32 Killed in Virginia Tech Shootings, At Least 24 Injured

[Hegemon]

Jota, I agree that it is easier to kill someone when you're using a gun, but the thing is that these sprees tend to have some sort of planning involved. When there is planning, it doesn't matter if guns are legal or not, because regardless of the legality of them, they can be obtained.

[jotabe]

Even though that's true, if firearms are banned altogether, even for petty criminals is really hard to get them. One of the best examples can be how our local terrorist group ETA had to cross the border to France, go to a police station and steal their stock of guns. They managed to get 40 handguns, and it was a real success for them, because they are so hard to get.

If a relatively wealthy criminal group has to go through so much trouble to get guns, i don't think that just any criminal can get hold of them, except stealing them from police themselves. Most robbers over here use fake or air guns to commit their crimes.

[fawkes]

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.

I live literally blocks away from Columbine. My middle school was locked down when the news came in, and they didn't tell us anything. If you've ever seen "Bowling for Columbine", that's my neighborhood. So, yeah, I kinda get what you're saying there.

[Sparrowhawk]

To Jota: Japan tried to outlaw guns altogether, now only gangsters have guns. The old saying was true, and in fact was not hyperbole.

And, regardless of how you feel about the issue of gun control, the matter is irrelevant in the context of preventing violence, which is (or at least I was under the impression was supposed to be) the goal of such legislation. As mentioned in the other thread, 200 people were (and are) killed by bombs in single days. People who want to kill a lot of people are going to try regardless of the logistics or the materials they have at hand. Most people brought up with the belief that government can actually solve problems tend to think backwards about this, and that removing one kind of weapon from everyone's hands (or trying to) will solve the problem. Not to mention the fact that even in countries where the strictest of gun controls is in place (ala Japan) it doesn't work.

[anonshadow]

I do think that restrictions on guns are important; the extent to which they are necessary is not something I've decided yet.

I certainly think it should be harder for a person who has been hospitalized--involuntarily, at the very least--for some kind of mental illness to obtain a firearm. Yes, if they really, really want one, they can get it, but many won't. (I am aware that this is the case in Virginia, and I am not sure how he obtained a gun. Likely, through a person not all too concerned with the law.) It's giving a lighted fuse a stick of dynamite, and it's not a good idea. It's also a very bad idea to let teens carry guns--their judgement? Not so good.

The other issue I see is that if people begin to carry guns around for protection who cannot use them, the gun could as easily turn a situation deadly as serve a deterrent.

[Sparrowhawk]

I do think that restrictions on guns are important; the extent to which they are necessary is not something I've decided yet.

I certainly think it should be harder for a person who has been hospitalized--involuntarily, at the very least--for some kind of mental illness to obtain a firearm. Yes, if they really, really want one, they can get it, but many won't. (I am aware that this is the case in Virginia, and I am not sure how he obtained a gun. Likely, through a person not all too concerned with the law.) It's giving a lighted fuse a stick of dynamite, and it's not a good idea. It's also a very bad idea to let teens carry guns--their judgement? Not so good.

The other issue I see is that if people begin to carry guns around for protection who cannot use them, the gun could as easily turn a situation deadly as serve a deterrent.

Wait... what? I assume you didn't mean that towards me, because I never advocated that teens could/should carry guns. And as far as preventing mentally unstable people from obtaining them, I'm not sure what we can do. At least, in the case of Cho, the system failed to act on the danger he presented. That's not the fault of a gun seller or a gun manufacturer or even of gun laws. Sure, minors shouldn't own/carry guns, sure mentally unstable people shouldn't own/carry guns, and I don't see anyone saying otherwise, anywhere.

[Sparrowhawk]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories ... _page.html

I don't know how accurate this report is; it's short and I don't see any source anywhere - but according to it, Cho was "diagnosed with autism" at age 8. It would have been useful to know that, probably when he was originally entered into psychiatric care here in the States.

Also.. his grandfather apparently said of Cho; "Son of a bitch. He deserved to die. It's better not to have such a child in the family."

[anonshadow]

Wait... what? I assume you didn't mean that towards me, because I never advocated that teens could/should carry guns. And as far as preventing mentally unstable people from obtaining them, I'm not sure what we can do. At least, in the case of Cho, the system failed to act on the danger he presented. That's not the fault of a gun seller or a gun manufacturer or even of gun laws. Sure, minors shouldn't own/carry guns, sure mentally unstable people shouldn't own/carry guns, and I don't see anyone saying otherwise, anywhere.

