Whilst the shocking events at Virginia Tech make us think first about the victims and families involved,i do wonder why such a democratic nation as the United States of America continues to allow such free access to guns.

Just because the NRA can wheel out has been celebraties, such as Charlton (out of my cold dead hands)Heston,doesn't mean the more intelligent masses can't counter this.

On the news in Great Britain(BBC)this morning an American journalist stated that 60 children a week were killed by gun crime(3000 in a year)in the US,if the right to bear arms lobby think that is acceptable,then they do not belong in a civilised society!

The ammendment is outdated,and is no longer pertinent to todays society,and the dinosaurs that support it are responsible for countless atrocities,i wonder how they can live with that?

Put simply,is it right to allow any psychopath to walk in a shop and buy a gun?
How can you tell the difference?

Yesterday while watching the news conference I was appalled that the media was just beating up on the local officials, especially after knowing what they (the officials) had just seen in the classrooms. Thanks to Gatsby's post, I'm can see that I'm not the only one who thought they were getting beat up. I started to say something here about "what is WRONG with the media", but once again, I got too tongue-tied to continue. Gatsby has such a way with words and said what I wanted to, thanks.

Quote:

---

Making fun of Charlton Heston and confiscating guns from law abiding citizens is not the answer to a deep seated, difficult problem.

---

And PaulDrake, I couldn't agree with you more.

I am as dazed as everybody else by these senseless murders, wondering how it could've all come about.
Though I have touched on the following thoughts in other posts at other times, please bear with me as I attempt to respond to 1cyprus' comments.

It saddens me to see [already!] anti- gun activists both here and abroad who are willing to use this tragedy for political gain, and to take what I consider to be a few cheap shots, themselves. This morning a popular Italian newspaper cited these slayings to be "as American as Apple pie". That jaded comment left me hurt - and angry, too, in the knowledge these shootings take place randomly all over the globe and are not confined to the States.
I grew up in a rural agricultural area where guns were the norm rather than an exception, therefore negating the need for sensational comment and speculation. The people I looked up to as adult role models were sober, kind, and respectful of the rights of other people. Children in our ranching community were taught to respect guns and to never treat them as a casual object. People kept guns and hunted with them for as long as I can remember - and not once was there ever an incident of murder or mishap because somebody was careless. I know how to use a gun, and so do many of my adult family members. There have always been certain rules we followed as children - later handed down to my own family. Guns are not toys. Guns are kept locked up and out of the reach of children. The one area of thought I may be remiss in is this: our culture - not only in this country but around the world - has de-sensitized us so much that I realise how far out of step I seem to be with the rest of society. Kids who are allowed to play realistic, violent video games reach adulthood with much greater potential to go in and take out a classroom full of defenseless people. Casual violence in media was almost unknown 50 years ago and it's advent has caused serious changes in the way we as a species view human life.

But I digress a little.
As someone who grew up in a 'gun for sports' culture I can only speak for myself and those I know. The proverbial 'good ole boy' crowd [ ie - that percentage upon which so many characatures and hillbilly jokes are made of] will simply have to put down that beer and spring to their own defense, if they are able.

I believe that if existing gun laws were enforced, there would be no need for new ones. The real bottom line [ or one of them] seems to be that maniacal killers like the English major who gunned down his fellow students yesterday will always be able to procure a gun or two. He was extremely clever and almost professional in the way he planned the murders by shaving serial numbers off the weapons, remembering to bring chains to bar the doors and half a dozen other little chilly details.

There is no end to this debate, and I don't wish to change anyone's mind, because it won't happen. I do mind, however, when silly blanket statements are made about an entire culture with apparently no understanding or knowledge of the people in question. I have many friends who's politics are different from my own...but it's never a problem, because our friendship comes from a deeper source that social trend or politics. Thinking people see the world around them, process the details, then form sound opinions based on as many varied examples of the subject matter in question as possible.

I just don't see that kind of high order thought pattern in play this morning, and I'm bothered by it.

typo edit

Oh, brother . Here's a brief article on "the shooter". This should give just all sorts of the wrong people/"journalists" all varieties of the wrong things to observe, I'm embarrassed to speculate...

