I know a lot of our readers are at work, right now. You’ll see all of this, tonight, when you get home. I’m just putting this up as a placeholder for the moment. We’ll update later.
The Virginia Tech police chief said at least 20 people were killed in twin shootings on the Blacksburg campus Monday morning.
“Some victims were shot in a classroom,” Chief Wendell Flinchum said, adding that the gunman was dead.
A hospital spokeswoman told The Associated Press that 17 Virginia Tech students were being treated for gunshot wounds and other injuries.
The shootings came three days after a bomb threat Friday forced the cancellation of classes in three buildings, WDBJ in Roanoke reported. Also, the 100,000-square-foot Torgersen Hall was evacuated April 2 after police received a written bomb threat, The Roanoke Times reported.
Update: News Services now report 32 dead. Gunman shot almost 50 people.
ACCORDING TO THE BELL CURVE, HALF OF YOU ARE BELOW AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE!!!!
You’re engaging in the “Fallacy of Division”, Doofus.
#56 Podesta, I’m so glad I could provide your “show and tell” example of deluded thinking, so I’ll expand on the joy I’m giving you. I used to think, as you apparently still do, that the 2nd Amendment had grown obsolete due to the increased imbalance between the people’s chances to successfully organize an armed rebellion and the government’s ability to suppress it. The missing factor in that calculation, having everything to do with its outcome, is the severity of the government’s provocation.
The more oppressive the government were to become and the more suddenly it did so, the more popular the support for any revolution would be. Our current foreign entanglement has shown that even our superior military forces are incapable of suppressing a highly energized indigenous collection of citizen-soldiers. I’m no longer convinced that our own government would never sufficiently provoke us, and I’ve come to believe that the 2nd Amendment isn’t as obsolete as I used to think it was.
61,
According to the BELL CURVE, some ASS is 4.0 and blowing the WHOLE curve…
Granted the event really perplexes me, but; man is this site just full of narrow minded B..tches here! It’s not about gun control!!!!
What is it about our dumb ass super ignorant public.
Damn, the TV watching Video junkies think we can control everything, especially a bunch of uneducated Bedowins with better technology, and look where that is getting us.
The idiot could of just strapped a nail studded explosive belt around himself and taken out more people, gun control or not.
The last latest mass killing was the AMISH school where another idiot with a 20-year-old grudge, walked into a one-room school and killed a bunch of children. Just because the scale is smaller doesn’t mean it’s not related.
After-wards to the AMISH credit, they put up only the basics in additional security in their rebuilt school. Who thinks another Killing is going to occur there.
I just wish I could participate in a society that didn’t specialize in partitioning people economically, inflicting financially, emotional, physical or other wounds, instead worked to heal, think New Orleans. Utopian I know.
Obviously I can’t say I have all the answers, but we have to change ourself first and not our dumb laws!!!
My prayers go out to the families. God help us all.
I APOLOGIZE for bringing up politics in the wake of this tragedy but…
Any possibility that this event will inject the issue of gun control into this election cycle?
While a standard campaign issue for years after the Kennedy assassinations, even “liberals” eventually dropped it from their campaigns when America swung so far to the right.
The solution is…
Don’t manufacture guns with hollow barrels.
Thank you.
I think we best grade the Intelligence Quotient on the curve with this group…
#54 Actually, the facts are not controversial. All reputable research on access to guns in the U.S. confirms:
You are correct, the facts are not controversial.
Myth: The availability of guns causes crime
Fact: Though the number of firearms owned by private citizens has been increasing steadily since 1970, the overall rate of homicides and suicides has not risen.
Fact: Most gun-related crime is caused by gang activity. These organized bands of criminals commit many crimes, and guns are tools they use.
The mere presence of a gun in a setting increases the probability it will be used to cause injury or death.
Fact: 90% of all violent crimes in the U.S. do not involve firearms of any type.
Fact: Even in crimes where the offender possessed a gun during the commission of the crime, 83% did not use or even threaten to use the gun.
