32 Killed in Virginia Tech Shootings, At Least 24 Injured

[zeroguy]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

So far, I've been able to contact two people I know there, both are fine. Names have not yet been released, however.

[Yebra]

The Virginia Tech's News site's coverage.

Just....blank.

[steph]

Wow. We went to the store, then took a nap, and this is what I wake up to. Just WOW! I don't even know what to say.

[Wil]

GG



... really. Asians always do it right.

[LilBee91]

I heard about this at the beginning of 3rd period. And then we watched a documentary about bullying. Suffice it to say, I've been depressed since. It's just...awful.

[anonshadow]

Jesus.

[Eaquae Legit]

Current number of dead is 33. This is just... awful. Words fail me.

[Virlomi]

Half of the people I knew from highschool ended up going to V Tech. I can't get ahold of some of them. I don't even know how to feel right now.

This is just so close to home for me.

[peterlocke123]

One of my friends who graduated last year goes there. Luckily, we've heard from him and he's fine. That's just a horrible feeling when you don't know if they're still alive.

[daPyr0x]

wait for the lobby groups to chime in

oh no it's videogames' fault
it's marilyn manson and other "angry" music's fault
it's the governments fault for not being in more control of weapons in the country
it's the parents' fault for not ________


I feel extremely sorry for anyone who is at all close to anyone involved in the incident. All of my deepest condolences go to them and stay with them until they start arguing about whose fault it was.

[wizzard]

It's already happened, Dap. I was watching CNN last night, less than 12 hours after the news initially broke, and they were already pointing fingers. There were clear accusations at videogames, gun control, and campus security, as well as some implications in other directions.


My thoughts and prayers are with everyone at VT, and the friends and families of the victims.

[Boothby]

I hope all of you who have people there get good news, soon.

Already there are people saying how this is a problem with both TOO MUCH and TOO LITTLE gun control!

Within an hour or two, Muslims were already being accused in the various blogs and news comments on-line. (It's still unclear, but still--how ridiculous!)

[Ela]

Very sad and upsetting situation.

[Rei]

Already there are people saying how this is a problem with both TOO MUCH and TOO LITTLE gun control!

The first article I read, when the count was still onl 24, had a quote from Bush about the right to bear arms regarding this incident.

Either way, it is a very tragic thing no matter what contributing causes may or may not have led to it.

[Slim]

[hive_king]

GG



... really. Asians always do it right.

Not funny, wil. Not the time nor the place for joking about it.

[fawkes]

I heard someone say this was the worst shooting since Columbine. That's not true. Anytime anyone is shot and killed in a place that is supposed to be safe is unbearable.

[hive_king]

Not to mention, this permanently scars a community. I used to live in Marysville, CA where we had a school schooting at Lindhurst High in 1992. I was too young to remember it, but there are still people in that town permanently scarred by the shootings. I can only imagine what the community at blacksburg is going through.

[Sparrowhawk]

GG



... really. Asians always do it right.

Not funny, wil. Not the time nor the place for joking about it.

When/where will it be funny?

Your statement centers around the uniquely internet axiom "too soon." It is basically an attempt to play thought police without seeming uncool, a wishy-washy middle ground that seems to say "hey, I'm as up for dark comedy as anyone, but this is inappropriate at this time." In other words, the speaker is alleging that whatever it is that offended him will somehow magically become funny and not offensive with age, perhaps with further fermentation.

[Sparrowhawk]

Interesting aside, the last campus shooting in VA was stopped by two armed students. Much is being made (and is about to be made) about VA's lax gun laws and the ease of acquiring a firearm there.[/url]

[Hegemon]

Personally, I think that the whining about gun control laws is asinine.

The people we don't want to have guns are the ones who are going to use them to kill. If they're willing to kill, do you really think that they give a damn about gun control laws? Do people think that they figure, "well, I might be able to kill someone, but I cannot even fathom the horror involved in breaking a gun control law."

The only people that the gun control laws prevent from having guns are law abiding citizens. Citizens who probably should be packing heat to shoot nutcases like this with.

[zeroguy]

wait for the lobby groups to chime in

oh no it's videogames' fault

I believe I heard Jack Thompson saying that he's sure that we will find Counterstrike on the gunman's computer, a few hours after the news broke. (Related Slashdot comment: "Do I get a prize if I predict he has Microsoft Word on his computer, too?")

