20 People Shot Dead on Virginia Tech Campus

[slingblade]

But you're right slingblade. There are no guarantees of safety; as my dad used to say, none of us is going to get out of this world alive. But we do have the right to try to keep ourselves safe.

Sorry I misunderstood your point. Thanks for setting me straight.

What bothers me is the growing sense I have that more people want that guarantee, and are willing to do just about anything to try to achieve it.

You absolutely have the right to try to keep yourself safe, no argument. I worry about how far we are willing to go, however.

 

[Flo]

I've been thinking more about this.

I think the accessibility of guns is a factor. It really is much easier to get guns in America than in other places, and it does lower the bar for people who might be contemplating murderous rampages. Those sorts don't have much stomach for paperwork, I'm guessing.

The same argument applies to Switzerland when compared to other European countries where guns (especially military issue assault rifles) are less accessible. There have been, comparatively to the size of the respective populations, a lot more rampages in Switzerland (last one this month by a 26 years old disgruntled bank employee) than in France, despite occurrences of violence are much more common.

ETA: http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rsr.html?siteSect=200101&sid=7711872&cKey=1176488518000 (in French, but gives timeline for shootings since 2001, suicides statistics and violence with army rifles kept at home)

The one thing that seems to unify most of the accounts I have seen of muckers (a term I got from an ancient, and not widely read science fiction novel for someone who runs amok killing people at random)

John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" ... good book.

is that they are lonely. I think it's easier to be lonely in America than it is elsewhere, and I'm fairly certain it's easier to be lonely today than it was in years past.

More likely loners, but I don't think loneliness particular to America.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Has nobody mentioned blaming immigration yet? I mean, the guy had a green card! It's only a matter of time before someone out there puts the two together.

I've now heard "foreign students" mentioned (this guy's been here since he was 8 years old) and on talk radio tonight, "the chemicals in your food" was mentioned.

Olbermann's "worst people in the world" segment added a couple people claiming it was the wimpy guys who failed to rush the shooter who were to blame. In other words it was the victims' fault. Pretty disgusting.

 

[Meadmaker]

The same argument applies to Switzerland when compared to other European countries where guns (especially military issue assault rifles) are less accessible. There have been, comparatively to the size of the respective populations, a lot more rampages in Switzerland (last one this month by a 26 years old disgruntled bank employee) than in France, despite occurrences of violence are much more common.

That's a pretty telling statistic.

Although, to be fair, they did say in the article that their death rate was lower than in Pays-Bas, Canada, Finland, and the United States.

I'm not sure if the guy quoting those stats chose those particular places becasue they were the only ones with higher death rates, of it they were just representative regions with higher death rates.

John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" ... good book.

That's the one. The term stuck with me.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'd like to see stats on this too, if they exist. I don't assume that this is more common today than in days of yore (adjusting for population). It's still quite rare in any case.

I did some googling. I don't have hard stats, but there's plenty of lists of similar incidents. They usually start in 1966 (the Texas incident), have a few cases in the seventies and early eighties, and then lots and lots of examples starting in the nineties.

I think it's a modern phenomenon.

 

[BPSCG]

It does seem that "blaming" society is appropriate.

Does it? I think that now that we've found out more about him, there's little disagreement that Cho Seung-Hui was deranged. How is "society" to blame for that? I am part of society; how did I contribute to his madness? What should I - and the rest of us - have done, in retrospect, to keep him from going mad?

 

[Flo]

Does it? I think that now that we've found out more about him, there's little disagreement that Cho Seung-Hui was deranged. How is "society" to blame for that? I am part of society; how did I contribute to his madness? What should I - and the rest of us - have done, in retrospect, to keep him from going mad?

"Give us a smile"

 

[BPSCG]

I asked a question earlier, and I wonder if anyone has an answer. (Not saying anyone is dodging mind you, just that the thread has a lot of traffic and it's easy to overlook a question.)

Has there ever been an incident in which someone committed one murder, and it appeared he would commit another, but he was prevented from doing so when a private citizen with a firearm incapacititated the murderer?

Yes. At a college in Virginia, no less.

"I was sick, I was sick. I need help."

That was the terse explanation Peter Odighizuwa offered yesterday when reporters outside the courthouse asked him why he shot and killed three people at the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday. Three others were wounded.

...


Those killed in Wednesday's shooting rampage were the school's dean, L. Anthony Sutin, 42, of Grundy; associate professor Thomas F. Blackwell, 41, of Grundy; and student Angela Denise Dales, 33, of Vansant. The wounded are Rebecca Claire Brown, 38, of Roanoke; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy; and Stacey Beans, 22, of Berea, Ky.

State police and school authorities allege that Odighizuwa, upset about being dismissed from school for poor grades, shot and killed Sutin and Blackwell in their upstairs offices, using a Jennings .380 semiautomatic pistol he had concealed beneath his trench coat. He then allegedly went downstairs and fatally shot Dales and wounded the three other students.

Police said they do not know how many shots were fired, but by the time fellow students tackled Odighizuwa, the two magazine clips he had with him were empty. Each magazine could hold eight rounds.

