Shootings at Virginia Tech

[Daekar]

I haven't been able to read this whole thread, but I have a few comments:

1) The behavior of the media has been appalling. They have swarmed in huge numbers and have no respect for anyone here - it's just a story to them. As far as I can tell, the impact of having to support the huge influx of media teams has been as taxing to the area as the shootings.

2) Someone mentioned "where were the police?" Well, the shooter had an hour (!) inside Norris Hall after he fired the first shots before SWAT entered the building. He had already committed suicide by then. I don't blame them for letting him escape Ambler Johnston - he was a student, he blended in with everybody. To expect to just "pick him out" would be arrogance of the highest degree. However, I find it appalling that it took an hour for police to enter Norris. According to my a friend who is on Tech Security, they didn't let the local cops (who were there well before an hour elapsed) enter because they were afraid the shooter wouldn't come out alive. Incidentally, Tech Security personnel aren't allowed to carry firearms, or any other weapons besides batons. To the best of my knowledge, Tech Police don't have firearms either. My friend carries a maglite for protection, not for light.

3) Campus communication was non-existent. There are large PA speakers scattered around the perimeter of campus (those of you who are familiar with the VT campus will be falling out of your chairs laughing at this point) that they broadcast things on - but there are none in any buildings at all. You can't hear the PA speakers inside anywhere... and guess where most students are at any given time? Oh yeah, inside... I'm surprised in our "always under threat of terrorism" state, things were so bad.

I know I'm "monday quarterbacking" but these are my feelings. Overall it was handled well with some critical mistakes thrown in.

 

[prof]

Very sad. I teach on a university campus. I'm surprised this does not happen more, honestly. Our students are stressed out from many different issues--for example, finals are coming up. Others have personal issues. However, almost all of them handle it very well. We, like most campuses, have resources for those that need help. I do not know how effective those centers are, and have never had to refer anyone to them.

So sad. I have no words for this.

Gun control: my best friend lives in a country where ALL guns are banned. He is a law-abiding citizen and is unarmed, although he travels in dangerous areas (often with his wife and children). He's been caught and held at machine-gun point. Machine guns are brought in by people fleeing a nearby country which is at war. The guns are sold or traded for food. I do not believe these laws help, as many of you have pointed out. Criminals do not care. However, I really do not think that letting my students have guns on campus would help either. That would be scary in itself, especially when returning exams. I don't know the answer here. There are no easy answers.

 

[BB]

Even bullet proof vests would not have stopped the guy in VT, or the Lubby's killing, etc... Many of these people were simply shot in the head at close range.

And yet, in the LA Shootings a decade ago--several robbers armed with full automatic weapons and bullet proof vests themselves, shooting anything that moved in the middle of a major city--did not kill one other person themselves (granted, several police officers were badly wounded).

And, as Carbine15 has seen from (current?) research (and I from research even 30 years ago)--killing the wrong person is more likely by highly trained police then by he "average" person (and, again from decades old research, citizens are responsible for something 1.5+ times the police regarding justifiable homicide)--so by that reasoning, we should be taking guns away from the police and only arming citizens as armed citizens have a much better record in preventing crime and less errors in using weapons. And--we have more people being killed by governments (wars, police actions, etc.) than killed by "criminals"--again disarming nations and politicians (if that was even possible) should be a good thing (not being serious here--just trying to make a point).

So, I guess you have your research right there when armed citizens stop more crimes and kill fewer unintentional victims than police. Remember, even VTECH was not stopped by the police--it was stopped when the attacker was done killing and committed suicide--like several other school shootings (again--realizing the police have an, at times, an almost impossible job). And there are at least several other recent school shootings in the US that were stopped by armed citizens rather than the police (including one where the guy had to run a 1/2 mile to his car+gun because he had to park outside of the "gun free" zone--talk about irony).

Also, remember that even the US Supreme Court has ruled multiple times (over a 100+ year period--earlier post from me) that "government" has no duty to protect their citizens, or even respond to calls for help. US Citizens are the only ones with a duty (in the US constitution) to protect themselves.

And if we could reduce gun possession to near zero (say, as in a "small city" with ~30,000 adults--no "children" and many thousands of employees--say gun possession by per 1/40,000 people which is very close to zero guns in a large population)--we get VTECH.

