Virginia Tech massacre

[jetxl]

Yet once again.

33 dead.
At this point I can't even think of anything else to say.

[LGM]

Horrible.

[Tuomas]

utterly.

[Moresco]

Very sad.    I can't think of anything else to say either, so I wrote a song for the victims.  It's all I could do, but I don't feel any better.

[radiowaves]

I wonder, what caused this. Maybe the actual victims had ruined the poor guys life before?

[Eigen]

That is horrible indeed ..
Where did he get a gun in the first place?

[Nikolas]

So sad...

I think that guns are easily accessible in the US eigen... Not sure though

[evenwolf]

But is no one else enraged over response times?   In the 60's a similar event happened at my college where a man holed up in a bell tower and shot 16 people dead and wounded a number of others.   Police were strategically trying to stop him.  Finally several cops were able to break through the shooter's barricade and kill the sniper.  This event caused the city to budget its SWAT team etc.   

What I don't understand is how two hours go by without informing the community about murders on campus.   So that students and faculty could have known not to go to class.   And if the first murder was unsolved WHY weren't there patrols on active duty when the second spree started???   ...  was the administration trying to keep the first set of murders under wraps?  33 is a huge loss and I don't think many people are keeping in mind that this nation is very quickly becoming a police state already with its patriot act and homeland security.

I just don't understand why citizens' liberties are being yanked away when it is indeed the police who are slacking...

[Andail]

That is horrible indeed ..
Where did he get a gun in the first place?

Yeah where? Maybe he tripped over one, got one thrown at him, had one for easter present, found one in his breakfast cereal box, spat up one after having a bad burrito; yeah maybe a gun simply materialised in his hand by just holding it up in an american morning breeze.

WHERE oh where.

[Nacho]

I wonder, what caused this. Maybe the actual victims had ruined the poor guys life before?

Does that matter?

On the other hand... United States is a very populated Contry... If there is one extremelly nut person per each million, how many extremelly nut person are we going to have? 300?

Which is the ratio of people having weapons at home? 5? 10? I am not aware of that cypher, but if we consider 5 or 10%, we will have like 50 insane people with a gun AT HOME. I am not even telling that this unstable people must do the effort to get the weapons. They will have themm AVAILABLE AT HOME... that's  an extremelly bad cocktail.

Darth Mandarb told me that you can't even have a "healthy" fight at the cinema because someone is spoiling the film to you, that many MANY gang thugs are armed. As much as I usually deffend some of the non-politically-correct issues of the American culture, this is completelly silly...

And, even being this "Coloumbines" and "Virginias" extremelly horrible, we must not forget that this is just the point of the iceberg... that the real horrible cypher is that if you bring a gun to your home, the possibility of you, or your relatives, to be harmed is 3/4 in front of the 1/4 that the "criminals" have. Hundreds of "civilians" die every year by accident with home guns, much more that the ones killed in the "rare" events of shootings at colleges.

Sorry, I can' t add anything new to this discussion, I just wanted to vent.

[Darth Mandarb]

It is incredibly easy to get a gun in the U.S.  I could, were I so inclined, have one by lunch time.

I do not, however, consider that fact to be the problem here.  It certainly isn't the cause of these types of shootings.  Most of these sprees are committed with illegally obtained weapons (not sure yet in this case as they're not releasing full details yet).  Were guns outlawed in the U.S. (bye-bye 2nd ammendment) it wouldn't stop [most of] these events.

The shootings are the sad result of much deeper issues that should be addressed first.  I don't think we should focus on the fact that guns are easy to obtain, but why the fellow felt inclined to do what he did.

[HillBilly]

I don't think we should focus on the fact that guns are easy to obtain, but why the fellow felt inclined to do what he did.

I think the closest they got to figuring out a motive was that he suspected his girlfriend for having an affair. Maybe this was a case similar to the one of Mattias Flink in Sweden, 1994.

