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20 People Shot Dead on Virginia Tech Campus

OMGturt1es said:
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.
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I think you meant to say, "had any of the students in any of the class rooms been able and willing to carry, and responsibly handle a firearm, and not been thwarted by legislature, then there's a decent chance that the incident could have ended much more quickly."

I agree with you that we really can't know what would have happened had some of the students been carrying that day. As far as the claims go that there would be more overall shootings, both accidental and deliberate, if everyone were packing, I think that's a red herring. Again, Virginia allows you to carry a concealed weapon, if you have a permit. If you don't have such a permit, you must carry a weapon out in the open, if you're going to carry one at all. You don't need a concealed-carry permit to carry a gun; you only need one to hide it.

Well, the next time I see a civilian openly carrying a weapon someplace other than at a firing range will be the first. The obvious conclusion is one of the following:
  1. Lots of Virginians have concealed-carry permits and walk around with hidden weapons;
  2. Lots of Virginians don't have concealed-carry permits, and walk around without hidden weapons.
  3. Lots of Virginians have concealed-carry permits and don't walk around with hidden weapons.
I'm betting it's no. 2. I personally fall into that category, even though I own a gun. So does my tree-hugger Woodstock-nation neighbor who's appalled that I even own a gun in the first place. So does everyone else who doesn't own a gun, as well as everyone else who owns a gun strictly to protect his home. Without statistics to back it up, I'm confident in claiming that the vast majority of Virginians do not routinely walk around carrying guns, even though it's generally perfectly legal for them to do so.

It is easy to legally get a gun in Virginia, only a little more difficult to get a concealed-carry permit. If the predictions that allowing everyone to carry a gun around would result in another Blacksburg every other day were true, we would have seen it happening already.

But we haven't.
 
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skeptigirl said:
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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Here's some speculation:

MSNBC just had an attorney prattling on about the evils of video games, talking about how one of the Columbine shooters trained on Doom, how kids are desensitized to the horror of killing other humans, how the stoic expression on the shooter's face proved that he had rehearsed this event many times on video games, blah, blah, blah.

Good grief. Talking about gun control is one thing, but this is using a horrible event to pump up a ridiculous platform to an impressive degree.

WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IF HE PLAYED VIDEO GAMES.

Having said that, it's still a stretch. Somehow the rest of society can play video games (and, personally, I love first-person shooters) without walking onto a college campus or into work and gunning down dozens of our peers. This kid had problems. He was going to do this with or without the likes of Doom.

Idiotic blather.
 
Meadmaker said:
Well, not for those 32 people killed, but that's a quibble.

Random, yes, but the simple fact is that this random things happens with greater frequency in our society than others. Perhaps we may wish to alter our society after all.

If only we could figure out how.
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Really? Do you not count the terrorists who blow themselves and dozens of other people to hell each day? Do you not count the incidents in other countries that occur? Do you not count the incidents where people with no access to firearms have used machetes or swords to kill multiple people?

Do you not count the reported incidents in the paper quoted earlier in this thread of tribespeople in primitive societies running amok and killing several tribe members before being put down?

How about this incident from Germany in 1964:
Cologne, Germany 1964
No handguns. A homemade flame thrower and a LANCE for christ's sake. Two teachers and eight kids dead, another 20 treated for burns - and the nutso chugged herbicide and killed himself.

Does the American media not report on the incidents in other countries?
How about this incident in Japan. Eight dead kids with just a knife.

People yell "Gun control" when things like this newest atrocity happen. It isn't the guns. Its the crazed sickos that are the problem. Those crazed sickos exist in every society, from the most primitive tribes to the most civilized of nations.

I'm far more scared of the day when some nutso discovers that he can steal a car and runs over dozens of people. European cities have outdoor shopping areas instead of enclosed malls. How much carnage could be caused that way?
 
Katana said:
Here's some speculation: MSNBC just had an attorney prattling on about the evils of video games, talking about how one of the Columbine shooters trained on Doom, how kids are desensitized to the horror of killing other humans, how the stoic expression on the shooter's face proved that he had rehearsed this event many times on video games, blah, blah, blah.
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The hilarious aspect of that part of the Columbine farce was DOOM is no more a realistic representation of tactical shooting than Contra on the NES. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were complete idiots who clearly wanted to become famous, and weren't particularly concerned with tight planning.

Good grief. Talking about gun control is one thing, but this is using a horrible event to pump up a ridiculous platform to an impressive degree.
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It's predictable. Amusingly, or not so amusingly, it seems John Woo was more responsible for the characteristics of the shooting than anything else.
 
Katana said:
one of the Columbine shooters trained on Doom,
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I played Doom when it first came out. Played it a lot. Really enjoyed it. Got really good at it. Made me want to go out and start shooting real people.

