Crazy kid goes on murderous rampage across Virginia Tech… kills 32 people… it just doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Has Columbine just grown up?
I wish the people at Virginia Tech, some of whom frequent this blog, all the best. (Treat this as an open thread)
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More gun control would be prudent. Perhaps a mental health interview as well…
Mitch
I grew up in Fairfax County, where the shooter and many of the victims came from. Maybe I just pay more attention to stories that involve NoVA, but the area seems to have been hit with more than its fair share of tragedy in the last five years (VA Tech, 9-11/Pentagon, Beltway Snipers).
As someone who enjoys target shooting and believes in the principles behind the second amendment, I don’t think this event should or will result in drastic changes to gun laws. The guy was a law-abiding citizen when he purchased the weapons, and the guns he used were pretty standard. If you go after these types of guns, you might as well ban everything. Perhaps adding a review of mental health records into the background checks would be a good idea, but then you are talking about revoking doctor-patient confidentiality, which is probably worse for public health than letting law-abiding nutjobs buy guns.
That´s really a terrible thing.
But as long as there will be no changes in the weapons law, the next massacre will come sooner or later. I just can´t believe that there is such an easy access to weapons…
You can also make the argument that the magnitude of this tragedy could have been reduced if Virginia Tech didn’t ban the possession of firearms on campus. (Virginia state law allows permit holders to carry concealed weapons and *any* citizen to carry a handgun in plain view).
I find it unlikely that any one student would have had a weapon on them, given the sense of security a campus seems to impart – even at Virginia. Even so, I would assume it to be considerably less likely that, even if VT would have allowed guns on campus, any student would have been competent enough at the time to shoot a single guy in the middle of a panicking crowd.
As a supporter of the 2nd myself, I simply can’t see any way this would have been mitigated by any exception to the campus’ rules regarding possession of a firearm and that the only way that something like this could be prevented would simply be to ban all guns all the time.
Or we could live in a society where EVERYONE is armed out of fear of EVERYONE ELSE.
That´s true! I think it´s just mad to think everybody should have the right to have a gun. That´s a vicious circle. If there wasn´t that easy access to weapons in the U.S., there were certainly less shootings and homicides. I don´t know anybody in my circle of friends who has a firearm and that gives me the good feeling that I am not sourrended by guns.
First, criminals will always have guns. Second, the guy wasn’t in the middle of a crowd, he fired from just inside the doorways. Granted, the people in the first room are pretty much screwed, but someone carrying in another room could have easily drawn his weapon and been ready to fire.
There are more than a few people in Virginia who carry concealed all the time, and wear a gun like wearing a watch. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to think that someone in the building could have been carrying if it were allowed.
As for the idea of allowing gun ownership, one of the major principles behind the 2nd is that the government often does a rotten job of protecting its citizens. Look at the rioting/looting that takes place after natural disasters. I like the fact that in our country, you have the means to protect yourself in these situations.
Forgive the disjoined feeling of this reply, but I loathe making these things too long…
So, the number would have been 15 dead and not 30 had someone gotten to him? That wouldn’t have stopped this conversation from happening and the ensuing debate on gun control. Of course, some freaked out sophomore with a gun could have ripped it out and started shooting in a panic and killed another 10 in the crossfire.
The door was chained up anyway, so someone in an adjoining room wouldn’t have been able to get in.
I’m not recommending or endorsing changing gun ownership laws in the state of Virginia or federally – my heart lies near and dear to the 9th and 10th. Such things are your problems. But no one expects this sort of thing on college campuses and there are only a few, very fortuitous scenarios where someone trained and in possession of a firearm could have stopped this. Indeed, I can image a number of scenarios where a frightened kid pulling his piece would make the whole thing a lot worse.
The doors to the building were chained, not the doors to each classroom. Still, the point of having the gun is not to go hunting for the source of gunshots in an adjoining room, it is to wait in case the guy with a gun comes and tries to kill *you*.
I actually deleted a line from the comment that essentially stated, perhaps very coldly, that were I to have my gun with me, I wouldn’t have concerned myself with the crowd present. My mission would be to not die. Not killing other people uninvolved would be a distant second priority and I sure as hell wouldn’t play Rambo and run to the source of the gunfire.
Since that would be the most logical thing (I think most people would agree with what I would do), people with guns would either have had no impact on the situation or would have made it worse. So the argument that VT being a “gun free zone” caused the tragedy to be as bad as it was holds no water… IMHO (as H as I can be, at least)
Paul, your logic seems well off of rational. You might want to step back and try to see the situation from a more distanced perspective.
