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.
If 9/11 was an inside job to make the case for war, then I think it’s reasonable to conclude the shooting was really done to make the case for gun control. Happening just hours from DC, I think we need to investigate the Senators’ staffs.
#87
Pardon, yes .22 caliber. Typing too quickly.
From a blog that sums it all for you, gun-lovers. Screw you and your guns. I will do my best to support taking them away from you and like you.
“Virginia Is For Lovers?
We often get letters from readers that chide us for edging into politics instead of sticking to science and technology coverage.
But misuse of technology needs some mention. Everyone has read today’s headlines.
This 2005 report card for Virginia from the Brady Campaign is disturbing, particularly because the state has no limit on assault weapons, no background checks at gun shows, no limits on Saturday Night specials, no requirement for handgun licensing, no safety training, no waiting period, and cities do not have the authority to hold gun manufacturers legally liable.
What’s most disturbing is that 32 states registered worse scores than Virginia.
Is there something wrong with this picture?”
Gary Marks, you do see the fallacy in your reasoning though you are too stubborn to apply it. Citizens simply are incapable of overthrowing the government even if they have personal arsentals. The government will invariably have bigger and better weapons. What we must do is reform wrong government policies by stopping them before a revolution is needed. Unfortunately, that takes convincing our fellow citizens. As we can see with the reelection of George Bush, that can be a seemingly insurmountable burden.
Greg Allen, there will, briefly, be talk of enhanced gun control, but, with considerable help from the NRA, the issue will fade away before the next election. That always happens after these tragedies.
Thomas, all that would be accomplished if more people carried guns is more shootings. The research shows that the mere presence of a gun escalates conflict. If every verbal dispute that occurs in America daily was ‘settled’ with guns, we would reduce our population by at least ten percent in just one year. The claim that mandatory arming of the citizenry is a good idea is one of the most foolish the gun lobby makes.
Virginia Tech student, you have my deepest sympathy. But, I don;t think the police were negligent in their initiat investigation of what appeared to be a domestic shooting. It may be true that information that the shooting had occurred should have been communicated sooner, But, that likely would not have stopped a man living out his own wild, wild west fantasy.
Oops! I failed to respond to Mike since I usually ignore wingnuts. But, for others interested in the topic, I cited the Harvard University study that is the latest proof of the link between access to guns and committing suicide in my first comment on this thread. This is a fact, not my personal opinion. The link between access to a gun and commission of suicide has been proven by experts in the field. (Not that it takes an expert to understand why the availability of a lethal weapon would exacerbate conflict, including conflict with oneself.)
Here’s the link again for people who want to read a summary of the study:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518133
Podesta- one thing missing from your argument, and the most important thing is, You assume that 100% of the military would turn its guns inward. I dont think so. There would be insurrection among the troops. As well as law enforcement personnel. This is why Americans (including the military) need to be educated that this government, at this time, does NOT have their best interest in mind. That they are being used. How many of the troops in Iraq do you think hear about the deplorable conditions of their fellow fallen brethren in VA Hospitals back home? And what would they think if they knew the truth. I dont think the majority would support this corrupt regime.
75 I didn’t say beliefs are irrelevant, what was stated is Your “beliefs” are irrelevant
81% of all gun owners are willing to lie in order to justify their ownership of a firearm
True, but did you know this figure is only relative in blue states.
Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Let’s get back to a pre FDR Republic.
#94
> Citizens simply are incapable of overthrowing the
> government even if they have personal arsentals.
Disagree. A hundred million unhappy, armed people could not be suppressed by any military we have yet seen US or otherwise on this planet. Suppressing an armed populace is orders of magnitude more difficult than suppressing an unarmed one. Furthermore, you do not need to eliminate every person in the military in order to overthrow a government.
> The research shows that the mere presence of a gun escalates conflict.
Firstly, Switzerland is a good example that runs contrary to your statement. Everyone is Switzerland is trained and armed and yet they have an almost non-existent rate of gun violence.
Second, you keep thinking that correlation implies causation. By your logic, we could safely say that the mere presence of automobiles causes accidents and the presence of coroners causes deaths. Poverty and poor upbringing are far better links to violence than gun ownership.
> If every verbal dispute that occurs in America daily was
> ’settled’ with guns, we would reduce our population by at
> least ten percent in just one year.
I suggest that you go back and read more about the daily lives of our pioneer forefathers. Almost everyone in the west was armed and yet we did not lose anywhere near 10% to gun deaths and that era is considered far less “civilized” than today.
Mark, the American military, which in its current incarnation recruits heavily from the South and relatively low in regard to educational attainment, tends be more conservative than the general public. Also, people in the military have a dependency relationship with the government. I don’t foresee many of them turning against it. If they did, they would support a Right Wing revolution. Remember that was veteran Timothy McVeigh’s goal.
Then there is the matter of information. According to a new Pew survey, from a quarter to a third of the population does not even know who the president, vice president and/or the governor of their state ais. How can anyone mobilize such people for anything other than the status quo?