No. I was just responding in the general vein of gun control, and where it should apply. (Which is also what I'm doing now. I don't disagree with anything that you're saying.)

It might actually be the fault of the seller in this particular case, though--I though that, in Virginia, it was illegal to sell a gun to someone who had been forcibly institutionalized, and Cho clearly bought the gun in his own name.

Honestly, though, be that as it may, I have trouble really blaming anyone. Yes, some people are irresponsible, and yes, the boy shouldn't have been able to get his hands on a gun, but seriously, now. Hindsight is always perfect.

[anonshadow]

I don't know how accurate this report is; it's short and I don't see any source anywhere - but according to it, Cho was "diagnosed with autism" at age 8. It would have been useful to know that, probably when he was originally entered into psychiatric care here in the States.

Also.. his grandfather apparently said of Cho; "Son of a bitch. He deserved to die. It's better not to have such a child in the family."

Autism. What??? He had a breakdown and was forcibly institutionalized for autism?

Don't buy it.

[Sparrowhawk]

I'm not familiar with VA's gun laws either. I do know that it's relatively easy (at least compared with my home state), and that there was supposedly a background check when Cho bought his weapon (though it was an automatic, minute-long computer check) and I don't know if it would have brought up his institutionalization.

I don't buy his autism diagnoses either, partly because before that allegation I hadn't heard anything like that, nor any symptoms or signs, and partly because autism is kind of a chimera these days, the way ADD/ADHD has been in recent years.

[jotabe]

I can only tell you this, sparrowhawk. I have been (for an extended period) in 4 countries. 3 of them have severe limitations to firearms possession: United Kingdom, Spain, Japan. The 4th considers it a right: United States.
It might be subjective (i know you will say this), but the feeling of safety, the feeling of danger of being victim of an assault/crime/robbery was incomparably higher in the 4th, while in the other 3 i have always felt free to go wherever i liked. This feeling is affected by public behaviour, people attittudes, suspicious activity and news reports.

[Sparrowhawk]

Well, let me tell you this then. I would probably feel anxious and nervous about assault/crime/robbery if I was in a foreign country period. Simply being in a place that is different from your home is always an experience that comes with a little trepidation. That sense of danger was probably higher because you have a certain preconcieved viewpoint of the danger of America (especially for a foreign tourist, a designation that comes with danger regardless of where you are from or where you are going.)

Even though you felt safer in your home country of Spain, Japan and the U.K. than you did in the States, that doesn't mean... well, anything. You felt safer at home because that's natural - so do I. And Japan is well-known for its low-crime rate (besides small-time pickpocketing and whatnot) so it's natural to feel safe there (though it has much more to do with its culture than with its gun laws). As for the U.K., well they actually have a serious crime problem, and your chances of getting assaulted there were most likely higher than they were in the States (of course depending on where in the States and where in the U.K. you were.) Obviously if you were in, say, Detroit, L.A. or similar places, crime is a very real possibility - though that has much more to do with poverty, gangs and drugs than it does with gun law (most crime problems have little to do with gun laws and much more to do with those three). "Feelings" don't mean jack, I hate to break it too you, especially for someone exposed to the highly negative world-view that media outlets portray the States in, particularly in the areas of crime and violence.

[anonshadow]

Not to mention that autism doesn't jive with that kind of behavior? Maybe some kind of mood disorder, but autism?

Edit: In response to your most recent reply to jota--

So f****** true. Look, jota, I live in New York City. I feel less safe when I am anywhere else in the US. The college I will attend this fall is in a more rural environment, and when I have visited it, I have felt less safe than I do walking around the city at 3am. This is because I am comfortable, and I know the area. I am more comfortable on the Lower East Side than I am on the Upper East Side, and guess with one has a significantly higher crime rate? It's all about familiarity.

[jotabe]

I know feelings aren't a rational argument. Still, it's just natural i will defend the laws that make me feel freer and safer.

I am no expert, but in his "final communication" it looks like he believed the world was "out to get him". That screams "paranoia". He was also a depressive person.
Depressive+paranoid? That's a bomb walking.

Edit: Anon, i was under the impression that N.Y. had one of the lowest crime rates of the US... btw, i felt a lot safer in Japan, the few months i was there, where i had to use a map to navigate, than in my city, where i lived all my life (and my city is almost a rural city, very quiet, never major crimes... but Japan is so tidy, everyone is polite, and you don't get news of any crimes... almost at all), so not all of it is familiarity.