Fact: Less than 1% of firearms will ever be used in the commission of a crime (much less a violent crime).
Fact: Two-thirds of the people who die each year from gunfire are criminals being shot by other criminals.
Myth: Private ownership of guns is not effective in preventing crime.
Fact: Every year, people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times – more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds. Of these instances, 15.6% of the people using a firearm defensively stated that they “almost certainly” saved their lives by doing so.
This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
Fact: In 83.5% (2,087,500) of these successful gun defenses, the attacker either threatened or used force first, proving that guns are very well suited for self-defense.
Fact: Of the 2,500,000 times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, 92% merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers.
Fact: Less than 8% of the time does a citizen wound his or her attacker.
Fact: For every accidental death, suicide or homicide with a firearm, 10 lives are saved through defensive use.
Fact: When using guns in self-defense:
• 83% of robbery victims were not injured
• 88% of assault victims were not hurt
• 76% of all self-defense use of guns never involve firing a single shot
Fact: After the implementation of Canada’s 1977 gun controls prohibiting handgun possession for protection, the “breaking and entering” crime rate rose 25%, surpassing the American rate.
However, a continuous campaign against smoking eventually yielded results. That gives me hope that sensible laws about access to guns will eventually prevail
Sensible Laws?
“If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves” Joseph Stalin
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20- millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.” Adolf Hitler
In 1938 Germany did establish gun control. From 1939 to 1945 over 13-million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, union leaders, Catholics and others, unable to fire a shot in protest, were rounded up and killed.
The fact is over 56-million people have died because of gun control in the last century
The only “Sensible Law” is to expunge the books of all the gun control laws for citizens with full rights under the Constitution.
#68, I don’t believe your facts are true. For instance, tell us if your “fact” that “every year, people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times” includes police and other public law enforcers.
Truth is
People break.
We treat each other poorly.
Nothing we say here can change this morning’s events.
Guns won’t go away without taking something with them.
Knowing someone can take the lives of 33 people by pressing a button 33 times seems heinous to most people, including myself.
No, guns should be illegal. It would work. Drugs are illegal and they’re impossible to get.
#69 Your “beliefs” are irrelevant.
The figure come from civilian self-defense gun use.
Every year, people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times – more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds. Fall 1995, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
In 1992, Kleck and Gertz conducted a national random-digit-dial survey of five thousand dwelling units, asking detailed questions about self-defense gun use. Their estimates of civilian self-defense gun use range from 1 million to 2.5 million times per year. The 2.5 million figure is the one they believe to be most accurate.
K-G derive their 2.5 million estimate from the fact that 1.33% of the individuals surveyed reported that they themselves used a gun in self-defense during the past year; in other words, about 66 people out of 5000 reported such a use. Extrapolating the 1.33% figure to the entire population of almost 200 million adults gives 2.5 million uses.
More conclusive than “Global Warming” figures.
I am a sophomore here at Virginia Tech and a Resident Advisor for Lee Hall. What happened today was utter madness. I was in class at 9:50 when i first learned anything of the shootings an I was in Hancock hall, which is located next to norris where most of the shootings occurred. VaTech did a poor job of warning us anything was going on. Police with assault rifles came into our classroom at 10am and stood by the door til noon.
#71 BgScryAnml says… “15.6% of the people using a firearm defensively stated that they ‘almost certainly’ saved their lives by doing so.”
I’m glad I wasn’t in a situation where my uncontrollable laughter would be inappropriate when I read that unchallenged bit of information. Quite funny!
“Their estimates of civilian self-defense gun use range from 1 million to 2.5 million times per year. The 2.5 million figure is the one they believe to be most accurate.”