Mitch
“Democracy doesn’t prevent murder – it prevents concentration camps” is roughly the quote I was looking for (I don’t believe I’ve mistated it, though if someone knows the real quote and I have they can tell me).
I don’t believe Paul is off rational – considering the ability of unchecked governments to murder their own citizens, particularly in recent (20th c) history, and the impossibility of sealing the US’s borders or the government’s arsenals well enough to prevent bad people from obtaining guns, that perspective doe not seem irrational at all.
Well, I’m in good company with the majority of America. I really hope the Dems don’t decide to make gun control an issue in the next election; it will absolutely destroy their good chances of victory.
I don’t think campuses have ever had a real sense of security. I went to a city university (granted not a bad city, but) and there was maybe one policeman who might actually have intimidated me (if I were looking to commit mayhem) and a few others who appeared competent. Even with that, it’s unlikely any of them were armed and could have done anything about this type of incident. It seems like a problem if you can’t protect your students from any sort of violent crime on campus but deny them the (potential) ability to do so.
The problem with students and guns is whether the presence of guns will prevent more crimes than it facilitates – whether drunk or immature students will hurt or kill more people than armed students might prevent in this sort of case. I wouldn’t be impressed with the maturity of many undergrads with guns, and might follow schools’ tendency to ban them, but in that case it’s important that the schools hire good enough security to provide what they are implicitly promising by banning guns.
Sorry to self reply.
Guns are allowed not necessarily for fear of other people, but for fear of government. The government might be less likely to take too much power if they aren’t the only ones with the capacity to use force. I don’t think that history has disproven this reasoning.
Licensing rules, etc., have had a tendency to be abused (look at voting rights in Jim Crow) to prevent the expression of the rights being constrained – while in theory they aren’t a bad idea, they aren’t going to be implemented in theory. The 2nd Amemndment is a statement that the right to own guns is a preexisting right, not a privilege that government can choose to grant or revoke – licensing tends to apply to privileges, but is a problem with rights. Restriction on gun show sales or waiting periods probably wouldn’t have helped – if he was legal, then he would have passed any sort of vetting, and I thought that the time between purchase and use was a week – long enough for the shooter to find his conscience.
If you could get you head around this, there would be a problem with your sanity or conscience, I think.
don’t know the full details of the laws in virgina, but surely a licensing system is a little more rational than open season? here in NZ, you can apply for a license (~$200, background check including two referees, visit from the police and an inspection of your (mandatory) gun safe), and get any useful hunting firearm (rifle or shotgun, no full bore semi-autos with magazines >7 rounds). the possession of other classes of firearms (pistols, military-style semi-automatics) require further security, and background checks. it’s a happy balance, users of firearms (myself inclusive) are fine, and the proliferation of less justifiable firearms (pistols, military-style semi-automatics) is kept in check.
I think that pistols are among the most justifiable guns to own, both in terms of sport and self-defense. And when you start charging big fees for gun permits, a lot of people stand up and say that you’re discriminating against the poor.
yes pistol shooting is a challenging sport – but the original design purpose of a pistol is to kill other humans, with a readily transportable and concealable weapon. i guess we operate in a different mindset here – the use of a gun against another human, even for self-defence, is not a valid reason for owning a firearm.
Yes, we probably have a different view of the value of human life. I am of the opinion that a guy trying to shoot me deserves to die. I also think habitual felons, murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and child molesters should be executed.
let me get this clear – if it was me or him, i’d have no qualms about pulling the trigger. what i’m getting at is that by tightening things up just a little, you could be restricting the access of people such as this guy to such weapons, at no hinderance to yourself.
Judging from the story about this guy, it seems likely that a background check–including references from people who knew him– would have stopped him from getting a gun legally.
I doubt he would have the social connections (illicit or otherwise) to easily purchase a gun illegally. Forgive me for the hypothetical, but perhaps he would have tried to rob a gun store. If that were the case, then who better to deal out vigilante justice than a gun shop owner protecting his wares?
This sort of thing doesn’t occur in Switzerland, where every male citizen adult is essentially required to have a submachine gun in the house.
I’m a gun owner and a second amendment supporter. You, sir, are a drooling moron, and the thought that people as stupid as you are allowed to own guns is one reason why I feel it is necessary to also do so.
————-
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WO.....index.html
‘Grudge’ behind Swiss gun massacre
September 27, 2001 Posted: 2:48 PM EDT (1848 GMT)
ZUG, Switzerland (CNN) — A gunman who killed 14 people at a Swiss regional parliament building had a grudge against local transport bosses, officials have revealed.
The Swiss attacker sprayed assault rifle fire around the parliament chamber and set off an explosive device during the incident on Thursday.