[Sparrowhawk]

I know feelings aren't a rational argument. Still, it's just natural i will defend the laws that make me feel freer and safer.

You and every other socialist, statist, collectivist and bleeding heart on this planet. I hate to break it to you, buddy - but feeling safer and actually being safer are two very, very different things. Do you probably already know this? Yes, yet you still allow it to control you to the point of defending laws you know may not be protecting you, yet because they make you "feel" safer, you still rise to their defense despite no evidence in support.

"The problem with little Johnny isn't that he can't read. It isn't even that he can't think - it's that he confuses thinking with feeling, and can't tell the difference."

[jotabe]

If i can chose between those 3 groups, i rather be in the bleeding hearts.

But well, you surely do not defend the laws that make you feel freer, do you?

Edit: Ah! but feeling free or safe is essential. Our daily activity depends on our perceptions. Our perception of reality, no matter how well informed we are (specially nowadays, where partisanism in media is so rampant that papers/TV/radio will tell you one thing, or the opposite), will always be a partial perception. And it is upon that perception that we act.

I tell you one example. Nowadays in Spain you are perfectly free to expose your political views. But in the right-wing media they are spreading information in a way that listeners might thing that if you express your right-wing views publicly, you will be ostraziced for that, that people whose oppion is left-wing will make your life impossible. Consequently, these right-wing people effectively act as if they weren't free, and suffer all the consequences of such lack of freedom.

So, a legal system needs not only to ensure freedom and safety, but only to ensure that they are perceived. If they aren't perceived, people will sensibly take them down.

[Sparrowhawk]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Regardless of anything else, a feeling shouldn't dictate what laws you should support/not support (a distinction being completely eradicated by both Republicans and Democrats in the States so that it can be ruled, like its socialist European counterparts, on whims and feelings).

[jotabe]

lol ^_^ i knew you were going to say this. Read my edit in the previous post.
The knowledge about how laws works and their consequences is hardly a scientific, certain one. You can only know them after you try them out. And believe it or not, people values more "feeling" safe than "being" safe. What good is actually being safe if you don't feel it? Think of the people who is afraid of taking a plane and decide to travel by car instead (because, against actual accident rates, they feel safer at the car).

[anonshadow]

I know feelings aren't a rational argument. Still, it's just natural i will defend the laws that make me feel freer and safer.

I am no expert, but in his "final communication" it looks like he believed the world was "out to get him". That screams "paranoia". He was also a depressive person.
Depressive+paranoid? That's a bomb walking.

Edit: Anon, i was under the impression that N.Y. had one of the lowest crime rates of the US... btw, i felt a lot safer in Japan, the few months i was there, where i had to use a map to navigate, than in my city, where i lived all my life (and my city is almost a rural city, very quiet, never major crimes... but Japan is so tidy, everyone is polite, and you don't get news of any crimes... almost at all), so not all of it is familiarity.

Jota, we have a low crime rate for an enormous city. We do not have a low crime rate. This is why there are rapes and murders in the city on a regular basis, and assaults, and theft, and muggings, and... etc. We still have more than our fair share of crime. My brother was mugged at knifepoint, my next door neighbor was mugged at knifepoint, I have an old friend who was mugged at knifepoint, I knew plenty of kids in my first high school who got seriously whaled on walking to the train station. There are plenty of nasty areas of New York City. I spent (and spend) a huge amount of time in the Lower East Side, which is the seventh most dangerous neighborhood in the City.

And I feel safer there than on the rich bitch Upper East Side. Because it's familiar. Because I know the people there. Because I know what to expect.

As far as Japan goes--

You're a boy. I have heard plenty of women who are either Japanese or have spent time in Japan complain about feeling unsafe or being sexually assaulted or propositioned in some way.

[jotabe]

As far as Japan goes--

You're a boy. I have heard plenty of women who are either Japanese or have spent time in Japan complain about feeling unsafe or being sexually assaulted or propositioned in some way.

From what i could gather, the original cause for that was "cultural": women didn't feel they had the right to loudly complain or to slap a guy who was touching them, taking advantage of, for example, massified trains.

Still, (not sure about it) last time i had heard, Japan sexual crime rate was actually lower than in most of the western world, so that would be, again, perceived safety against actual safety.