In the end, we still have some of the largest mass-murders in (at least) US history that took place without even using guns (largest US school killing was in ~1927 using explosives, ~168 Oklahoma by explosives, ~90 people killed by ATF/FBI/government in Waco--most killed by fire, and ~3,000 people in 9-11 killed by 19 hijackers armed with simple box cutters).

And still the largest number of US dead--from any cause of violence, ~600,000+ people (most dying from disease rather than guns), is the result of a disagreement between two groups of United States politicians (US Civil War--1860's).

-Bill

 

[chmsam]

*** Major rant warning!

Now, this is for anyone who thinks that the kids in those classrooms were wussies -- let somebody come up and fire blanks behind you macho types and not watch you crap your tighty white-ies. How dare you call those kids and faculty anything but heroes. Before some say that they should have attacked Cho, remember that he had two pistols and that he was firing and reloading quickly. Let me please see just one of the folks who have the advantage of such good 20/20 hindsight charge a person with two weapons while he is firing at them. I bet you'd say that you'd throw yourself on a grenade in combat, but you know what?, saying it is one thing and actually doing it when you're in the crap up to your ankles is quite another. Talk is cheap, chumps.

A large number of these kids risked their lives by barricading doors that Cho then fired through. They were behind wooden doors and cinderblock walls -- and neither of those will stop a 9mm round. Faculty and students literally put their bodies in the line of fire and kept him from coming into the room and firing at others. Several were shot and a few died doing it. Sure as hell doesn't sound like they were wusses, and guess what? That sounds like an honest-to-God bunch of heroes to me, and quite a number of them, too. They put the lives of others ahead of their own as scared as they were at the time. In the military that usually gets a Bronze Star, and for those who died doing it, sometimes a Medal of Honor. I'd like to remind a few of you tough guys that these were teenage kids and one of the professors was an old man, and he was a concentration camp survivor at that. That old man had looked death in the face before and he still had the guts to stand there while his students got out through the windows. It sounds like that old man knew he was going to die and yet he did it anyway. What have you done that makes you able to call any one of those people anyhting less than a hero?

Real heroes don't brag. The real heroes don't need to justify what they did and don't even feel heroic. Those kids are feeling guilty they couldn't have saved even more lives than they already did. The other real heroes are kids like the Eagle Scout who remained calm enough to put his finger in his own bloody wound and be able make a tourniquet so his arterial bleeding would be controlled and he wouldn't bleed to death before he could get hauled out and still wait there patiently -- Geez, that took guts! The real heroes are the police and EMT's who cried when they heard the cell phones of the dead kids they were carrying out start ringing and then realized that it was probably family and friends calling to check on those dead kids. Could anyone who has a child not picture themself in those parents' shoes? The people who did these things are far braver than most of us simply because they will eventually learn to live with those memories that will last for the rest of their lives. I doubt very many of any of us had that sort of courage when we were that young. A few of us probably will still be dumb enough to brag that we would, but I doubt most have it even now.

To those people here who actually do know what happens when you go into burning buildings, into the line of fire, or have to put your body in front of somebody who was hurt or was about to be, please forgive my rant, but those wanna be's have no idea just how deep the crap gets and how scary it gets once you decide you have to do something even though you're scared, too. Guess I am not smart enough to realize that I don't have the patience to spare anymore on folks who will never, ever get it. To those of you who know, I apologize.

Can we PLEASE get this back to being about the tragedy and the victims, and not about a few people who need to justify something to or about themselves?

 

[Jorge Banner]

I've read from two sources about a very interesting phenomenon. Don't have the links nor do I remember who they were, but the coincidence stuck in my mind and it's very enlightening. One was a Japanese author writing on what happened when the Samurai world was coming to an end and the government prohibited the carrying of swords. The other was a French author, writing about when, apparently after the 1789 revolution, the carrying of swords was prohibited in France, also. And both mention that one of the consequences was the loss of common courtesy. Previously, people thought very carefully at how they treated others. Because they were all armed. Afterwards, things changed. People did not respect others, any more. No matter what your behavior, what could others do? Ban weapons, ban respect.

And on this vein, many of you may not have noticed or experienced this, but people are VERY polite at a range.

Now to our present problems. Doesn't it express an amazing amount of disrespect the attitude of walking into a room full of people and slaughtering them like animals, not worried in the least about the possibility of retaliation? Think about it. These killers don't hide. They don't attack from behind cover. They don't stalk people in the night. Just one single individual can simply walk into a room and start shooting away. Why? Because he knows something that before these politically correct, liberal, times, was very different. He knows that his victims will be disarmed. By law. Defenseless. By law. At his mercy. By law. Almost prepared for death. By law.