The people we don't want to have guns are the ones who are going to use them to kill. If they're willing to kill, do you really think that they give a damn about gun control laws? Do people think that they figure, "well, I might be able to kill someone, but I cannot even fathom the horror involved in breaking a gun control law."

I really don't want to be arguing about this -- especially now -- but... crimes of passion....

[jotabe]

Apparently, the guy posted in 4chan that he was going to "kill people in vtech" the previous day.
For those of you who don't know, 4chan is a message board where all the stupidity of internet converges, and i advice you not to go check it...

An online friend of mine was apparently checking 4chan at the same time this guy posted his threat. Just that he was like a thousand miles away from that place. He is also an university student, and not in the best terms with police after he shouted at an officer for an speeding ticket.
All this circumstances made of him an obvious suspect, and an FBI agent went to him for questioning.
Sadly i had to go offline shortly after he did, but he was quite worried. Specially since there are rumours to consider these killings as a terrorist attack, and since the general attorney had said that the habeas corpus isn't granted in the Constitution.

[Hegemon]

To have the kinda ammo and weapons you need to go and shoot up a school, likely not a crime of passion... And if someone is in a state to commit a crime of passion, they'll probably use a knife or a baseball bat if nothing else is handy.

[Sparrowhawk]

To have the kinda ammo and weapons you need to go and shoot up a school, likely not a crime of passion... And if someone is in a state to commit a crime of passion, they'll probably use a knife or a baseball bat if nothing else is handy.

From all appearances, this instance isn't a "crime of passion" anyways. The dude was lurking around, writing psychotic stories, scouting locations, taking pictures of potential victims. He was planning this. Even if laws in VA had prevented him from legally obtaining a weapon completely, someone taking the time to plan out a massacre is going to procure a weapon regardless of the law.

[Sparrowhawk]

Excuse the double post, but hey - it's 3am, who else is going to posts?

I think of the gun-prohibition lobbies as no different than any other prohibition activists; prohibition is a ridiculously awful way of trying to change people's behavior, whether it's aimed at guns, drugs, alchohol, whatever. Looking at history, did the Japanese feudal era policy of forbidding all but samurai the use of swords prevent non-samurai from violence? Of course not. In fact, just like alcohol-prohibition in the states birthed and bred the rise of gangsters, sword-prohibition fueled the rise of shadow arts using non-sword weapons with the same effect. Just like drug prohibition fuels powerful gangs raking in drug profits. The same way that gun prohibition in countries implementing it fuels other weapon-related murders and other crimes. I hate to turn this into a debate (oh hell, you know that's a lie) about gun/other substance control, but a recent entry in Reason.com seemed related:

There's a broader philosophical point regarding whether or not using the law to curb private behavior is a moral and appropriate use of government coercion, but let's put that aside for a moment. The inevitable rise in use that would follow legalization (note: I extrapolate this into any legalization, be it drugs or gun ownership) is a point proponents of drug prohibition often fault drug war critics for not acknowledging, though I really don't know of any critics who don't willingly concede the point.

The more appropriate response to "more users" argument is "so what?" A slight rise in the number of recreational drug users is only a problem if you believe that there's something inherently immoral and destructive about smoking a joint or snorting a line of coke--any worse, say, than downing a shot of whiskey or a taking drag off a tobacco pipe. The subset of people who refrain from drug use today out of respect for the law, but who might experiment with drugs should they one day be legal, probably isn't one we need to worry about becoming addicted in mass numbers, or committing crimes to support their habit (which probably wouldn't happen anyway if drugs were legal--how many alcoholics mug, burgle, or kill for gin money?). Unless you buy the "gateway" theory of marijuana, or the "instant addiction" theory about cocaine, both of which have zero scientific validity, I'm just not sure having slightly more overall users will have much of a negative impact on society at large.

The same can be said for gun prohibition. It goes on to hit the nail on the head regarding the motives of activists: "{they} insist alcohol prohibition was a success because it reduced alcohol consumption. This assertion itself is debatable (see Jeff Miron's terrific research on the subject). But even assuming they're right, this line of argument is revealing. To call alcohol prohibition a "success," one would have to consider overall consumption of alcohol in America the only relevant criteria. You'd have to ignore the precipitous rise in homicides and other violent crime; the rise in hospitalizations due to alcohol poisoning; the number of people blinded or killed by drinking toxic, black market gin; the corrupting influence on government officials, from beat cops to the halls of congress to Harding's attorney general; and the erosion of the rule of law.