He seriously wounded another 10 people before turning the gun on himself in Switzerland’s worst-ever shooting spree.
Three members of the seven-member state government were killed and two were seriously injured, including state President Hanspeter Uster, said government member Robert Bisig. He survived by diving behind a desk.
The other 11 who died were all members of the state parliament in Zug, a wealthy lakeside town near Zurich.
Paul, I think that somewhere in your argument, you are assuming that people are rational. Giving everyone on campus the right to own guns is a highly risky decision, because then we just have more people who would cause havoc if they turned irrational. Think of how many times irrational accidents have been averted because somebody got mad, but didn’t have access to a gun. Also, what kind of culture would we have in a place of learning, if everyone possibly has a concealed firearm on them?
However, I am in favour of officially giving a select number of “responsible” people on campus a gun. We can possibly have a gun in every major building for example. I think there needs to be a compromise somewhere.
Your plan might be more conducive to private schools. Private schools can arbitrarily ban guns or grant people the right to possess them on campus. Public school’s like Virginia Tech are a different story. Virginia’s attorney general has already interpreted the VT ban as illegal, but the situation is still up in the air.
Perhaps this argument is a bit cliched, but guns don’t murder people. People were being slaughtered en masse long before the invention of black powder. If someone is as sick as this kid apparently was, and we don’t have the appropriate social structures to detect and avert such a threat, then he doesn’t necessarily need a gun to kill 30+ people. Timothy McVey didn’t use any firearms, and he got a lot more than 30 people. Cho could have poisoned a mass of people, perhaps. London is trying to deal with an epidemic of knife violence that has burgeoned since they virtually banned firearms from the city. I think the real issue here is that our socitey is doing a piss-poor job of managing the urge to kill. Considering how often we are exposed to depictions of murder sans consequence in this country, it is a credit to the reasonableness of most of us that we don’t see more of this kind of tragedy.
You, of all people, know my generous feelings on the second, but I can’t think of anyone that can run into a classroom and knife 30 people to death.
And bombs and mass poisonings require considerable premeditation. A gun needs little thought to discharge. It’s hard to say Cho wouldn’t have calmed down by the time he loaded his U-Haul up with fertilizer.
It’s pretty clear that Cho had plenty of premeditation.
How is it clear? Until some evidence pops up suggesting that he intended to buy those guns for that purpose I see no evidence to suggest it.
Chaining the doors of the building so that no one can escape strongly suggests premeditation. Also, unless there was a target range at school, I think the six or seven full clips suggests premeditation too.
I would mean premeditation that would extend out to several days. You can buy a few clips and chains a few hours before hand… then maybe you can rent a U-Haul and buy fertilizer in the same amount of time… I can’t honestly say I’ve ever tried to see how rapidly I could stock up on weapons and explosives, nor have I ever directly measured how long it takes to cool down from psycho-rampage-angry to just pissed. (also, just as a tid bit, my campus had a shooting range in the student union)
I think the tapes he sent to NBC pretty much lock this down as “premeditated”.
Since the departure of the first author of the comment, we have been unable to reproduce the logic that provided the rational for the initial comment. Therefore I retract my comment. We regret having mislead the blogging community.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me that you’re not going to bring up the video game argument, that Cho was playing a little too much GTA and that caused him to snap and take out 30-some innocents.
The rest of your argument, I agree with wholeheartedly. There have been mass murders and massacres since the first club was picked up and wielded with impugnity. Now, we just have more “sophisticated” weapons to kill people with, which is more a product of an ever-increasing technology and not necessary an artifact of violent news reports, video games and movies.
No, I’m not bringing up the video game argument. I’m just saying that in a society such as ours (or perhaps the Roman Empire, as another example of a bloodthirsty culture), where violence is popularly depicted as an acceptable form of conflict resolution (i.e. foreign policy enacted through armed struggle, WWE, any Hollywood action flick, Jerry Springer et cetera), some of the less socialized among us might just whip out a piece or a baseball bat to redress a grievance. Ask yourself why Canada, which has a level of gun ownership per capita on par with the United States, has a much lower incidence of gun violence, and violence in general. I’m guessing it has to do their robust social support structure. Granted, they have school shootings in Canada, too, though. The fact of the matter is, a nut is a nut is a nut. Stripping Americans of a Constitutionally protected right is not going to fix that. At some point we are going to have to start addressing the disease instead of just the symptoms.
Agreed, completely. Locking the guns away won’t stop this from happening. Even when he went to buy the guns, though, he was a mild-mannered, well-meaning young man, according to the clerk (who might also be saying that just to take any heat off himself and his store).