I agree with you, Gatsby, that the clearly-dazed college administrators and security personnel were forced to be the victims of harsh second-guessing by the media at a moment when it was really too early for them to be expected to answer such questions. The media engage almost instinctively in the blame game; scandal is seductive.

Moreover, this is not a high school contained in one or a few buildings. Virginia Tech has a very large campus -- 2,400 acres, with many buildings and access points -- and most of the students and all of the faculty and staff don't live on it. The logistics of shutting the entire place down as thousands of people were arriving for classes and work would have been extremely complicated.

On the other hand, it is not unusual for even a domestic shooter to take hostages, barricade himself in a building and start shooting out windows, or something similar. Since the police and administrators did not know exactly where the shooter was after they discovered the first two deaths, serious precautions needed to be taken, even if they couldn't have been 100% effective.

Last night and today, I've been very disturbed by claims that if weapons were allowed on campuses -- if students were permitted to carry them -- then the extensive loss of life could have been prevented. Any college administrator or professor can tell you that 18-22-year-olds may be legal adults, but they are not adults emotionally and intellectually. They also tend to be impulsive. If students could freely carry guns, then I guarantee that campus shootings would be frequent. Fights and arguments, especially those involving alcohol, would turn into murders. There would also be stupid accidents. Anyone who thinks that allowing college students to arm themselves is the best way to prevent mass murders of this kind is living in a fantasy world.

I will say that I don't believe these types of shootings are a product of a generation of gamers. (Or any other casual media violencce.) Many mass murders have occured over the decades. Do they seem to be speeding up? Getting closer together? I don't know. Maybe. So is the population. Maybe not, maybe the media is just more far-reaching. I don't know, I suppose someone does. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't feel like it's more common now, exactly. And I don't think it's fair to say that a kid who plays Grand Theft Auto is more likely to be able to kill someone. I think it takes crazy to do crazy, and crazy is crazy with or without violence in media. Besides which, mass murders have been happening in the US since long before such things. (August 1, 1966)

I am a member of this generation, the one who grew up with violence on TV (even when I was a kid, more on the news than on anything else, movies included!), played Quake and Doom, the generation that is "desensitized" and "allowed to play realistic, violent video games" and therefore reached "adulthood with much greater potential to go in and take out a classroom full of defenseless people". And I guess, as a member of the desensitized youth, I kindof resent the idea that I am any more likely than someone of my parents' generation to commit an act like this by virtue of our pasttimes, as a matter of generalization. It isn't really true.

The fact is, school shootings have been going on for a long while. In 1979 a 16 year old girl opened fire on an elementary school. This was not the first, nor the last such shooting in generations previous to this most recent, desensitized one. They weren't even really all that uncommon. School shootings seem to be getting deadlier, but not really more common. And after all, yesterday's shooting only finally broke the record which was set in 1966 at the University of Texas - Austin.

And yet, here I sit, unshocked, desensitized, I guess. I am not shocked by this. I, once again (seems like a daily thing, doesn't it?) shake my head sadly at the loss of life, innocence, love, family. I can't be shocked by senseless death and killing anymore. And it isn't because of my choice of video games. It's because my country has been embroiled in a series of violent military actions, the "sense" of which might be questionable, since I was too young to understand such things. I was just coming into my own sense of self when I sat up nights watching the film of bombs arching through the night to kill and maim, the billowing burning desert, the soldiers looking tired and gritty. A person practically had ringside seats to a war, without all the messy business of actually being there. And it isn't just wars, either.

I'm sorry if I might actually believe that my nightly news, the REAL CASUAL VIOLENCE going on every day from the time I was old enough to understand the reporter until now, might have more to do with whatever desensitization my generation experiences than the video games we grew up with. I guess I feel like even myself and the younger generations might still be smart enough, in touch with reality enough, to recognize fake from real, CGI from flesh, and the related consequences to either. Perhaps it's the real world that's more likely to push us over the edge.