[Sparrowhawk]

Jota, sometimes your willingness to embrace illogical and unreasonable positions on the basis of feelings flabbergasts me. There are times when I simply have to take a step back, look at the extrapolation of what you believe and the consequences of such, and it is at such times that I understand how human beings, despite all the mind power we've been blessed with, have burdened themselves with ridiculous notions like socialism and humanism; most humans even with working brains cling to the mystical, to the ineffable, to "feeling" and not being. This is the one area in which my seemingly conflicting interests in free-market capitalism and new age/buddhist philosophies coincide - human beings are essentially retarded when it comes to forming coherent philosophies for life and living with other humans, and will adhere to any ridiculous notion so long as it makes them feel a certain way. I'm sure the victims of the Madrid bombings felt pretty safe - but no amount of feeling safe made them actually safe.

[anonshadow]

Oh, please. "It's only because they culturally feel unable to say something! That's not feeling unsafe! It's only the culture! And the recorded crime rate is lower! But that, and being culturally unable to say something, are completely unconnected!"

On March 9th, the Wall Street Journal published an article about depression rates in various countries. The US obviously came out on top, with almost 20% reporting some kind of depression, mood disorder, or anxiety disorder. Nigeria reported about .8%.

Could it really be that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth, and Americans the most unhappy? At least the first of those suggestions seems absurd, and researchers have no shortage of explanations to account for the comparatively lower rates of depression reported in poorer countries. "It's all about what people are willing to tell us," Harvard's Ronald Kessler, who helped run the study, tells Forbes. "In Nepal, it's against the law to be mentally ill. No surprise, nobody there admits to being mentally ill."

When it culturally uncouth to report it, yes, the statistics will, in fact, show that. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, nor does it mean that women feel any safer.

[jotabe]

Of course, Anon, you are right.

Well, the source of such illogical and seemingly mad way of acting most of us humans have might be a byproduct of evolution. I mean, you can't really take a monkey, squeeze into him a litre and a half of brain during barely 2 or 3 million years, making him apt to survive in a savanna environment, and expect it to work well in nowadays world. It just doesn't work that way.

And i tell you something about the victims of the bombings: they had a lot better life than the people they left behind. I mean, they were feeling pretty safe and confident, each with their daily worries. In a few seconds everything is over (for them). Maybe a few seconds of panic and/or pain.
We all are going to die, someday. It won't be pretty. Probably won't be painless. What matters, though, is not how we feel while we die, but how we have lived, how we have felt along our lives, how we have enjoyed it.

The people that has been left behind, after the bombings... now they do have a hard pill to swallow.

[Sparrowhawk]

More touchy-feely claptrap. There's no appropriate response.

[jotabe]

A joke is always welcome. I gave you an eaaaaaaaaaaaasy target.

[anonshadow]

How about an interesting discussion? Or have we moved away from that possibility?

[hive_king]

What about the possibility of having to go through some sort of personality or mental stability test or something before being allowed to buy a gun? I mean,I have to take a personality test before even getting a job, so it wouldn't be that big of a novelty. It would definately make it harder for people like Cho to get a gun.

[hive_king]

Also, on another note, there is one person who really was a true hero in this tragedy. That is Liviu Librescu. For those of you who haven't heard, Librescu, a holocaust survivor, was a teacher at Virginia Tech who blocked the entrance to a classroom to give students time to escape out the window while Cho shot him repeatedly. He probably saved at least a dozen lives, the man definately deserves our rememberance.

[jotabe]

This reminds me that, for a scientist, there are better things to be remembered for than your research.

And the guy was a good scientist, too!

[anonshadow]

What about the possibility of having to go through some sort of personality or mental stability test or something before being allowed to buy a gun? I mean,I have to take a personality test before even getting a job, so it wouldn't be that big of a novelty. It would definately make it harder for people like Cho to get a gun.

What kind of test? Who would pay for it?

Beyond that, it would be absurdly easy for a person to fake it. If you are determined, unless you're a very special kind of crazy, you'll be able to fake sanity. I know people who faked being normal when they were suicidal and were successful, and people who pretended they weren't violent when they were. Some of this was even in the presence of qualified professionals.

And, even beyond that, a person with a mental illness might be perfectly stable while taking medication--but what happens when they go off it? Should they have their firearms revoked when they go off their pills? Should it just depend on what they have?