Messages

Innocent good guys, lawful citizens. Do you agree this is a tricky term? Everybody is innocent until proven guilty.

You actually think Americans are less likely to carry guns now that they feel they can be murdered in the most "gun-free" areas?

No, I think they are more likely to carry guns now, which is a problem.

Read this article.  Pay close attention to how the police had no solutions to stopping this man.  And what they did.  This was before SWAT and emergency rescue teams etc.  You grew up in an era post swat.  You have grown up with violent movies and video games, you yourself have not murdered anybody, yet you don't trust anybody else to do the same.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/02/152847.php  (seventh paragraph and beyond)

You're taking two separate entities, the American mindset & the American gun laws.  You splice them together as if they are synchronized.   As if one equals the other.

The two most brutal school shootings (Whitman held the record until VT, right?) were perpetrated by mentally ill 20 something year olds.   You actually think that a sane person would shoot and murder someone ( seeing the carnage and experiencing those emotions)  and continue to murder others around him?    It is not a coincidence that the two bloodiest mass murders like this were by mentally debilitated individuals.

You are dead wrong.  Most Americans carry handguns because of these events, and even when insulted in a bar or cheated on by their spouse it is not a western shootout.   You have such a great selective memory when it comes to gun violence because you cannot tally the number of times violence was prevented by a gun.

You can't.   With all your facts and figures, you can only negate. negate. negate.  And you do.    And you don't realize that most of the people training to use handguns in the US are women.   If they come close to being raped one time in their life, just pulling a gun on the perp makes it all the while worth it.  Deterrent, deterrent, deterrent.

You took my words and pulled out "Jesse thinks there should be gunfights everywhere"  when Jesse quite adequately stated "There would not have been a gun fight if guns, LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE, were concealed in the purses and on the bodies of some of the students."  Guns cannot legally be carried in schools which means innocent law abiding citizens are fooled into submission, and the idea that criminals obey signs.   The police DID nothing in this case WHEREAS you argue that police will protect you.   Its done more to suggest that I need my own gun.

You actually think Americans are less likely to carry guns now that they feel they can be murdered in the most "gun-free" areas?  Gun free areas are the problem.

That was a great episode.  I've seen many others and this one seemed a lot less biased.   Some may argue!

But I tend to agree with Penn.  Insane people in "gun free zones"  are shooting fish in a barrel.  Its the gun control laws that kept any of those students at VT from getting into a shootout with Seung-Hui.   He knew nobody would be carrying a gun, compared to say Walmart.

radiowaves, Im glad youve reached that part of teen angst where you become a know-it-all.  Trust me, I sat through plenty of high school and college courses where the teacher knew less than me.

Fact is, I was wrong!   And my bluntheadedness served no purpose but to isolate me from others.  So lighten up.  You can't judge an internet debate based on the last post.  Locked or not locked.   People persuade others throughout the debate and small opinions sometimes LARGE opinions are effected.   Some folks' character become established, much like in a movie.  Which enriches the community, makes it sort of fleshed out rather than bland and dull.

The last pages in a forum debate do end up repeating themselves or serve little purpose, but that hardly negates the content of the debate's entirety. 

Yeah there's euro metal.   There's also French rap and Japanese Rock and Roll.    What's your point?    We live in a pluralistic society.  Did you think that genres only inspired people on the continent where it was invented?

ahahaha.

and yet i still find it clever on some level

Why not ask on a forum which isn't devoted to adventure gaming? IGN? Gamespot? Gamefaqs? Hell even the official gta forum?

I noticed that he posted this in the general forum, which actually has nothing to with adventure games (by sheer implication!)    Silly to think that his community (which is full of all sorts of tech savvy people) wouldn't be able to help him.

P.S.   I think Lordi is a kickass band.  Not for the name but I do think it works on two levels:

"Lordi"

Its irreverent.

It sounds good phonetically, and creates a new meaning from the word "Lord"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=POO33XjtAws

I don't necessarily think "Pearl Jam" or "The Police"  are all that convincing as names.   Without any word of mouth someone says to you "Hey lets listen to the police!"   "Ooh, do you love Pearl Jam?"  Sounds a bit odd.

Those names could have backfired & people thought they were dumb.   Obviously the music trumps the name. 

Does the name have an effect?  Yesh.  Word of mouth spreads about a band, and the first image someone imagines usually sticks.   When I hear "Mystery Machine" I think scooby doo.    That will stick for most people.

I think the task of writing a good band name isn't to try to sound "grown up" or hard edged, but maybe to come up with something ambiguous or universal, or a nice mental image.   I would avoid pop culture references.  People can have all kinds of ideas what a "Pearl Jam" is and that creates conversation.   So the name helps or hurts, sure.

I learned rhetoric from this very forum.  I was a shy person "IRL" with my opinions until I opened up on dosuser forums.  I got a voice there and expanded to parties and social gatherings.   What's even logical about using the rhetoric "this is an internet argument, its pointless"  when that very rhetoric is being transferred via the internet?