Lothruin, funny you brought up the topic of video games and how they are thought to be one of the sources of violence.

Oddly, I just had a quiz put online that dealt with precisely that issue. When I started the quiz Sunday night, I researched a bunch of cases of violence and video games as the source. One of these was the Columbine shootings. It was to my surprise that the very next day, there was this school shooting. It was a bit unnerving that I had pretty much started this quiz researching school shootings and then this happened.

The massacre has once again brought up the issue of gun control, but I wonder if maybe violence in our media (such as video games) won't be brought up in the next few weeks. Since the shooter was described as a "loner" and was from South Korea (a place where video games are enormously popular), I wonder if he wasn't an avid fan of video games. If he was, then we may see the same issues brought up about violence in video games and othe media.

It looks to me as though this thread belongs in the Debate forum. Yes, again we are having a discussion about gun control. That's fine, but maybe not in current events.

The following appeared on my internet browser. WARNING: It includes some graphic statements.

"How VT Students Escaped, Saved Others"
Although 32 students, faculty and staff died in the massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16, many more may have died had it not been for the heroic, fast actions of a few brave students. When the gunman entered room 207 of Norris Hall where Christopher James Bishop was teaching a German class, he first shot the professor in the head and then methodically started firing at the students--mostly point blank in the head.

Eagle Scout Trey Perkins, 20, was in the back of that classroom and told The Washington Post that the gunman fired "some 30 shots in all," including shooting one girl in the mouth and one boy twice in the legs. Perkins said the gunman had a "very serious but very calm look on his face." The gunman finally left. As soon as he was gone, Perkins quickly shut the heavy, wooden classroom door and barricaded it with a desk. He and another boy and a girl laid down on the floor and held it shut with their feet. That quick thinking saved their lives. The gunman returned after just two minutes, and when he couldn't get back into the room, he started shooting through the door. Because the students were lying down and holding it shut with their feet they were not injured.

After the shooting stopped, Perkins instructed the other two students to remain on the floor with their feet firmly planted against the door. He got up and tended to the wounded. Some were crying. One vomited. Perkins wrapped a sweater around one boy's legs to stop the bleeding. He covered the face of the girl who was shot in the mouth. "He knew exactly what he was doing," Perkins told the Post of the gunman. "I have no idea why he did what he decided to do. I just can't say how lucky I am to have made it."

So, in spite of the horrible goings on, we have someone who got down to business and helped save lives.

Gun control-not gonna happen. It's a moot issue. Sorry folks. It probably gets too much attention anyway. The government is not here to babysit people and make sure they behave. If the guy didn't use guns maybe he'd figure out how to make a suicide vest or bomb, carry it in, and kill 200, just like in Iraq. My point is, we just have to accept the reality that random acts of violence will occur no matter what, one's chances of dying from it are really tiny, and no government (or personal) action can protect us-look at how well they did with Katrina. Humans are the most violent creature around. We can kill with more efficiency and economy than any other animal. We got to the top of the food chain because of this. Making gun violence less glamorous might help to make these events rarer.

That said, taking a person's life before their time is a terrible thing, especially a young person or people. It is as senseless as it is shocking.

The university where I did my undergrad was very large - it had more people, but I think the buildings weren't as spread out as VT. Yet, even with September 11th, we didn't cancel classes until the mid/late afternoon. (I ended up calling my mom and asking her to come get me as they were putting up signs saying classes were cancelled.) And how was everyone notified? Radio spots, messages on the website, email and lots of photocopied papers throughout the school that also directed people to where the counselors were (we had a very large NYC population as it was the furthest NY state school from NYC).

Because we were a commuter school, and because no one knew what was going on at the time, no one was going to attempt to disrupt tens of thousands of people's lives when it may have just been a commuter plane crash (as some thought after our first class).

I'm fairly certain that if there was a murder in the dorms - which were separated from the main 'North' campus by a small parkway and campus police believed the perpetrator had left the area, they wouldn't cancel all classes on the slight possibility that the person was still there. As VT's president said yesterday, there's just no way to notify the people who are commuting in to school as they're commuting - they don't have access to email, they probably aren't listening to the radio, etc. The normal procedure is to contain the scene of the crime and try to find the shooter - which they were doing. (They were interviewing an individual not affiliated with the university who was in a car and somehow knew an individual or both individuals.)