I think I read somewhere that “beliefs” are irrelevant. Oh yeah, that was from your comment 😉
And when a figure of 2.5 million defensive gun uses can be extrapolated from a 5,000 dwelling telephone survey, my skepticism grows by leaps and bounds. Haven’t you heard that over 81% of all gun owners are willing to lie in order to justify their ownership of a firearm? Not to mention the fact that self-selection of those people willing to participate in a detailed and time consuming telephone survey could further skew the results.
Statistics can be almost as irrelevant as the beliefs you so handily dismiss, but at least they’re entertaining 😉
I would be happy if the gun wackos would stop pretending there was some virtue in gun ownership. It is just a tool, duh.
Also, it is insane to think that there is any serious effort to eliminate guns from american society. There have been a few minimal efforts to regulate them. Nothing like prohibition was ever even considered, not even once.
And insane people shouldnt have guns. Period.
No matter what you gun lovers say… easy access to weapons allowed this guy to get two and massacre a bunch of people.
Easy access to a car allows me to go for a joy ride on a busy sidewalk too.
#54, 56, I challenge you to show any evidence that owning a gun has any effect on the likeliness of somebody committing suicide. People who would kill themselves choose any number of ways to accomplish their goal, and sadly yes, guns are one of them because of the relatively instant death. So, claiming that me owning a handgun increases the risk that I will commit suicide is complete nonsense. But a statement like that does show an increased likeliness that you are an idiot.
Guns probably cause more suicides, since it makes the suicide easier. However, I would say the effect is veryh small.
As for gun ownership making you more likely to die, that’s true. This is because people who own guns are more likely to have needed protection, so they were more at risk to begin with, even without the gun. The gun didn’t cause the higher risk, it is just a correlation factor.
In terms of accidental deaths, it’s far more dangerous to have a swimming pool in your home, than a gun.
Virginia Tech has already studied what went wrong and have taken measures to see that this can never happen again.
New signs have been ordered:
NO GUNS ALLOWED ON CAMPUS!
WE REALLY MEAN IT!!
Failure to obey will result in a suspension of your
parking privileges and a hold on your transcripts.
#80, the gun may be an enabler, but you cannot show that owning one causes anybody to want to kill himself.
The police cannot protect you. The government cannot protect you. This is so blatantly obvious in the wake of Katrina and incidents such as this. Individuals need to take responsibility for their own and their families protection. Sitting in a room and waiting for the Police is not the answer. They may or may not intervene, depending on the situation. I will not put my faith in the hope that I will be saved.
#56
Frankly, I’ll risk a higher rate of suicide in the interest of providing protection for myself and my family as well as a threat to the government. An armed citizenry makes a big difference in terms of governmental oppression (See Iraq). While one armed citizen makes no difference, hundreds of thousands of armed citizens most definitely makes a difference.
IMO, the mistake that has been made in the US is not requiring gun training and preferrably ownership. If everyone owned guns we’d be safer. If no one, including the police and military, owned guns we’d be safer. But being in between is the worst place.
BTW, I notice that I don’t hear any people calling for banning “assault handguns” (a term which is a vacuous as “assault rifle”.) since this guy did this with two 9MM handguns.
Pardon, the second weapon was a 22MM handgun.
My wife asked me how someone could kill so many people so quickly and they were talking about automatic weapons on TV. I explained to her that it would be just as easy to do it with revolvers based on the audio I heard of the shootings.
steve
Thomas –
I think you mean “.22 caliber” (expressed as a fraction of an inch), which is the same as 5.56 mm. 9 mm is the same as .357 caliber.
“22 mm” would be almost an inch, which is almost twice as big as the biggest pistols.
#57 – rofl!! nice diatribe!
I’ll admit the caps got on my nerves, just a lil bit 🙂
#75, thanks for that sensible response to #68 Gary. BgScryAnml’s statistics are just nonsense propaganda from the NRA… and his religious gene has activated in response. The NRA is all-knowing and merciful.
JimR, it just shows what an equal-opportunity arguer I am. I can even have a good time dismantling the “supporting evidence” of someone who ends up at a similar position as I have. Statistics are just good clean fun for everyone!