Victor, you use the terminology "what drove him mad".   This a bit foul because mental illness isn't caused by other people, activity can be triggered perhaps, but illness is usually inherent in the person's physiological and chemical makeup.  Genetics.

Please research mental disorders, and mental illness in general.  My mother is manic depressive, she's practically always been that way but when I was born YES something was triggered that made it worse.    You won't understand anything more than the mental disorder that Cho Seung-Hui had, which was a type of schizophrenia.

These types of events happen time and time again by mental illnesses, and everyone makes a big shit about the killer and their sociological behaviors, but no focus is ever drawn on the ongoing fight with mental disorders in the world.

Victor,  you sympathize with a murderer under the pretense that he had it worse than you did.  You can assume this but most likely he had the same problems we all do, and he just didn't know how to handle them.

For instance, when I feel really angry I express that emotion into a drawing.   Or I confront the person I am angry with.     Yes, Cho Seung-Hui had problems, but to feel sympathy for him is rather disrespectful.   I cannot extend him the slightest courtesy of sympathy.

Courteous, civilian beings do not disrupt the lives of others over one's own suffering.   

victor, I understand what you were saying about possible influences.  We are on the same side here.   But I find it shameful that the selection process for these movie poster photos included only asians, as if asians invented these poses.  Asian cinema can be particular violent and macabre,  but there are people out there who want to make this a racial thing.  Even a southern korean thing:  (Old Boy & Seung-Hui)   But Old Boy is not at fault.  No single piece of media is at fault.   (including Cho Yun Fat or Clint Eastwood)   Its our entire culture.   And I think you detract away from that when you pick and choose only asians... or hammers what have you.   Removing one piece of media from the whole culture solves nothing.

That's censorship.  And we don't need that as a result of this poor soul.

Yes, you did.  You proposed that Cho Yun Fat had some sort of movie poster influence on the kid.

Cho Seung-Hui is the definition of insanity.  Are you kidding??  You do not understand mental illness.   Please do more research on the topic than you do on this teenager.  75% of what ALL news stations guess about the boy will be wrong.   You are buying into their hype.   Cho wasn't sending you some secret message.   "Ax ismail" isn't rosebud.

Read about every other serial killer and you'll find most were sociopathic.  Charles Whitman, the clock tower sniper that killed 16 people had a history of mental illness.   You will find trends.   But you will never understand insanity.

That's what's so insane about it.

See my edit.   Sorry it took some time.   A good ten minutes to prove that those photos mean jack squat.  You want to understand the killer?  He was mentally ill and bullied over his race and intelligence.   And he wanted attention.  You can stop being intrigued now.

[missing link]

Cho Yun Fat = Cho Seung-Hui???????? We've found the missing link!  This case is solved.  Lock up asian cinema.... and asian actors while you're at it!

I made a wonderful smoothie the other day, with mandarin oranges being a prime ingredient!


Ive always loved em'.

[Cho Seung-Hui Video Released]

Why is someone defending counterstrike in this thread?  Go somewhere else.  The fact that you are protecting your right to kill imaginary people is sickening right now.

Cho Seung-Hui Video Released  (I am not linking you to it however)


There is a video which was sent to NBC News in the period between the 7AM shootings and the later shootings. It features the killer himself. Refuse to watch these kinds of things. Can you imagine how many more murders there would be if every killer was guaranteed a slot on prime time television?

Shameful media and their 'scoops'. They are further victimizing the survivors by harassing them day in and day out. They are clamoring over dead bodies for scraps of information to get an edge. But airing a mass murderer's dying wish is too far. And the media thinks that we want to see these kinds of things.

At one point Fox was going to publish OJ's "If I Did It Here's How" book through their sister company Harper Collins. Is there any question to why someone would do this? Seung- Hui has gained your attention. He found an audience. Refuse to watch and encourage others to show dissent toward the decision to broadcast murderers.

Well there are supposed to be restrictions on the mentally ill.   But suffice to say these restrictions need amendment or serious scrutiny.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9800EED8143EF932A25757C0A9669C8B63

Most background checks only show if the person was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital not that there was a history of mental disorder.   This is mostly attributed to privacy laws for the mentally ill.

I would advise against the view "no guns period"  but I would also advise against "no gun control period."   These are extremist philosophies based on emotion, and not on reality.   Yes this country was founded on a revolution against the government.  That revolution would not be possible without unarmed citizens.  Yes, technology has granted guns ridiculous firing rates. Yes there are guns all over the US.

The VT shooter didn't pick up his guns out of a garbage can.   He bought them legally according to the state of Virginia's laws.  But he should have had paperwork, some red flag in the computer system which would have denied him access to the glock and the Walther P22 which he bought February and March of this year.   There's a compromise I think gun control extremists can reach when it comes to the mentally ill.

Any mentally ill person can purchase a gun & go on a shooting spree the same day as long as its their first offense.  Completely legal until the very first shot is fired.   Both the VT shooter and the UT shooter had medical histories.