Yes, they should have tried to get an email out sooner, but I know from bureaucracy, that the permissions of what to say, and permission to send it out must have taken that long (2 hours) in order to get that email sent. The person approving the first email was probably making sure the facts were correct in the email, that no further information had been found out that should be added to the email, what should/should not be said, etc. They (the administration) didn't know at the time what they were dealing with.

Oh, as for the topic of gun control - I think someone said he may have obtained it illegally.

As I said in another thread (at least I htink I said it), if someone really wants to get a gun, they'll get one. Because it's illegal isn't going to stop them.

And gun control won't stop murders - you just won't see mass murders because you can't stab people as fast as you can shoot them. Or else people will end up making bombs (although that requires thinking ahead and people like the individual from yesterday generally didn't plan ahead).

Ladymacb, he bought at least one of the guns legally, at a Virginia gun shop, with a credit card. Police found the receipt for it in his backpack.

As for video games, I don't blame them or the young, in particular. It's true that violence of this kind has been taking place for a long time -- the previous worst university campus shooting was the Texas Tower massacre in the 1960's.

And while video games may be quite popular in South Korea, this kid had been living in the U.S. for almost 15 years, since the age of about 8.

However, there are indications that he had shown signs of mental illness. Apparently, he'd been referred to the university's counseling service. THis is another controversial issue in the U.S. right now -- what do universities do with students who appear to be suffering from mental problems? Expect that to be a subject of much discussion in the media in the weeks to come.

I realize I'm posting a lot on this subject, and Jar may be right that all this belongs in the debate forum. I've been particularly upset by this tragedy because I've taught college students, and I keep wondering what I would, or could, have done to protect my students and myself if I'd been one of the professors in one of those classrooms yesterday. I'll try to get off the soapbox.

Yeah - news just said he bought the guns legally. I'd read about the receipt, but we at work opined it may have been he used a fake ID or someone else's ID as we'd heard earlier they were purchased illegally.

Quote:

---

It saddens me to see [already!] anti- gun activists both here and abroad who are willing to use this tragedy for political gain, and to take what I consider to be a few cheap shots, themselves. This morning a popular Italian newspaper cited these slayings to be "as American as Apple pie". That jaded comment left me hurt - and angry, too, in the knowledge these shootings take place randomly all over the globe and are not confined to the States.

---

ktstew,
As a British citizen,living in Britain,i fail to see what political gain i could be trying to make.Nor do i think my comments should be classed as a "cheap shot".The point i raised is that so many children are killed (mostly in single shootings),these could be curtailed with stricter gun controls.I do understand that random actions like this, by people with psychological issues cannot be stopped so easily. Maybe i didn't make that clear in my post.

Quote:

---

There is no end to this debate, and I don't wish to change anyone's mind, because it won't happen. I do mind, however, when silly blanket statements are made about an entire culture with apparently no understanding or knowledge of the people in question

---

Isn't that a blanket statement,that as a British person,i can have no knowledge of American culture or it's peoples?There are members of my family who have lived in the States for nearly fifty years,my reference to archaic laws is in reference to Lexington(where i believe the right to bear arms stems from,(please correct me if i am wrong)
Finally,i am not anti-gun,in my past employment i have used firearms,what i am against, is the right for anybody to buy something that has only one real use.

Jon

A tribute made with song
Virginia Tech Tribute

Quote:

---

a British citizen,living in Britain,i fail to see what political gain i could be trying to make.Nor do i think my comments should be classed as a "cheap shot".

---

Actually, Cyprus - I was thinking more about the 'apple pie' comment made by the Italian media when I countered it with 'cheap shot'. I was addressing your comments as well as some remarks made by American special interest groups on the first day of the tragedy. I should've been more clear.

I heard this morning from several news sources that some parents have already made appointments with their lawyers -whether they intend to press charges against the college, the school president or campus police is unclear. If it's true - how sad. Their children haven't even been laid to rest yet.

