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20 People Shot Dead on Virginia Tech Campus

OMGturt1es said:
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...because shootings occur all the time, and almost never turn into rampages. i'm sure the university could have improved in its response, but let's not be so quick to scape goat them. i'm sure they did their best, and i'm sure that, given the evidence available at the time, they were acting what they considered to be the best course of action.

if you don't completely over react to every single threat that ever occurs, eventually something crazy will happen, and you'll not have properly prepared. do we want to accept this risk, or chain ourselves up inside a box everytime anything that might be bad is said to possibly have happened?
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Believe me I wasn't scapegoating them, not at all. I am genuinely curious. I would assume that they had a reason to think that he left. I am just wondering why.
 
LawnOven said:
Believe me I wasn't scapegoating them, not at all. I am genuinely curious. I would assume that they had a reason to think that he left. I am just wondering why.
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firstly, in the great majority of all shootings, i'd suspect that the shooter flees the scene of the crime.

secondly, from what i recall, witness accounts led authorities to conclude that not only had the shooter left the school, and not only had the shooter likely left the state, but that the second shooting spree was unrelated to the first.

it looks as though the university and police are already being lambasted by the media. i think the university and police are being held to unjustifiable and unrealistic expectations. i feel sorry for those that were involved with the initial investigation. i'm certain they feel terrible enough without the likely upcoming crucification.
 
OMGturt1es said:
i support concealed carry permits. i don't own a gun, so i would never be found carrying one. that is my choice, however, and it's a choice that i should be free to make, not one that should be legislated away.

i don't think i could manage to shoot anyone in any of these situations. i'd be too busy curled in a fetal position, crying, soiling myself. i'm a coward. i'm a wimp. i freeze up in normal confrontations. i just don't have it in me.

but other people may be well trained. other people may be able to come to my defense. in example, last term, one of my class mates had just left iraq. another three grew up using firearms, and were competent in handling firearms.

so here i am. i support concealed weapon permits, even though i know i'd not be the one with the gun.
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I am neither a fan or nor opponent of conceal carry per se. (And I want to point out as I always do, I'm in Texas, so I have a bit of a different perspective than other people might.) What I object to is ex post facto of these massacres that if only someone had a gun there, they could have killed the gunman or even worse If I were there.... Well, in the link above I gave an example of what can happen when someone with a gun permit confronts someone like that, and I haven't seen any examples in this thread yet of massacres/mass murders being averted by someone with a conceal carry permit.

That's quite different from saying some dead solid marksman couldn't have whipped out his trusty Glock and dropped the killed today as soon as he opened fire. I'm just suggesting that if only someone had a gun in there, they could have killed the gunman is an exercise in wishful thinking, not a serious contemplation of the issue.

To add, just for disclosure, I have considered getting a concealed carry permit and will continue to consider it an option for me in the future. My objection is to the emotional rhetoric, not to conceal carry permits or guns.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
I am neither a fan or nor opponent of conceal carry per se. (And I want to point out as I always do, I'm in Texas, so I have a bit of a different perspective than other people might.) What I object to is ex post facto of these massacres that if only someone had a gun there, they could have killed the gunman or even worse If I were there.... Well, in the link above I gave an example of what can happen when someone with a gun permit confronts someone like that, and I haven't seen any examples in this thread yet of massacres/mass murders being averted by someone with a conceal carry permit.

That's quite different from saying some dead solid marksman couldn't have whipped out his trusty Glock and dropped the killed today as soon as he opened fire. I'm just suggesting that if only someone had a gun in there, they could have killed the gunman is an exercise in wishful thinking, not a serious contemplation of the issue.

To add, just for disclosure, I have considered getting a concealed carry permit and will continue to consider it an option for me in the future. My objection is to the emotional rhetoric, not to conceal carry permits or guns.
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exactly.

even one trained in weapons handling can get killed if a confrontation is made. maybe it could be argued that, in some cases, a confrontation can make the situation worse? i'm sure it could happen.

but it does provide some chance that one may be able and willing to "save the day". i'd suspect there are many examples of those with concealed permits that do "save the day", and many examples of those with concealed permits that don't save the day.

so long as scrutiny is used in obtaining concealed weapons permits, i'd rather competent folk be armed in my classes, if they wish-- instructors as well.

ETA: so far as those that claim concealed weapons laws would have prevented these attacks, i agree with you. however, many in this thread have noted that there's simply no way to know if concealed weapons laws would have made a difference. the point is that they might have, and that, had any of those students executed had the training to properly handle firearms, but failed to carry because laws prevented from doing so in class, perhaps the concealed weapons laws are indirectly responsible for at least a portion of the blood spilled.

it's a big if, but had this event occured last term in my classes, as i knew at least two competent students that would carry if not forbidden by law, it's an important if, and is worthy of discussion, i think.

BTW, thanks for your thoughful responses. i apprecaite the fact that you've not resorted to emotional rhetoric, as others did previously in this thread. i know the topic of gun control is already the source of heated argument, let alone the fact that this topic is fueled by the initial emotional reaction to 33 (?) dead innocent people.
 