Of course, the 18th Amendment was passed because prohibitionists convinced the country that Prohibition would alleviate many of these problems. But once prohibition was in place--and still today among its defenders--it became not about externalities, but about preventing people from drinking as an end, indeed the only end. If it did that, it was successful. Never mind that it was exacerbating the very justifications for its enactment."

And of course, despite evidence to the contrary, those in favor of more stringent regulations on all kinds of items carry the banner of prohibition in spirit. They triumphantly proclaimed recently that "Reductions in illicit drug use among 8th and 10th graders exceeded the President's goal, falling 30 and 26 percent since 2001, respectively. "There has been a substance abuse sea change among American teens," Drug Czar John Walters said in the release. "They are getting the message that dangerous drugs damage their lives and limit their futures. We know that if people don't start using drugs during their teen years, they are very unlikely to go on to develop drug problems later in life." When in fact, the CDC reported that deaths from drug overdoses rose nearly 70 percent over the last five years. Half the overdose deaths were attributable to cocaine, heroin, and prescription drugs. The number of overdose deaths caused by marijuana--the drug most targeted by the ONDCP--remained at zero. And among the biggest increases (113%) were those aged 15-42, those same teenagers the ONDCP was celebrating in its prior press release.

It finishes with what would seem really funny, if it weren't so painfully true:

"Prohibition advocates are again measuring success not on how well the drug war (see: war on guns) is preventing real, tangible harm, but simply on how effectively they're preventing people from getting high (see: owning guns).

And of course overdoses are only one aspect of the harm done by the drug war. There is also the appalling rate of incarceration in America, the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, the erosion of the rule of law, the government infringement on the doctor-patient relationship, the contempt for property rights, the arrest of promising developments in the treatment of pain --the list goes on.

Nevertheless, so long as there are fewer joints in teen backpacks, the drug warriors are content to say we're "winning."

Some interesting statistics:
Concealed Weapons
* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:

* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their rate of murder by 8.5%, rape by 5%, aggravated assault by 7% and robbery by 3%;29 and

* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.30


Usefulness in cases of rape
* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando’s rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.40

* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.41

More guns less crime?
In the decade of the 1990s, the number of guns in this country increased by roughly 40 million—even while the murder rate decreased by almost 40% percent.7 Accidental gun deaths in the home decreased by almost 40 percent as well.8

* CDC admits there is no evidence that gun control reduces crime. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has long been criticized for propagating questionable studies which gun control organizations have used in defense of their cause. But after analyzing 51 studies in 2003, the CDC concluded that the "evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these [firearms] laws."

TOKYO -- When Nagasaki's mayor was fatally shot in southern Japan, it wasn't much of a surprise that a gangster was arrested for the attack. In a country where regular citizens face strict gun laws, the mob does most of the shooting.

Handguns are strictly banned for ordinary citizens in Japan, and only police officers and others _ such as shooting instructors _ with job-related reasons can own them. Hunting rifles are also strictly licensed and regulated.

Crime syndicates, however, have the money, numbers and international connections that enable them to smuggle foreign guns into Japan.

"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters." - Sammy "The Bull" Gravano

"When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." - Common Sense

[anonshadow]

This moment to say that two things annoy me about coverage of this:

1) That people act like this is somehow news. Yes, it could happen. You should have known this. Anything can happen. This shouldn't be a shocker.

2) This is just yet another reminder that, who cares about anyone in some other country? And, for that matter, who cares about doing anything that involves more than praying? How many of these people who are "so deeply affected" by this sent aid to New Orleans after Katrina? Why don't they give a f*** about people dying elsewhere in the world, and on our own f****** streets?

No. By all means, mourn the dead students. But f*** the people being kept in poverty by a corrupt system of government. Changing that? Would actually involve doing something.

/pissy


That's not to say it's not sad these kids died. But why is it somehow sadder than the Iraqis who die every die?

[Virlomi]

The problem I have with that argument, Elena, is that something doesn't just become less saddening and unjust because there are other saddening and unjust things going on. No one here is saying that those things are less worthy of our attention, and, as far as I know, no one has a limited supply of grief. So yes, there are horrible and unjust things happening. And yes, some of them could be considered more unjust and horrible, if those are really quantifiable things at all. But for goodness sake, we're allowed to give this our attention for a minute without being reminded how selfish we are for caring about it.