"The amendment is outdated,and is no longer pertinent to todays society,and the dinosaurs that support it are responsible for countless atrocities,i wonder how they can live with that?"

What about stupid people or not so stupid people? The guns haven't got anymore dangerous over these past two centuries but the people sure have. If you want to talk about antiquated amendments cast your eyes no further than the First Amendment. Never did the fore fathers of America intend for the things protected under this Right to be safe haven for filth in the name of freedom of speech and or the press. This has been watered down and has fed the minds to the point where 3000 children a year are killed imitating what they see in the movies and television. I don't claim to desire banning television then guns but if your impressionable your access should be limited.

A further thought is how 32 dead students and faculty stirs the great nation but the 50 to 150 people killed in Iraq each day is old news. It's callous and it too is the result of that great amount of freedom stemming from the 1st Amendment.

My question to myself is this: At what point does my freedom become a prison?

Perhaps the gun control portion should be in the Debating Society section of the forums. This portion of the forums isn't for debate issues.

As for the VT shooting, NBC news in NY just received a package from the gunman which included a video, photos and a rambling note. According to NBC, the package appeared to have been sent in between the two shootings. The information was given over to the FBI.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/from/ET/

Now a Bomb Threat at University Of Minnesota. I guess did everyone hear of this on the news? I heard it on the tv in the waiting room while waiting to get called back at Doctor appointment.
Then as I was leaving, I thought I heard something about someone shooting a pelet gun. Anyone know anything about that part?
I guess it must have been the same person involved with the bomb threat.
Looks like copy cat stuff going on again. Seemed to happen after that Columbine thing.

Bomb threats are actually rather common at universities. You just don't usually hear about them because they nearly always are just hot air from disgruntled students about grades or something like that. Could be a copycat, but it could also be just another day in higher education...
One of the unfortunate things about tragedies of this nature is that people get awfully jumpy for awhile afterwards. So much so that I worry about some sort of 'crying wolf' effect setting in.

Ok, here I go again with "what is WRONG with the media"? Sure, we all have the right to know what's going on, but I'm beginning to feel differently when it comes to telling the public about the shooter. You notice that NBC said the video packet was sent immediately to the FBI, but obviously not until they copied everything and have now pasted the story and pictures all over the web and news stations.

People that do these kinds of heinous crimes WANT publicity. It doesn't make a difference if they're dead or not. Their name will go down in history as the person who committed the deadliest attack at an education facility....until the next attack by someone else. Apparently the names of the two attackers at Columbine were mentioned (and note I'm NOT going to mention their names either). They were his heroes.

If an effort is made to tell the story of what happened without showing the murderers story and face in minute detail, maybe it would curtail some other madman from doing the same sort of thing. This madman at VT has won. The media has glorified him. He not only killed many innocent people, but he now has his name in every newspaper, on all television stations, and all over the web. It doesn't make a difference if he's dead. He's now famous.

I'm beginning to feel that something like this should be reported as "A madman has killed 32 people, then taken his own life at Virginia Tech..." THEN NEVER MENTIONING THE KILLERS NAME OR SHOWING HIS FACE. Then, if someone else feels they need to do the same sort of crime, they'll know that the public won't even know who they were.


edited for typo

You have absolutely touched not only the heart of this matter, but offered a remedy for many others, too, Lisa. I wonder how many 'copy cats' we'd see from this and future crimes if the media would pledge themselves to merely report the news and not offer it as entertainment. We as viewers are subjected to slick graphics, dramatic trailers for the next news cast and actual theme music composed for each new major tragedy. One has to speculate - do they keep a 'bank' of appropriate sounding theme music for different tragedies - mass murders, kidnappings, wars?
If we would stop guaranteeing these creatures their 15 minutes of fame, I wonder if shocking crime would greatly decrease?
Why bother to go through the practice, trial selections and insults of being on American Idol? Committing a heinous crime will get you months of [well, okay - posthumous] publicity, your own theme song, and at least several books written about you.