One of the students who subdued Odighizuwa was Tracy Bridges, a 25-year-old sheriff's deputy from Buncombe County, N.C., who is studying to become a lawyer.

"We went to get to class after 1 o'clock, and [student] Ted Besen and other students and I were in the classroom when we heard the first three shots," Bridges said yesterday. "It sounded kind of muffled, and a few seconds later we heard the next round of shots, and a scream.

"Me and Ted and [student] Rob Sievers went out to look. A professor ran up the stairs and said, 'Peter [Odighizuwa] has got a gun and he's shooting.' I ran back and told the class to get out. They went out the back way," Bridges said.

"We went down, too, and Peter was in the front yard. I stopped at my vehicle and got a handgun, a revolver. Ted went toward Peter, and I aimed my gun at him, and Peter tossed his gun down.

"Ted approached Peter, and Peter hit Ted in the jaw. Ted pushed him back and we all jumped on," Bridges said.

Note: Although the magazines he was carrying were empty, the one in the gun still had three rounds in it.

 

[Lonewulf]

There is no solution to this other than having gun laws similiar to the UK's enforced, and then waiting for years until all exisiting weapons fade from existence. If the right to bear arms is so important to Americans, then they have to expect incidents like that of yesterday. There are so many people, and so many guns, it is unavoidable.

And an incredibly small amount of shooting sprees, that get an abnormal amount of media coverage.

Your point?

What bothers me is the growing sense I have that more people want that guarantee, and are willing to do just about anything to try to achieve it.

You absolutely have the right to try to keep yourself safe, no argument. I worry about how far we are willing to go, however.

My personal thought:

Hunting rifles (semi-automatic and bolt-action)? Yes, with hunter's permit. (Ironically, these are the guns most accepted, and yet also most able to penetrate body armor! Funny, eh?)

Semi-automatic pistols? Yes.

Revolvers? Yes.

Let people buy 'em, providing they pass a background check. If they violate the law, demand the firearm back. If they cannot provide (They claim the gun was "stolen"), fine them an equivalent amount of money to the money they spent on the gun.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm against the purchase of outright automatic weapons, but I am for self-defense; you do NOT need an LMG or HMG to defend your house. Still, I've heard that in the Nevada desert, you can temporarily hire a .50 BMG Heavy Machine Gun, and blaze away at the desert sand in a hum-vee. That just sounds too cool to ban.

Olbermann's "worst people in the world" segment added a couple people claiming it was the wimpy guys who failed to rush the shooter who were to blame. In other words it was the victims' fault. Pretty disgusting.

100% agreed.

It was not the victim's fault. I feel that they probably could have done more to prevent their own deaths, but it was not their fault. They did not choose for a shooter to go throughout the school, and they most likely did not have the training to handle the situation.

At no point was it their fault, and I'm sorry that innocent people were killed so horribly. But I'm even more sorry that someone would downplay their deaths and put blame on them. That's about as disgusting as you can get.

Yes. At a college in Virginia, no less.

Note: Although the magazines he was carrying were empty, the one in the gun still had three rounds in it.

What? You mean someone with a gun actually managed to defuse the situation, without even shooting the shooter? Gasp!

According to Heavy Gun Control Advocates, people with guns are stupid and will start shooting each other, and go around shooting people without threatening/warning. Weird.

 

[Mephisto]

I haven't been following the discussion here, but I just wanted to pop in and comment on this subject. The way this has been covered absolutely disgusts me. It's like the media is collectively saying, "Congratulations, Cho Seung-Hu. You got the high score!"

For all the other attention seeking sociopaths with no self worth out there, what does all this coverage mean? It means I'll see you in the next thread like this, when the next one snaps and gets a higher kill count.

Who says Americans are slackers and non-competitive?

Sometimes, I really hate my species. I wonder if the dolphins would adopt me.

You'll have to go with the duckbill platypuses - the dolphins have already been corrupted.

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina


Mark Townsend in Houston
Sunday September 25, 2005
The Observer

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1577753,00.html

 

[fuelair]

Yeah, you can come up with all kinds of scenarios, including, "Gunman sees the error of his ways when he hallucinates a vision of Jesus," but what actually happened was that 32 defenseless people were murdered.

A number of people seem more concerned about possibilities than about what actually happened in real life that might have been prevented or reduced. Interesting philosophy involved - but not one I follow.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

According to Heavy Gun Control Advocates, people with guns are stupid and will start shooting each other, and go around shooting people without threatening/warning. Weird.

Need any more straw?

According to Give Everybody A Gun And Nobody Will Ever Get Shot Advocates, people with guns never make mistakes, are able to appraise every situation immediately with 100% accuracy and their performance is completely unaffected by pressure/stress, also their bullets are magic and will always hit a guilty person first time without fail leaving all innocent people around them completely unharmed. No guns ever go off accidentally or are misused.

There you go. A pair of strawmen. What do you think it adds to the discussion?

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

A number of people seem more concerned about possibilities than about what actually happened in real life that might have been prevented or reduced. Interesting philosophy involved - but not one I follow.