Getting back to the "rushing the shooter" discussion for a bit: Some people here (deliberately?) misunderstand me when I ask why nobody did it. I never made any special claims to personal bravery; for all I know, I would have ended up a quaking, pants-soiling mess on the floor, pleading for my life.

I was simply asking why the students didn't rush him as a group. That would have been the rational thing to do. Why did they not do the rational thing? Does sheer terror short-circuit the reasoning process that badly? Does the brain do some sort of mental calculus and figure that maybe there's a better chance that he'll run out of bullets or the cavalry will arrive or he'll sober up or he'll get hit by lightning, than the chance of my surviving if we rush him? Is there a denial process at work?

The people on United flight 93 on September 11, 2001 also faced certain death and fought back. Was it because they had enough time and information to dismiss their denial, and the VT students did not?

Here's a horrible, unrelated thought: Someone is working on the made-for-TV movie right now.
 
BPSCG said:
I played Doom when it first came out. Played it a lot. Really enjoyed it. Got really good at it. Made me want to go out and start shooting real people.

Getting back to the "rushing the shooter" discussion for a bit: Some people here (deliberately?) misunderstand me when I ask why nobody did it. I never made any special claims to personal bravery; for all I know, I would have ended up a quaking, pants-soiling mess on the floor, pleading for my life.

I was simply asking why the students didn't rush him as a group. That would have been the rational thing to do. Why did they not do the rational thing? Does sheer terror short-circuit the reasoning process that badly? Does the brain do some sort of mental calculus and figure that maybe there's a better chance that he'll run out of bullets or the cavalry will arrive or he'll sober up or he'll get hit by lightning, than the chance of my surviving if we rush him? Is there a denial process at work?
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Probably so. It's hard to imagine another explanation.

BPSCG said:
The people on United flight 93 on September 11, 2001 also faced certain death and fought back. Was it because they had enough time and information to dismiss their denial, and the VT students did not?
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The folks on the flight may have thought that they really had a chance to survive. If they didn't, the element of time and the opportunity that it provided for the passengers to unite was likely a key factor.

BPSCG said:
Here's a horrible, unrelated thought: Someone is working on the made-for-TV movie right now.
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Well, you're not alone. I mentioned the fact that a movie from this seems inevitable to my husband last night.
 
Time. Had the students had half an hour in a locked classroom to hatch a plan, I'm betting they would have done. Confusion, shock, disbelief and noise would have contributed to the lack of "rushing".
 
Spiritual Technology.

BPSCG said:
I played Doom when it first came out. Played it a lot. Really enjoyed it. Got really good at it.Made me want to go out and start shooting real people.
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Personally, DOOM brought me closer to traditional Christian moral values. Clearing hellhouses of demons with futuristic weaponry and the occasional sucker punch, or seeing an entire room full of them collapse in a steaming pile of turgid flesh and creating a pleasing odor for the Lord; it kind of gave me recompse for the crush I had on Rose McGowan at the time. Thank you John Carmack.
 
Well, the one thing I'm sure we can all agree on in this thread is that the MODS are putting in overtime. :)

Welcome ThinBlueLine. :) It'll be good to have the input of another police officer on the forum (Bikewer is also in law enforcement).
 
BPSCG said:
I was simply asking why the students didn't rush him as a group.
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Because someone has to get up, move deliberately towards the gunman, and with a loud clear voice call out to his fellow students "Let's rush the bastard". Guess who gets shot first.
 
Mephisto said:
Well, the one thing I'm sure we can all agree on in this thread is that the MODS are putting in overtime. :)
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True, but was it really that bad?

I don't have my posts edited very often, so I was a bit surprised this morning to see what had happened.

I know that efforts are underway to change the CT sub-forum, but are the new standards being applied forum-wide?

Or was it worse than it seemed at the time?
 
Predictably, this incident is immediately partitioned into the category of "school shooting" so as to create an artificial separation from the rampant US gun problem as a whole.

"Gee, we need to stop these School Shootings," people say, as if they're a completely separate phenomenon.

What about supermarket shootings? Car park shootings? Shootings within 10m of an evergreen tree?

Guns = shootings = death

Thank goodness I live in the UK where most people understand such a basic premise.
 
BillyJoe said:
Because someone has to get up, move deliberately towards the gunman, and with a loud clear voice call out to his fellow students "Let's rush the bastard". Guess who gets shot first.
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In that situation you have to. It would have prevented 9/11 (..and that's really the only simplistic sweeping generalization you can get away with regards to that event). That's exactly what I would have done; I don't see the particular risk involved either. If nobody sprung up to assist before I was tagged attempting to break the guy's neck or take out his vision, doom on them..
 
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