[BOYD1981]

The shootings are the sad result of much deeper issues that should be addressed first.  I don't think we should focus on the fact that guns are easy to obtain, but why the fellow felt inclined to do what he did.

i think the deeper issue with any shooting has to be the availability of firearms, trying to find out the cause/reasoning behind each shooting after it happens is pointless if measures aren't taken to ensure situations like that can't happen easily.
and although a majority of gun crime may or may not be comitted with weapons obtained illegally by the shooter, if the gun was stolen there's a high chance it was originally purchased legally, or is only made illegal due to the removal of a serial number.
i think it would be more productive to eradicate the main cause of the problem rather than analyse the byproducts and stop protecting the second ammendment, if the real cause of all the gun related problems is the availability of the weapons then surely it would be better to sacrifice the so called freedom to own a firearm for the good of the country. if a second ammendment can be made in the first place then it's not likely that the constitution (or whatever you call it) is actually set in stone and can't easily be ammended again, and it's not like the precious 'freedom' of speech and press are actually taken any notice of in america.
so, in short, the real problem IS the availability of firearms and people need to stop protecting them.

[Darth Mandarb]

See this is where I disagree ...

This guy had violent tendencies (as most of these types do).  The availability of firearms didn't cause these violent tendencies.  If the guy couldn't get his hands on a gun so easily (and wasn't willing to make the few easy steps it takes to get one illegally) he'd just have found another way to commit the crime.  Poisoning food, toxic gas, etc.  Imagine if he'd snuck into the cafeteria and laced all the soup with cyanide?  The death-toll could have, potentially, been FAR worse than 33 (not that this isn't horrible of course).

So ... do we need to outlaw rat poisoning?  Or pesticides?  Or silverware/cuttlery?  Or common household cleaning products which anybody can make a bomb out of?  Where do we draw the line?

Do you really believe that if guns were outlawed that people still couldn't get them?  Do you truthfully think that the black-market availability of illegal guns would simply stop if the second ammendment were done away with?  I just don't see this as the case.

The removal of the second ammendment would, in my opinion, cause more crime.  Your average street-thug wants to break into a house ... as it stands now, he has to wonder if the citizen living in the house has a gun of some kind.  This fact might cause him to change his mind and not commit the break-in.  Take that out of the equation, these criminals (which WILL still have guns) now don't need to worry about it.  Same with muggings, robberies, etc.

The only thing the removal of the second ammendment would accomplish would be taking guns away from people who are responsible and own them legally.  To believe that it would stop the criminal element from having/using them is just naive in my opinion.

[BOYD1981]

well it wouldn't actually hurt to try now would it?
and you seem to have overlooked the fact that rat poison, pesticides, cutlery and cleaning products actually serve a useful purpose and are beneficial to society.
the only benefit guns have is to intimidate, frighten, injure or kill. it's what they were invented for and what they do best, whereas rat poison was designed to kill rodents, pesticides to aid crop growth, cutlery to eat with and cleaning products to do as their name implies, and it's what THEY do best, it's a very silly argument that could be extended to extremely stupid lengths (a computer isn't designed to kill somebody, but if somebody were to drop one on your head from a great height it could kill you) and just ignores the real issue.
banning guns won't increase the crime rate either, in the UK it has been illegal to own a gun for about ten years (ever since a school shooting in fact, in which the victims were 4 year olds), and even before then there was less gun crime. ofcourse there is now a black market (and i suspect there was when they weren't illegal, and the same applies as much to america as any other country in which just because something is legal doesn't mean it will always be purchases legally), but gun crime is still relatively low, it's mostly criminals with guns killing other criminals with guns with very few innocent casualties.
so maybe that does point somewhat in the direction of another cause for all the gun crime, perhaps like you said it could be violent tendencies (but i don't believe there is a person on earth who isn't prone to violent behaviour), but that alone won't get somebody shot, perhaps hurt but with a fighting chance of defending yourself, or at the worst stabbed.
but anyway, i'm talking about the bigger problem of shootings and not just this one case, sure the guy could have found some other way to commit the crime but a gun required less effort.
i suppose the real irony in my argument is the fact that all the people killed in school shootings are unarmed students and teachers who could have perhaps defended themselves and stopped the killings sooner if the second ammendment also applied to schools.

[Darth Mandarb]

Guns, yes, were invented as weapons of warfare.  Those other things I mentioned weren't, true.  However, my point was simply that given enough thought, just about anything can be used to kill (dropping a computer on somebody's head as you mentioned).  A murder is still a murder regarless of the weapon used to commit it.

The 'violent tendencies' aren't going to go away if we throw out the second ammendment.