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OMGturt1es said:
firstly, in the great majority of all shootings, i'd suspect that the shooter flees the scene of the crime.

secondly, from what i recall, witness accounts led authorities to conclude that not only had the shooter left the school, and not only had the shooter likely left the state, but that the second shooting spree was unrelated to the first.

it looks as though the university and police are already being lambasted by the media. i think the university and police are being held to unjustifiable and unrealistic expectations. i feel sorry for those that were involved with the initial investigation. i'm certain they feel terrible enough without the likely upcoming crucification.
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Ahh, interesting. You don't happen to have a source for that do you? There seems to be a lot of scattered information. hopefully there will be a more complete picture tomorrow.

As for the media; when something like this happens people always look for someone to blame. Perhaps the police could have done more, but everyone can always 'do more'. The police have a lot of responsibilities and not always enough man power. Had they thought the shooter was going to go on a shooting spree I'm sure they would have acted accordingly. In life it is not always possible to plan for every contingency. Even when it comes to the police.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
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You do realize that during this mornings shootings VT there were cops all over the place because of the murders before the massacre right?.....
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Which points out that you would need the person with the gun to be in the right place at the right time, and able to use the gun, yadda yadda. So the number of hand guns people would have to be wearing for the one person to be able to take this guy out (like everyone with a gun would even win the gunfight) would probably mean an extra 30 deaths at least over time by accidents and other people using the gun in a rage. It is just not skeptical thinking. It's a fantasy.
 
LawnOven said:
Ahh, interesting. You don't happen to have a source for that do you? There seems to be a lot of scattered information. hopefully there will be a more complete picture tomorrow.

As for the media; when something like this happens people always look for someone to blame. Perhaps the police could have done more, but everyone can always 'do more'. The police have a lot of responsibilities and not always enough man power. Had they thought the shooter was going to go on a shooting spree I'm sure they would have acted accordingly. In life it is not always possible to plan for every contingency. Even when it comes to the police.
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At the time of the second shooting, the police believed they were already questioning the suspect in the first. The description given of the first shooter didn't match the description of the second.
 
LawnOven said:
Ahh, interesting. You don't happen to have a source for that do you? There seems to be a lot of scattered information. hopefully there will be a more complete picture tomorrow.

As for the media; when something like this happens people always look for someone to blame. Perhaps the police could have done more, but everyone can always 'do more'. The police have a lot of responsibilities and not always enough man power. Had they thought the shooter was going to go on a shooting spree I'm sure they would have acted accordingly. In life it is not always possible to plan for every contingency. Even when it comes to the police.
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exactly.

i hope that we are able to avoid scapegoating the police and university in this thread. the authorities on scene made decisions based on the evidence available. these are folk that are trained to deal with these situations.

had there been evidence that the shooter was to go on a rampage, i'm sure more would have been done.

regarding the witness testimony, as i recall, i heard that from an authority at an early press conference. the university/authorities claimed that there was no reason to believe that the shooter was still on campus. it was claimed that witness testimony suggested the shooter was likely fleeing the state. it was also claimed that when the rampage began, it was not thought to be related to the early shootings.

and yet, the university and authorities are being critized because they should have been on hightened alert because two bomb threats were made earlier this year. it's scapegoating. bomb threats happen all the time. my fiancee's work used to get monthly bomb threats-- well, untill they found out it was one of the worker's boyfriends helping to get some extra days off.
 
skeptigirl said:
Which points out that you would need the person with the gun to be in the right place at the right time, and able to use the gun, yadda yadda. So the number of hand guns people would have to be wearing for the one person to be able to take this guy out (like everyone with a gun would even win the gunfight) would probably mean an extra 30 deaths at least over time by accidents and other people using the gun in a rage. It is just not skeptical thinking. It's a fantasy.
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well, no.

had any of the students in any of the class rooms been able and willing to carry, and responsibly handle a firearm, but been thwarted by legislature, then there's a decent chance that the incident could have ended much more quickly.

accidents do happen, but deaths by accidental shoootings are statistically not very likely, especially, i would assume, among the demographic that laws currently prevent from carrying on campus-- those that are trained to properly handle firearms.

if we want to reduce accidental deaths at universities, we better start filling those damned pools with concrete. (i have no idea if anyone has ever died in a pool at any campus, but in general, they are responsible for a greater percentage of accidental deaths than are accidental shootings... as i recall!)
 
a_unique_person said:
At the time of the second shooting, the police believed they were already questioning the suspect in the first. The description given of the first shooter didn't match the description of the second.
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Wow... do you have a source for that? That's a bit freakish.
 
Tricky said:
According to the department of vital statistics, In the US there were about 110,000 firearm homicides from 1990 to 1997 (yes, data's a bit old, but I'm guessing they haven't changed by an order of magnitude.)

That works out to about 13,700 homicides per year or more than 35 homicides per day. (Approximately 80% of the homicides were from handguns.)

I do not wish to downplay the seriousness of today's tragedy, but looking at the statistics, such a tragedy happens every day, but spread out rather than in one place. It doesn't make much sense to get outraged over this episode of murder by firearms unless you are going to be outraged every single day by firearm murders.