I assume you mean the people who are making arguments along the lines of "He would have got hold of guns even if they were illegal"?

 

[Mephisto]

If the professors were trained in firearms and all had a firearm at hand, or if a few select trusted students were trained in firearms and had access to a firearm, I guarantee that this guy wouldn't of killed but a fraction of the amount of people he did.

I guarantee that students would be less likely to debate whatever grade they were given.

 

[SirPhilip]

So you say, sitting in your comfy sofa.

Sofas as computer chairs, not a bad idea..

The particular risk is that you get shot first.

There is far less risk if it's a pistol and the distance is 10 feet. CCW classes, in fact, focus very strongly on 'distance closure' when fighting with a gun. A rifle, on the other hand...

Me, I would play dead and hope he didn't notice. Later, while reflecting on my comfy sofa, I'd wish I'd rushed the bastard as well. And in my fantasy I wouldn't get killed either.

This would have been a much better rude response if you actually had a clue about the mechanics of a handgun fight. Handgun wounds are very unlikely to produce fatal results, or if even fatal, not immediate incapacitation - unless the spinal cord or brain is destroyed. He would have had a very hard time, being small framed, tagging people in the head if they were lurching at him like a basketball player - and that's the only real thing he could do to really stop anyone coming at him in their tracks.

 

[Mephisto]

I was just watching CNN news and the crawl just said that a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology was arrested for having two assault rifles in his dorm room. Unfortunately, there was no other word, nor can I find anything online regarding the story.

 

[Reeco]

And an incredibly small amount of shooting sprees, that get an abnormal amount of media coverage.

Your point?

I was responding to someone who doubts it is the abundance of guns in the US that causes a lot of people to die by them. I'm saying no way - that is exactly the reason a lot of people die by them.

Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

 

[BPSCG]

Need any more straw?

According to Give Everybody A Gun And Nobody Will Ever Get Shot Advocates, people with guns never make mistakes, are able to appraise every situation immediately with 100% accuracy and their performance is completely unaffected by pressure/stress, also their bullets are magic and will always hit a guilty person first time without fail leaving all innocent people around them completely unharmed. No guns ever go off accidentally or are misused.

There you go. A pair of strawmen. What do you think it adds to the discussion?

Well, there are those here who would have you believe that if others had had guns, all those people untrained in the use of handguns would likely have increased, rather than decreased, the carnage.

And yet, it appears Mr. Cho had had no previous experience with handguns. He didn't bring his gun to VT from Centreville; he bought it last month in a nearby gun store. To date, there is no indication that he spent any time in a gun safety class or at a firing range; in any case, Virginia requires neither for you to be able to buy a gun.* Yet he was able to very methodically go around a college campus murdering people.

Why the presumption that other people carrying guns would be any less competent?

*"Gun nut" that I am, I see no problem in requiring someone purchasing a gun to attend a class in basic firearms safety. We require people to prove basic competence behind the wheel of a car before they are allowed to drive; I don't understand why a a similar requirement doesn't exist for people purchasing a gun. It won't stop criminals and crazies, of course, but it might make a dent in the number of accidental shootings. A friend recently inquired about what kind of revolver I owned, and asked to see it. I showed it to him, and after ascertaining it was not loaded, gave it to him with the chamber open, muzzle pointed towards the floor, and handle towards him, as I had been taught. He inspected it, put the chamber back in the ready position, and gave the gun back to me, muzzle end first. I then gave him his first lesson on gun safety, involving the proper method of giving a revolver to someone. Mind you, he is an intelligent, thoughtful, responsible person, and yet he didn't know the first thing about handling a gun safely.

 

[Mephisto]

There is far less risk if it's a pistol and the distance is 10 feet. CCW classes, in fact, focus very strongly on 'distance closure' when fighting with a gun. A rifle, on the other hand...

As a student of Filipino martial arts we were shown a law-enforcement instructional video entitled Surviving Edged Weapons, (obviously directed at the law enforcement community) which stated that an officer with an unholstered handgun requires 15 feet against a knife-wielding attacker to effectively engage him as a target.

An officer with a holstered firearm not expecting a knife attack requires 21 feet distance between him and his attacker and will STILL likely be wounded. A pocketknife (or even a sharpened pencil) could be a deciding factor in the hands of someone with a minimum amount of training.

The most dangerous gunman (at close range) using a handgun is the one who holds his weapon close against his hip.

(edited to add) Here's a link to a blurb about the video

http://www.sierratimes.com/05/04/06/sheriff.htm

 

[fuelair]

I assume you mean the people who are making arguments along the lines of "He would have got hold of guns even if they were illegal"?

No, although I do not disagree with that point. I refer to posters who have given statistics showing that if guns had been legal on campus (CP only) that more than 30 people would have been killed - just not all at once. Those statistics are amazingly flawed, but even if correct are essentially saying "better the 33 died as they did than to allow guns on campus under legally controlled conditions which statistically might (if the stats I was using were valid) eventually result in more deaths over a year."

I find this argument morally flawed. Others seem to agree.

Actually, I was being nice, at least two of the posts did say that - just not with the words in exactly the same order (and different numbers as the body count changed).