I'd agree that on some primal level we all have violent tendencies ... but as modern humans we've (most of us) learned to temper them.  These violent criminals don't have that block/control and they act on them.

I don't want to be misunderstood ... I'm not a huge advocate of the second ammendment.  I just don't see it's abolishment as a solution to the problem of violent crimes.  You make good and valid points which I understand, I just don't agree.  I suppose it's probably pointless to debate over it too much ... as this is one of those things that'll most likely never be proven (either way) and be kicked around forever.

[Andail]

Darth, sorry but Boyd's points make heaps of sense here.

The 'violent tendencies' aren't going to go away if we throw out the second ammendment.

Well, they won't go away is if you pressed a magic button. However, if less people were legally able to purchase guns, there would be much less guns on the market, black or white. The problem in America is that there are too many darn weapons, your factories simply produce too many of them.

The process of lowering the accessibility of weapons will not only be some politician publically announcing "guns are hearby forbidden!", as the weapon lobby wants to portray it (in their slogan 'when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will carry guns'), but it must be a thorough cleansing of all weapons, from the streets, from the kids, from the families, from the schools.
If people are no longer allowed to buy weapons, less weapons will be produced.

The availability of firearms didn't cause these violent tendencies.  If the guy couldn't get his hands on a gun so easily (and wasn't willing to make the few easy steps it takes to get one illegally) he'd just have found another way to commit the crime.  Poisoning food, toxic gas, etc.  Imagine if he'd snuck into the cafeteria and laced all the soup with cyanide?  The death-toll could have, potentially, been FAR worse than 33 (not that this isn't horrible of course).

This sounds horribly un-scientific. Are you gonna keep guns because at least they can't kill more than around 30 people at a time?

I don't think this person was out to clinically take as many lives as possible, because then he would indeed come up with something more diabolical, something more profound, because after all big bombs are not hard to concieve in any country. You just need a lot of gun powder, or some chemical or whatever, you hardly even need a lab.
I think this guy was really really angry, and he looked at his gun, and said "I'm gonna take this damn gun and go around and shoot everybody I see until they get me. Because I'm so freaking angry." The gun was readily available. He just needed to load it and he was good to go.

I have a really really hard time imagining that, in a world without guns, newspapers would, on a regular basis, go "Extra! Another school massive-dosis-of-rat-poison-in-the-food this morning!" Do you really think people would go to these lengths, just as often as they do now, if guns were not as available?

[Tuomas]

Well there's a point when firearm control helps, but it's not the guns that make people violent, they just are there to help them express their violent thoughts. Take Finland for instance. We dont' have schoolshootings. I've never even seen a real gun. Yet in average almost every household has a gun somewhere. And the murder rate is the highest in the world. but the thing is, people here stab with kinves. They use the alternative.

I think, of course, tighter control would make a difference, but I'd rather go to the root of all these problems. People don't just go berserk because they have the means to it. I don't drive over people because I have a car. But if I did, I most certainly had a reason, of I was mad. And at that point I'd wish the authorities to either remove that reason. Then, if I'm out of control, I'd wish they didn't leave missiles on my doorstep.

[SinSin]

Another huge waste of life its awful
Ive just done some reading and he had two guns
It sounds like either a revenge plot or one or two of the gears in the guys head have gone  
either way it is trully horrible
My thoughts go out to the parents and families and  all who knew the deceased

[Pumaman]

The 'violent tendencies' aren't going to go away if we throw out the second ammendment.

Of course they won't; but suppose that, as Farlander says, out of every million people there is one who is a nutcase with a desire to commit mass murder.

If this person can get hold of a gun and play out their fantasy then chances are they'll do it. If they can't get hold of a gun, they might go on a stabbing rampage or a shouting rampage or some other form of attack, but it's unlikely to do anywhere near as much damage as a sub-machine gun.

The removal of the second ammendment would, in my opinion, cause more crime.  Your average street-thug wants to break into a house ... as it stands now, he has to wonder if the citizen living in the house has a gun of some kind.  This fact might cause him to change his mind and not commit the break-in.  Take that out of the equation, these criminals (which WILL still have guns) now don't need to worry about it.  Same with muggings, robberies, etc.

And how does the crime rate in the US with its abundance of guns differ from countries where guns are illegal? Surely it should be the safest country in the world?
Sadly the nuclear deterrent argument doesn't really apply to gun crime.