Thomas, you might want to spend less time on the Net and sign up for history classes at a local college. You apparently have a head full of myths that you mistake for historical reality. Foremost among them is the myth of the wild, wild West. T’aint so. Never was. Truth of the matter is that almost everyone in the West was a gunman farmer. Despite what you learned from “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza,” a lot more hoes were being wielded than guns.
Nor are you correct about Switzerland and gun access. You are confusing having people completing military service storing their guns and ammunition at home with mandatorily armed citizenry walking around. There is a huge difference between the two. Gun permits are issued only to persons who have a work-related need for them in Switzerland. The overwhelming majority of the citizenry is not armed. Furthermore, the Swiss are considering having militia arms and ammo stored in armories in the future:
Here’s the link to the article:
http://tinyurl.com/yowwro
Guns do have a causal role in violent crime because they are inherently dangerous. The dispute that would have ended with one party walking away or a fistfight ends with someone maimed or dead because an inherently dangerous weapon is at hand and gets used. But for improvements in treating trauma, the death toll attributable to shooings would be even higher than it is. The other factor that distinguishes guns is that they don’t serve some workaday purpose like a knife or a car. The person who possesses one has made a decision that violence is acceptable though he may not realize that. He also ignores the fact that the person most likely to hurt or killed by his gun is not a stranger, but himself, a family member or a friend.
I’ve heard there was a bunch of talk about “anti-women and anti-rich-kids” in the shooters suicide note. Given the RAW ELITIST CLASSISM and SEXIST MAN HATING FEMINISM i’ve seen first hand on american campuse i’d have to wonder if social factors had more to do with this than gun control laws.
Truth is a firearm like anything else of this nature is a 100% NEUTRAL item with no mind or will of its own. How its used is totally upto the user.
Its easy to put the blame on an inanimate object such-as the weapon and not face reality but honestly for my own reasons? I’d like to know more about the shooter himself and what was going on with him, Ya’know it takes alot to push a person to do something like this.
My only complaint with whackos is they don’t pick their targets well. Go after overpaid CEOs and ranking executives at publicly-owned companies, and/or politicians — but leave the kids alone!
Podesta- as a veteran I can only speak from experience. The average enlisted man has no love for his command, or his president, and if asked to turn against his own people, I know myself, and the men I served with would not. We swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC. Think about it.
Podesta, well said! 😉
Need I point out that a “gunman farmer” is still a gun owner. Furthermore, if the “wild, wild , west” is one where most people were “gunman farmers” then we should have seen a very high rate of suicide and yet we do not.
RE: Switzerland
You attempted to claim that the “presence of guns” correlates to high suicide rates. Switzerland has one of, if not the, highest per capita gun ownership in the world and yet France, a country with far tighter gun control laws has a higher suicide rate. The claim that the “presence of guns” leads to suicide is thoroughly quashed IMO. Oh, by the way, it is perfectly legal to carry firearms in Switzerland if you obtain a permit much like many major US cities.
So, after that, you attempted to weasel out of that by claiming that the Swiss have more training which simply brings us full circle. If Americans were required to own guns in a similar fashion to that of the Swiss which would include training, perhaps even military training, we would have far fewer accidents. In addition, if all or most Americans were carrying firearms, incidents like the one at VT would have result in fewer (i.e. not zero) deaths.
> Guns do have a causal role in violent
> crime because they are inherently dangerous.
So do cars, chain saws, and electricity. Guns do not *cause* violent crime. People commit crime. You cannot convict guns of criminal behavior. Gun control advocates simply never get that guns are tools that can be used for good or ill just as knives. There is no evidence that the people that commit violent crimes with guns would not have done so with some other weapon. You can make weapons that are orders of magnitude more dangerous than firearms using products you buy at the grocery store.
> The other factor that distinguishes guns is that they don’t
> serve some workaday purpose like a knife or a car.
Protection and deterrence; that is their daily purpose.
> The person who possesses one has made a decision that
> violence is acceptable though he may not realize that
The assumption is that when a person carrying a firearm is forced to use it, that their opponent has already determined violence is acceptable and that criminal does realize it.
> He also ignores the fact that the person most likely to
> hurt or killed by his gun is not a stranger, but himself, a
> family member or a friend.
Bullshit. Far more people are shot by intentional fire than accidental fire. If fear of shooting oneself was really the concern, then mandatory training would solve that problem.
We swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC. Think about it.
Thanks, 102, mark. Of course, as post #105, this will never be read.
This is not fiction or a bad scene out of the movies. You don’t get that second chance to save the hostages in this. Where “Superman” or whatever your ideal hero maybe comes in and detours the unimaginable tragedy to come. You had a couple of chances to somehow interupt this. If not prevent it. But we as good and lawabiding society didn’t see it that way.
We failed them because of the simple ‘right to bear arms’. We make it so available to buy a handgun,so easy. The same law the applies to those that want to do us harm.
We failed because the same society that said report any suspicious behavior to the authorities. Didn’t listen or failed to act on it because “there was no crime commited”. How many times have we heard that response from the authorities?