Here's an idea for the liberal, gun control crowd, lets force people to wear a target on their chest. To make it easy for the killers to aim, you know?

 

[greenLED]

Very sad. I teach on a university campus. I'm surprised this does not happen more, honestly. Our students are stressed out from many different issues--for example, finals are coming up. Others have personal issues. However, almost all of them handle it very well. We, like most campuses, have resources for those that need help. I do not know how effective those centers are, and have never had to refer anyone to them.

So sad. I have no words for this.

Gun control: ... I really do not think that letting my students have guns on campus would help either. ... There are no easy answers.

Good points, prof.

I'd rather see discussion of more agressive mental health programs made available for students rather than focusing on whether they should be allowed to carry guns. Anything can be used for harming/killing oneself or others, so trying to control everything is a moot point, IMO. Learning tools to manage one's emotions, stress levels, and reactions to every day events is far more useful in terms of being a successful human being. I like to think that's one of the reasons students come to a university campus.

In my campus experience, we've had to refer 2 students to anger management therapy, and there's always one or two per term that make it to our "watch" list because of some type of unusual behavior.

 

[Sub_Umbra]

As each decade passes our society loses more of the "Prerequisites of Democracy." First literacy, then a cohesive culture. Idiots neither see the future or remember the past. While I firmly believe that no one should be murdered, anyone who defaults to passivity and believes some fat, balding bureaucrat or politician when they tell them that they are in no way responsible for their own defense is a prime candidate for a Darwin Award could do the rest of humanity favor by just wandering off a cliff somewhere, bringing their loopy genetic line to a grinding halt. Those who sold V Tech to so many idiots as a "Gun Free Zone" got some 'splaininn' to do.

Unfortunately, there are so many brainless sheep who believe them that nothing will make any difference at this point. The tragedy of yesterday is not the deaths on the campus -- not by a long shot. The real tragedy is the Gun Control pandering that must follow. "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls..."

This is a religious issue, essentially like Global Warming. It will do no good to point to yesterday and tell the believers that there is no such thing as a Gun Free Zone. Virginia Tech is a Defense Free Zone. All Gun Free Zones are Defense Free Zones. The problem with religious issues like this is that even after the horrific truth is explicitly revealed as it was yesterday the Church of Gun Control will go on preaching to the faithful in spite of the elephant in the living room. Mark my words, Gun Free Zone will continue to be a very popular promise by the ministers of Gun Control in the future -- even though no such zone has ever been created anywhere -- even in a prison. If it can't be done in a prison where the inmates have lost nearly all of their rights and mobility, it certainly cant be done on the 'outside.'

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[COMMANDR]

Just read this on NewsMax, thought I'd share.

Gary

NewsMax.com Did Killer Learn from Video Games

The media have been quick to point the finger at "guns" as the problem
in the Virginia Tech massacre. But NewsMax exposes the dirty secret
of violent "First Person Shooter" video games and how this particular
killer's style mimicked game play.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/4/17/171751.shtml?s=al&promo_code=3298-1

 

[bwaites]

Mental health issues are going to be next to impossible to address and here's why:

This thread is a microcosm of the attitudes toward mental health care.

There are two main viewpoints:

We need more mental healthcare, which means more counselors and more meds.

OR

Too many people are already medicated, and it's the meds which cause the problems.

You can't have it both ways. Just like any other disease, people have the right to accept or not accept mental healthcare.

Our current legal system cannot force any adult to accept care if they don't want it, at least under most circumstances.
(It's a little more complicated with juveniles).

The only time that patients can be forced into healthcare is when they have PROVEN themselves to be a danger to themselves or others, as determined by a state certified mental health professional. (In most states that means an employee of the county or state, not a doctor or psychiatrist or psychologists or counselor in private practice.)

This guy wouldn't have fit. At least from what we know now, he had never actually injured himself or others. Threatening doesn't count if there is no actual plan of action.

So we can Monday Morning Quarterback all we want, the system isn't set up to stop these kinds of issues, as has been shown by Columbine, VT, and so many others!

Bill

The only way to force

 

[BB]

Mr. Cho was well known to both the mental health community, the campus police, the teachers, the students, and his dorm mates as somebody "not right"... He was "profiled". Now what?

