government to the point that I'm willing to support the decay of my community in order to support what someone a few hundred years ago called 'inalienable rights'. It probably sounded like a good idea at the time given recent events that had occurred, but today it's a burden that costs you. You and your families safety.
The argument that 'bad guys have gun' is fairly ineffective too, because from what I observe over here, if they have them, they don't use them as anything but a threat. In fact, right here in Sydney I have ONLY ever seen guns holstered on the belts of police and security guards. In fact, the though that someone might be carrying a gun doesn't even occur to me any more.
Its unfortunate, but I suspect that the only way Americans will ever view the preservation of their society as more important that the ineffectual feeling of safety that arises from owning a weapon is when they start becoming too afraid to travel their own streets. Even then I doubt it. Before you shoot me down in flames, ask yourself why this always happens in the US. Why is this even news over there? From memory it seems to have every single year, or at least seems that way. Without gun control you will just have to get used to it.
Personally I loved playing soldiers when I was a kid. I lived on a military base and got to use the ranges all the time. I grew out of it though and am glad that our government listen to the people and not the lobbyists. Now we have a homicide by gun rate of 0.3073 per 100,000 vs. the US with 3.6000 according to <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence>.
Apple to Apples you Americans die more than 10 times more often than us from guns. We however lack your 'inalienable rights' to bear arms.
Thank you, for saying what I think most people are not aware of. If you could be modded +6 I would do it in an instant.
I am currently going through 3rd year in an engineering school in Canada. We are known to be the best eng school in Canada, and also known to be the toughest, though I perceive this as true for most engineering schools that I have seen.
An engineering degree is no joke. For us 60h work weeks are quite common. Where with other degrees occasional all-nighters are required, for us guys in engineering it's a weekly affair, if not more often. It's crunch time all the time, and most of us learn to take our relaxation like timed medical doses, giving us just enough to move on and stay sane, but not so much that we slack off.
My classes routinely average under 40% going into the final, and curving on the marks are never quite guaranteed. Meet an unlucky prof and 60% of the class gets to repeat the course. Couple that with a pretty hardline fail policy and you've got a lot of people on the edge.
Most of us in engineering dislike the system. We would rather extend our degrees and spend more time in school than dealing with this virtual gulag. Unfortunately there is a lot of "well in my day we did the same thing" thinking going on in the administration which perpetuates this philosophy. This false engineer's pride that there's something *good* about these living and working conditions. Hell, some of the students believe it too - if you don't work like a dog for 60-80h a week you're not a *worthy* engineer. Bullshit of that sort.
All of the engineering students I've met have developed some psychological curiosity or another. I hesitate to call them illnesses, but everyone has developed their own odd psychological defense mechanism to deal with the crushing stress, which is also why many engineers come off as such odd people. It's no surprise to me that one of them would snap and take out their rage like this.
Agreed. I think the only reason I did not go postal was because of my mother, and her caring attitude.
However, after my dad died, I became very depressed, and suddenly, I was the target of abuse from everyone around me. Because being depressed, I did not fit in. I started getting picked on severely. Then, one teacher (who was later fired after a similar incident!) declared me to be "slow" - as opposed to being very unhappy. So, the next thing I know I am put in the class for "disadvantaged children" aka the special class. They run a bunch of tests on me, and find that at 10 years old, I am reading at a grade 12 level, and that my IQ is above normal, that no, I am not slow, just bored and depressed due to the death of my father.
So what happens? The school does the nice thing and gets me *ADVANCED* material. So, there I am in the "slow" class, being given advanced material. The other kids in this class hated me, and picked on me incessantly. I got beaten up in and after school numerous times - often by multiple kids. It is hard to fight back when 7 people are attacking you. To make matters worse, I had no one to teach me how to fight back. So I kept loosing. And I kept getting attacked. The school would not help, and my mother just thought violence was "bad" and that I should "just not fight". (That was about her only negative influence).
I can tell you, if I had access to a weapon, it is entirely possible - in fact, probably very likely - that I would have gone postal in that situation. As it was, I did not have access to one.
Now that I am older, people wonder why I have studied martial arts for 13 years, and keep myself in very good physical condition. Partly because of vanity and wanting to look good. But mostly because I remember what it was like to be opressed so badly for those years.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
My apologies to Mr. Chiang-- he has posted a note saying that he was not the shooter. As he says on the same livejournal:
I am not the shooter. Through this experience, I have received numerous death threats, slanderous accusations, and my phone is out of charge from the barrage of calls. Local police have been notified of the situation.One armed student could have ended this right at the beginning.
Well, one armed man just killed 20 people. The solution isn't to have MORE guns, but to have LESS. Instead, have MORE SECURITY at these buildings. Weapon detectors, security officers, i.e. people KNOWN to be safe with guns.
The guy that shot up a college in Montreal last september had all his guns registered.
You can't take the sky from me...
This is ridiculous!
Don't you realise why things like that happen more often in the USA than in Europe?