...snip...
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As I read your post I realised that the 13,700 is just a statistic.

I suspect this is sadly something deep in the human psyche, we can extend grief only a very small distance from ourselves so, one person being killed we can "emotionally" understand, even 2 or 3 or a dozen, but by the time we reach 13,700 we have no "emotional" understanding and the figure is just a figure on a page.

Perhaps this is why the most successful campaigns for change always seem to start with comparatively minor and small events - whether it's one named person not moving down the bus or one named little girl sexually attacked and killed in the most brutal manner. We can understand that - but 13,700 - that is too impersonal too far removed from us for us to generate that "something most be done" anger.
 
So the question is: Would America be safer if more Americans owned hand guns?

I don’t think it would be safer, because the consequences of disagreement between individuals and groups become greater in magnitude thus fear increases. We make less rational choices when we’re scared, which lead to more poor decisions and growing distrust between individuals and groups.
 
LawnOven said:
Wow... do you have a source for that? That's a bit freakish.
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Just a reporter talking on the news tonight. Of course, that doesn't mean he's right, but I believe the first part is correct from other stories I have read. The police thought they had the suspect, which would explain why they didn't lock the whole place up. That it was two different shootings is speculation, I think.
 
I believe Tricky's post has been by far the most insightful one in this discussion so far.

athon said:
Mind you, if everybody was openly encouraged by the surrounding culture to carry a weapon, those 30-odd saved lives would be replaced by a larger number of accidental shootings, suicides and spur-of-the moment murders.
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Let's work out the numbers, shall we?
In the past ten years, there have been 32 theoretically preventable deaths (by school shooting) in U.S. universities - let's say 3 theoretically saveable lives per year.
There are some 17.5 million university students in the U.S. In general U.S. population, National Vital Statistics Report 2003 says that 0.15 males and 0.1 females per 100,000 die from accidental discharge of firearm per year. If U.S. university students carried guns proportionally to general U.S. population and we assume average 0.000125% accident death rate, this gives some 22 deaths per year just from accidental discharge - not even considering homicides.

Most recent school massacres actually happened in high schools rather than universities. In the past ten years, there have been 30 theoretically preventable deaths (by school schooting) in U.S. high schools - let's say 3 theoretically saveable lives per year.
There are some 16.4 million high school students in the U.S. If they carried guns proportionally to general U.S. population, this gives some 20 deaths per year just from accidental discharge - not even considering homicides.

I wish gun culture advocates could do basic math.
 
OMGturt1es said:
well, no.

had any of the students in any of the class rooms been able and willing to carry, and responsibly handle a firearm, but been thwarted by legislature, then there's a decent chance that the incident could have ended much more quickly.

accidents do happen, but deaths by accidental shoootings are statistically not very likely, especially, i would assume, among the demographic that laws currently prevent from carrying on campus-- those that are trained to properly handle firearms.

if we want to reduce accidental deaths at universities, we better start filling those damned pools with concrete. (i have no idea if anyone has ever died in a pool at any campus, but in general, they are responsible for a greater percentage of accidental deaths than are accidental shootings... as i recall!)
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There are many things that can prevent accidents but there's no reason to derail this thread to reply to your strawman. Suffice it to say I advocate reducing risk wherever you can.

But that wasn't what I said. I said in order to have enough people carrying guns to have one in the right place at the right time with those skills you mention, you would have to have so many additional guns in circulation among young college students that the accidental and rage shooting incidents would most certainly increase the gun fatality rate by well over 32 additional deaths. You can look up the data to see how many fatal accidents there are per gun owned to show that no brainer.

But your version, the one well trained person with the gun, is a fantasy. I can fantasize too. I fantasize this guy's ex-girlfriend (if that's what set the guy off) recognized the warning signs because we educate everyone about them, and the ex-girlfriend went to police who actually took her seriously and because legislation had been passed that gave police the power to take action before the girl is murdered (rather than just giving her a restraining order and telling her to file a complaint when he violates it so they can arrest him let him out on bail more pissed than before the restraining order, not tell her, and return to kill her). In my fantasy the police arrest this guy before he fires a single shot. They search his residence and find the plan and weapons so he is held without bond, convicted, and by the time he gets out of jail, she's finished college and her can't find her.

I mean as long as you're fantasizing....
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
So the question is: Would America be safer if more Americans owned hand guns?

I don’t think it would be safer, because the consequences of disagreement between individuals and groups become greater in magnitude thus fear increases. We make less rational choices when we’re scared, which lead to more poor decisions and growing distrust between individuals and groups.
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The evidence is ignored like the evidence for so many other things. I take it if these are skeptics arguing against gun control they have the same blind spot for the evidence as god believing skeptics have for that respective evidence.
 
a_unique_person said:
Just a reporter talking on the news tonight. Of course, that doesn't mean he's right, but I believe the first part is correct from other stories I have read. The police thought they had the suspect, which would explain why they didn't lock the whole place up. That it was two different shootings is speculation, I think.
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Talk about speculation, Olbermann kept going on about the previous bomb threats to the campus being connected. How on Earth would that be more than speculation at this point?

And normally I like Olbermann.
 
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