Va. Gunman Had 2 Previous Stalking Ca[font=Verdana,Sans-serif]se[/font]

The gunman ... had previously been accused of stalking two female students and had been taken to a mental health facility in 2005 after his parents worried he might be suicidal, police said Wednesday.[font=Verdana,Sans-serif] Cho Seung-Hui had concerned one woman enough with his calls and e-mail in 2005 that police were called in, said Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

He said the woman declined to press charges and Cho was referred to the university disciplinary system. During one of those incidents, both in late 2005, the department received a call from Cho's parents who were concerned that he might be suicidal, and he was taken to a mental health facility, he said.
...
[font=Verdana,Sans-serif] Several students and professors described Cho as a sullen loner. ... News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly erratic.

Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings - pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing...

Some people (students and, even, at least one proffessor) have already decided for themselves that Mr. Cho's writings and behaviour was so "out of the norm" that they dropped/dropped him/changed classes/had security passwords with staff incase he "went off".

In our current legal/medical climate--choosing to remove one's self from situations where somebody chooses not to follow society's norms--is about the only choice for self defense we have left today (in many states/cities/other locations).

There will be more to learn in the days and months coming--but long ago government and courts have decided that being significantly weird is not enough reason to lock people up and/or force medications (with their own issues) on people (after the courts, city hall and other locations have choosing to install metal detectors and hiring of armed guards--at a disarmed population's expense).

-Bill


[/font][/font]

 

[greenLED]

This guy wouldn't have fit. At least from what we know now, he had never actually injured himself or others. Threatening doesn't count if there is no actual plan of action.

Even if a plan was not openly disclosed, there were enough PIN's to raise red flags among his teachers and peers. Fellow students were already afraid of him beforehand, teachers were aware of his distrubed mental status, asking him to limit interaction with peers because of safety concerns, and trying to get him into counseling. As usual, these factors are often downplayed (if not completely ignored), and not enough is done to provide the potential agressor with the type of support they need. These events are then labeled as "random acts of violence" when in fact there was a long trail of indicators suggesting a terrible outcome.

A sad tragedy indeed, and no simple solution to prevent it from occurring again.

 

[bwaites]

The sad thing is that there isn't even a COMPLICATED solution for the problem.

Yes, he had been seen as a stalker; the vast majority of stalkers never do anything violent, simply wanting to be close to someone.

Yes, he had written some disturbing stuff; Anyone here ever head of Stephen King or Dean Koontz?

Red Flags? Yes! Smoke? Yes! But our society allows people a lot of freedom to act weird or even dangerous before we choose to do anything.

We aren't the only ones. Security people had been saying for years that a major catastrophe would happen if paparazzi were allowed to continue chasing celebrities; anyone hear about Princess Diana?

Freedom, by it's very definition, means that sometimes someone will take advantage of that situation, like Cho did. When that happens, there is the possibility that someone will die.

It's tragic, but is a price that we pay.

Bill

 

[TedTheLed]

Nikki Giovanni's Moving Speech from Yesterday's Service

Apr 17, 2007


*** "We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant i killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. "

*

 

[Robocop]

So it does appear that this man was well known to have issues and had made threats in the past....

I very much like the way bwaites said it above in saying that society allows people to act very dangerous for long times before anything is done....excellent way to put it however it is so very true.

In an earlier post I said desperate times will mean desperate measures in order to prevent future problems. I for one would be willing to lose some of my freedoms if it would mean a safer place to live. Maybe the rules have changed after this incident and just maybe some areas will be much more aggressive in dealing with persons who show signs of violence or danger.

I fully understand what the school and security there are dealing with as this is one example of many cases through the nation. If a person shows signs or even has several documented events of stalking or threats it takes months to even get anyone involved. It seems as if everyone involved at each level simply wants to pass it on to the next person for review or follow up.

If the school were to simply say hey that guy has had a few past problems lets just kick him out.....well thats not going to happen because he has "rights". It is very hard these days to really do much of anything and you cant simply think someone may be a problem you have to be able to prove it after they have been allowed to mis-behave for months or even years.

Maybe the rules will change a little now in that schools will be allowed to be very much more strict.....maybe it will not be ok to make threats or to even be weird. Maybe you can be kicked out of school for certain beliefs or actions even if they are really not against the law. Yes it sounds extreme or harsh but again maybe this will be something we must endure to guarantee safety in schools.