I felt quite horrified reading the news this morning. Even here, the incident is frontpage news. The fact that my sister and her husband are both medical school students in the US brings the incident even closer home. Having never visited or lived in the US, I have a question in mind (which perhaps many other asian/other nationals also wonder).. Is the picture of school and college life in the US, painted in Hollywood movies, really a reflection of reality? Now, India itself is probably one of the world's worst countries to grow up in for children. (Yes, it is, ok? I'm not being anti-national when I say that!). In terms of health, nutrition, child labor and other measures of human development, we pretty much scrape the bottom of the barrel over and over every year. Even so, I have never seen or felt the kind of hostility, peer pressure to conform and mental stress that, going by movie/TV standards, children in the US seem to be subjected to. I mean a social tension, although I'm sure economical disparities and dynamics must contribute in many ways... Is it for real? Are families irrelevant, or a source of negative rather than positive emotion for a lot of young people? Do kids really grow up too early, too fast? (atleast, that's the way it looks to me on TV, maybe my outlook is provincial by world standards..). And is it really easy to get your hands on a gun? I'm sure I couldn't even find one today in Delhi (I'm 25 now) even if I tried hard, and I'm pretty sure I'm better off for it. Can you guys from the states give your perspective? And, indeed, how it's different in Europe and other developed nations?
Actually most schools actually ban firearms through their administrative code. I don't know about OSU, but here at WSU (Washington) firearms are not allowed on campus even with a permit. However I can tell you a lot of my friends carry anyway, and I know of 5 off hand that want it changed, and there's actually a student group moving for change now. Its not because we don't trust the other students, or we feel unsafe but we prefer to exercise our rights even if they deem it illegal. If you choose not to carry and you end up in a situation like that, you made the choice for yourself. However if someone else tells you, "NO YOU CANT CARRY" and then the shit hits the fan, its the person who banned the carry in the first place, because the outcome could have been different. Just because you're in a small town doesn't mean "It cant happen to you." Case in point recently there were a couple murders here in Pullman and Moscow.
I truthfully don't know how many would actually regularly carry, however most who go through the effort to get their CWP and the rest of it will carry just because.
People often ask me why I have a CWP and why I carry even in the middle of no where. This is my response:
"I would rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Don't distort arguments with stupid emotional appeals. If more people would die due to low profile incidents on a highly armed campus that people that die in these high profile incidents with unarmed campuses, then arming students is a bad idea, period. I don't think that situation is unreasonable to suspect considering 10's of thousands of gun related deaths a year and less than a fifty or a hundred coming from school shootings. And guess what, those people would have families too.
I am a believer in arming well trained law abiding citizens to deter crime, but the revelation that people that die have families isn't very awe inspiring. Either a policy saves more lives or it doesn't. Don't bullshit around with emotional appeals to crying parents.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Also, if you go from having one student armed to having all students armed, then the rarity of such events drops as a result.
Here's a better idea: why not go from one student armed to no students armed. It's absurd to solve a gun problem by throwing more guns at it.
Just FYI, before you pull comments out of your ass again: Probable causes of death (US) Heart Disease 1-in-5 Cancer 1-in-7 Stroke 1-in-23 Accidental Injury 1-in-36 Motor Vehicle Accident* 1-in-100 Intentional Self-harm (suicide) 1-in-121 Falling Down 1-in-246 Assault by Firearm 1-in-325 Fire or Smoke 1-in-1,116 Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.) 1-in-3,357 Electrocution* 1-in-5,000 Drowning 1-in-8,942 SOURCES: National Center for Health Statistics, CDC; American Cancer Society; National Safety Council; International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; World Health Organization; USGS; Clark Chapman, SwRI; David Morrison, NASA; Michael Paine, Planetary Society Australian Volunteers How would someone 'steal a gun' if no-one was permitted to carry a gun? Kinda self defeating argument there.
Launchy.net changed my world.
Criminality ridden city, weapons all around the place (in the hand of criminals and the police mostly).
We never ever had a "school shooting" (bar the students riots in 1968, the police's bullets marks were still there when I went to HIgh School, but you will concede that is slightly different).
Why?
Most people do not carry weapons.
Spin it any way you want, it is hard time you have a look at yourselves, the statistics and the derided ammendment in your constitution that allows things like this to happen.
I hear the argument that if you ban weapons only criminals will have them.
You know what? I have no problem with that.
As the situation in Mexico City probes, criminals are not interested in indiscriminate shootings, it is a "tool of the trade" and the immense majority of people in Mexico City will never see a gun in their lives.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You guys can count deaths by gun shoots by the thousends per year.
Killing people is lifestyle choice in your country.
In the UK it is national news when somebody gets stabbed to death, even more so when guns are involved (they are banned in the UK). We only have a few dozens of incidents per year in the whole country, most of them gang violence.
After the only serious school shooting incident in the UK guns were banned. Guess what? We have had no reocurrence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Let me do that for you, then: these people are - well, were - victims. Oh, sure, they're also perpetrators, mass killers, and most likely batshit insane, but it's not like you can't be a perpetrator and a victim at the same time: that's a false dichotomy.
Similarly, I'd also like to remark that there is a difference between "excuse" and "explain". What killers like these do is unexcusable, but that doesn't mean it's unexplainable or impossible to understand on a rational level. I think people are making a mistake when they just condemn everyone who commits a crime - no matter how heinous - as simply being evil; there's almost always a reason why it happened, and if we want to avoid things like this from now on and keep them from happening again, we'd better make sure we understand those reasons so we can do something about them.
butter the donkey