And yes, it's true, things that are somehow closer to home feel more real somehow, and we're struck harder by them. Granted. Grief isn't really rational. 9/11 was another instance, for example, of Americans grieving passionately over a situation that, while horrible and traumatizing, was quantitatively less devastating than events which happen over seas every day. But then, as someone who has spoken many times about how traumatically that event effected you because it was literally close to home for you, I would've thought you of all people would understand that.

[anonshadow]

No, but I think it says something bad about Americans that they only care about this. I'm not arguing about giving a moment or two to grief, and I do understand mourning. The people at VT and who lost someone are probably mourning their hearts out, and I can understand that.

But it isn't a f****** circus act, which is what everyone is turning it into. The sensationalization of it on CNN and Fox and s***? What the f*** is that about? That's not respectful. It's disgusting.

[zeroguy]

From all appearances, this instance isn't a "crime of passion" anyways.

It's not. Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that it was; I was talking about murders in general.

[Hegemon]

Now the news is packed with stuff about the package he sent to NBC about his motives and whatnot. As far as I can tell, it is just a compilation of goofy pics and confused, incoherent rantings. I really wish he had at least taken the time to come up with letter or something that actually made some sense and explained his problems... and then perhaps made the incoherent video...

[Sparrowhawk]

Everyone's going to make a huge deal about those things, because they are under the impression that there's someone/something to blame. They believe that if they scrutinize every insignificant detail of the individual's life (and especially his last messages prior to his actions) they'll find some kind of reasoning for the rampage, and, in their little fantasy, the magic bullet to stop this kind of thing before it happens. Kleibold, Harris, this Asian dude - same story, different day. "Reasoning" is irrelevant with people who are completely unreasonable - and I'm pretty sure violent random murderous rampages are unreasonable. Just another day in the cycle. Didn't three Christian Bible distributors just get their throats slit in Turkey yesterday? You'd have had this same discussion about that incident if it wasn't overshadowed by the larger body count of the VA situation. Kind of ironic that, even without guns, people get killed huh?

[Young Val]

Now the news is packed with stuff about the package he sent to NBC about his motives and whatnot. As far as I can tell, it is just a compilation of goofy pics and confused, incoherent rantings. I really wish he had at least taken the time to come up with letter or something that actually made some sense and explained his problems... and then perhaps made the incoherent video...

the family i sit for works for NBC and i had to work late last night cause of that package.

[anonshadow]

Everyone's going to make a huge deal about those things, because they are under the impression that there's someone/something to blame. They believe that if they scrutinize every insignificant detail of the individual's life (and especially his last messages prior to his actions) they'll find some kind of reasoning for the rampage, and, in their little fantasy, the magic bullet to stop this kind of thing before it happens.

My friend and I were briefly ranting about this last night. The fact that he wrote a f****** up play and didn't talk to people doesn't actually mean that we should go around caging everyone who writes f****** up plays or books or is a little antisocial. This stuff sometimes just happens, and we need to stop decieving ourselves into thinking that we seriously have the power to change it.

The dissection of all of this is actually something I rant about a lot when it comes to literature (and my cousin, who is an artist, rants about when it comes to art). Sometimes, the author gives a character blue eyes for the simple reason that they want the character to have blue eyes. The blue eyes do not mean that the author was abused as a child, was in love with his mother, or was basing the character on a best friend (who he inevitably had repressed sexual desires for). They sometimes just mean that a character has blue eyes. The same is true for paintings; no, the artist does not usually think out every single spot they're going to put on a painting and find some symbolism in it.

[jotabe]

Don't mistake them, Sparrowhawk.
The guys from Columbine were victims of bullying. For some people, there is only so much abuse you can take until you snap. The guy from VTech was apparently snapped from the start.
What happened in Columbine could have been avoided, only if teachers weren't so lenient with bullying. What happened in Virginia probably couldn't have been avoided... people of age who is mental can only be forced to treatment after they prove themselves a threat.

Btw, killing without guns is a lot harder than with guns. And they are lot more difficult to overpower: 1, 2 or 3 people can overcome a person with a knife, but to overcome a person with a gun, you need to get close enough. Matter of speed and range: guns can kill a lot faster, at longer distances, and more accurately than knives. In Spain, mass-killings commited by people with firearms (usually (ex-)policemen, (ex-)soldiers and hunters) produce more victimes than mass-killings commited by people using knives or swords.