 

[bwaites]

Robocop,

The problem with restricting freedoms in the hope of safety is that those restrictions seldom, if ever, actually make you safer!

Remember, it's not the law abiding citizens that cause the problem, it's the ones who operate outside the law anyway.

If you restrict the guns, crazy people will build bombs. If you cut off the materials to make bombs, they will use airplanes. If you cut off access to airplanes, they will find another way.

IF you don't care if you die, there is always a way!

As others have said, prove to me that the bad guys don't have guns and I'd be willing to give mine up, too. Otherwise, all we are is sitting ducks or fish in a barrel, just like those poor students at VT.

Bill

 

[BB]

People gave up a lot of their freedom to feel safer at VTech... Per a press release from a "Pro-Gun" web site quoting VTech Vice President Hincher in an editorial reply in the local paper (VCDL?) to a student editorial written by Bradford Wiles...

And then in September 2006, after a shooting near campus (that included the shooting death of a deputy sheriff by an escaped prisoner) prompted a campus panic as a gunman wondered about, Vice President Hinkler [may be a typo--Hincher. -BB] belittled adult students for wanting their gun rights on campus:

"After the fear, and dare I say, panic from the events of Aug. 21, it is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles . . .The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself . . .

"On that fateful Monday, campus was understandably on edge. Elvis-type sightings of the escaped prisoner around campus were rampant. People were legitimately concerned about where he might be. . . . The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again....

"Contrary to his position, the writer's commentary actually gives credence to the university policy preventing weapons in classrooms. Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same," Hincher was quoted as saying by VCDL.

Sorry--but the quote from VP Hincher "...tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him..." scares me a bit more. And they certainly did not (and probably could not) have done much more than simply clean up the results.

-Bill

 

[Sable]

I hate to really butt in here - there's lots going already and adding another layer onto the onion may not serve the purpose that I want it to, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I'm 23 years old. I am a network engineer in Alaska, where I have been designing and building everything from office LANs to helping with an entire wireless ISP system. I am happy, healthy, stable, and about to get married. I've been playing video games since I can remember. I've had every console from the Atari 2600 up to an XBox 360 hooked to an HDTV. I've played games as diverse as Pac-Man and Galaga to Grand Theft Auto, and I've enjoyed the lot of them. I am one of millions of people in the United States and the world that wears the label of gamer with pride.

Video games do not - any more than rock music, comic books, movies or television shows - cause people to go on rampages. Don't for one ******* second try to blame the deaths of thirty-two people on collections of ones and zeros in plastic cases. I know it's the hip thing in the media to do, but as a nation - as a people, as a species, we're smarter than that. This was the product of a sick mind, of someone who was messed up without the external influence of a controller.

You want a look at what gamers are? The most sterling example these days is Child's Play run by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade. We are not murdering psychopaths, lying in wait with our automatic weapons to mow you down in the streets. Every misleading article, every psychotic demagogue who stands in front of you and lies, every attempt to peg this tragedy in a cookie-cutter "Youth of Today" is an insult and a slap in the face to those who were killed, those who were irrepairably harmed, and those who will never see their son, daughter, or lover again.

There may or may not be sense behind this - it might only be the product of a sick mind that no system, simple or complex, could have adequately prevented. The mind searches for easy answers when things like this happen, but in this as so many others there are none. The answer doesn't lie in video games - just as it doesn't lie in gun control. It may lie in our society as a whole - or it may lie only in the mind of the shooter.

Thanks for listening to my diatribe - our world is complicated enough as it is...lies and misinformation only make it worse.

 

[cchurchi]

There is absolutely nothing standing in the way of another massacre just like this one from happening TOMORROW! If this were to happen again tomorrow on some other campus, I hope that at least some instructors and professors are packing inspite of what the campus rules say.

 

[Sable]

There's nothing preventing you from being hit by a geriatric in the crosswalk who can't remember which one is the gas pedal! NOTHING!

Clearly, the solution is to live in a locked closet with a shotgun pointed at the door!

 

[bwaites]

Blaming video games is like blaming guns.

Neither of them caused the act, the act would have occurred in some form without either.

Shooters (video games where someone or something is shot) may allow the individual to practice and plot, but they don't cause the problem.

The problem is that some percentage of the worlds population has problems, and we have a hard time dealing with them when they lose their ability to continue coping with their problems.

Bill