This sick kid’s tutor try to tell the police that he had posed sucidal tendencies in his writings. Yet no one acted.
How can we as a society feel good about our protection on the next bad, god forbid, tragedy if no one is truely listening. What good would it do now to yell out ” the Brittish are Comming,the Brittish are Comming” when no one is listening. I wouldn’t be suprised to hear the response. Well we can’t do anything because ‘there was no crime committed’.
We had our slime chance with the English tutor. Give her a lot of credit she tried to prevent this. Good gun laws belong in the hands of the good honest, law abiding people that want to protect and not harm.
105. Bubba, at least someone gets it. Good enough for me.
Thomas, what exactly are you proposing? What scenario can you offer that would have prevented or reduced the death count at Virginia Tech?
I hate it when people tend to play the “blame game” But come on, 2 hours in-between? The students should have been notified and something should have been done. It infuriates me that while watching the news last night a father of a victim was informed that his daughter was dead, not by VT but by a family friend and fellow student! Not to mention All the warning signs were there, I mean how much louder did the psycho need to shout I NEED HELP, I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE! I just pray that a grave lesson was learned if nothing else, and I also pray that the Lord gives the family and friends of the victims the strength they’ll need to go threw what is about to come. I believe this could have not only Never happened but at least stopped after the killing of that beautiful girl and that wonderfully handsome smile of that man. May God bless us all, I hate to admit but this world is getting worse. We need to reach for the Lord above for guidance and protection, obviously we can’t leave it up to the staff of these schools to protect they’re students, May God bless all!
#111
Certainly having psychiatrists examine the guy in question, prior to the incident, when associates noticed that he appeared suicidal or homicidal would have been by the far the best medicine. In general, it is easy to solve problems if you catch them early.
Barring that, had the faculty at least been armed (and trained) by requirement, it is possible that he might not have done as much harm as he did.
The fact of the matter is that firearms are never going to be entirely eradicated. Education and information, as always, is the best solution. I would much prefer that people were required to be trained to use, respect and if properly requested, carry firearms (even college students) rather than the current situation where the only experience the current population have with firearms is through video games and bad movies. If people were required to attend a thorough, comprehensive course (or set of courses) in the proper handling and use of firearms it would reduce accidental death and improve people’s disposition towards allowing the carrying of firearms and that might have made a difference at VT.
Both the conservatives and liberals have it wrong with respect to firearms. We should neither ban firearms nor allow any person to carrying them. The balance comes in ensuring that the people that do carry firearms are sufficiently trained and that training should not be limited to just police and military.
First time I got back to this thread and I noticed a typo in my most recent comment above. I meant to strike out the word gunman in this phrase, as sort of a wink.
Christy has it right.. the guy was being pushed in some way.. his actions were screaming for help and since the dawn of time junk like this has been going on way before firearms..
Say he was sick, say he was evil, say he was crazy, whatever? I wont say he wasnt but if this is the case and people knew? Than why were they pushing him and making things worse?
Im sorry but I live in the real world and I think theres alot more to it than the “He was born crazy and killed everyon”, “guns are evil!”, or simple black and white issues.
Also Gregs is up there talking about good law abiding people but the shooter WAS A GOOD LAW ABIDING CITIZEN until things started to break down and he went crazy *for-what-ever-reason*
#114
You really don’t get it do you? You live in the “everyone sits around the campfire singing kumbayah” school of thinking. The simple fact of the matter is that if there were other people carrying guns, for which they too were trained when this guy went on his rampage, it is very likely that fewer people would have died. That is the cold hard fact. Everything else is dancing around how we empower more people, responsibly to own and use guns properly.
> You could have your own personal arsenal and still become a
> victim of violence
Or, as in the case of every student now in a body bag, you could have nothing have still be a victim of violence. At least if you are armed, you have a chance.
ya know what? ban guns and u wont have this stupid fuk wits goin around shooting people! simple as that!!! i live in Australia and this shit doesn’t happen here, and why? “NO GUN POLICY”. Guns aree not for sale to anyone here. Another thing too is America is fuked and the government and its people are to blame. They are all too scared to stand up. Either that or America is just a bunch of rampage assholes that don’t really think much of human life. Thats all i have to say!!!
For Thomas and Podesta:
I want to point out there was a school shooting at ASL in Grundy Virginia (not far from Blacksburg) back in 2002 and it was RESOLVED by ARMED students before the gun-man was able to kill to many people and go on a spree … Bottom line here gun or not the best defence against another armed person is being armed yourself.
I live in Oakwood Va, about 30minutes from ASL and 1:30ish from VTECH depending on how you drive im also a ARMED SECURITY OFFICER and i’ve been a card carrying member of the Department of Criminal Justice for over half-a-decade so take thats for what its worth …. Either way two shootings this close to home is weird …. Im going to visit the VTECH campus in a few weeks for my own reasons.
Can I throw in that old wind-up about sexual repression leading to gun fetishism?
No?
Oh well, I’ll do it the next time. I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long…