I don’t necessarily agree with the violent media being the blame for this (though, it probably doesn’t help). This guy was messed up. The sad thing is, there were LOTS of signs. This wasn’t the typical “Well, he was a really great guy, friendly, open, generally pleasant to be around” response you get when something like this happens elsewhere. You know the typical “Well, he was quiet, never bothered us, seemed like a nice enough fellow” you get from neighbors once they hear they’ve got a mass-murdered living next door. This was a case where the disease should have been addressed long ago, except no one saw anything like this coming. Hopefully, people have learned something from this and are not just running around making sure security is up to par but planning on how to identify possible problems in the future.
“London is trying to deal with an epidemic of knife violence that has burgeoned since they virtually banned firearms from the city”
There has always been knife crime in Britain´s big cities, and implying that this “epidemic” has been caused by banning guns is a spurious point at best. There is no real reason for American society to have the number of guns it does, and continually falling back on an ancient constitution doesnt cut it.
just so you know….
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-7....._massacre/
For 45 minutes on Dec. 6, 1989 an enraged gunman roamed the corridors of Montreal’s École Polytechnique and killed 14 women. Marc Lepine, 25, separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the classroom of female engineering students he screamed, “I hate feminists.” Almost immediately, the Montreal Massacre became a galvanizing moment in which mourning turned into outrage about all violence against women.
Americans will always love their guns (or at least the right to own them and kill other people with them) – and the rest of the civilized world will never understand why, doesn’t matter how much you try and explain it to us … 2nd Amendment nonsense, etc…, we won’t… And sure, even if you did legislate against casual gun ownership, the bad people would get their hands on them. Anyway, it’s more of a deep-seated psychological thing, either that or you really are afraid the English will try an revoke your independence.
Porkchop sandwiches!
Sorry, just feeding the troll. Nothing to see here.
So.. don’t live in the US then? It’s hardly like we’re demanding you adopt our gun laws. If you want to be gun-free, whoopee for you. Personally I like the ol’ “armed society is polite society” thing. It reminds me of that epidemic of “happy slappers” in Britain where chavs would go around hitting people and recording it. That shit would never fly here because they’d get capped the second they tried it. This is our country!
1. Lived in the US for the best part of a decade and left not too long ago. 2. I don’t believe I suggested (or even implied) you were demanding we adopt your gun laws. 3. Yes, seriously, whoopie for me. 4. Well, there’s a great solution to the problems of society, as soon as someone pisses you off or slaps you around a bit, you shoot them – marvellous! 5. You’re welcome to your country.
“It’s hardly like we’re demanding you adopt our gun laws.”
Actually… we are! The NRA pumped millions of dollars into the pro-gun camp in Brazil during their public referendum a couple of years ago. Before the millions of dollars and the commercials financed and created by the NRA, the anti-ordinance folks were easily going to win. But there is nothing like skilled marketing to turn the tide. How quickly we forget…
But that’s all good of course. Brazil is like our stupid, little brother who speaks some weird language. They need guidance on the important things in life.
crazy people + guns = trouble
Pistols and assault rifles are designed for one purpose only.
Those who buy them are displaying a sense of paranoia.
They are already a little crazy.
Trouble brewing.
Pistols are a great means of self-protection, and target shooting with a pistol is good fun. I’m not sure which one of these is your “one purpose”.
I agree with Kyle above…it’s considerably more complicated to either knife 30 people, or to concoct an elaborate plan to blow up Norris with explosives. Guns are used because that’s what they are designed for; quick, easy, efficient killing. So the “He would have killed people anyway” argument, while true, does not hold much water. Not having guns would not prevent killing, but it would very likely mitigate it. And reflecting on my previous argument, I think that even having a few chosen officials have guns (unless they are law-enforcement officials) would not help because as someone said, they are not going to have the generous sacrificial tendency of running to the scene of the shooting to try to shoot the killer.
By the way, notice how this event is quite rightly getting so much coverage, but daily events in Iraq (like 150 dead today) are now considered routine and boring?
Paul,
Shotguns are designed to kill fast moving aerial beasties.
Rifles are designed to kill stationary/slow moving terrestrial beasties.
Assault rifles designed to kill large numbers of people over short to medium ranges. (maximum soft target take-down as I once read in Jane’s defense weekly)
Pistols are designed to kill human beings at short ranges.
All of these guns can be used for target shooting or self defense. I agree that pistols are great for target shooting. But this is not what the vast majority of pistols are designed to do. They are designed specifically to kill human beings at close range. Self defense with a pistol fulfills those design specifications.
Shotguns are also good for shooting down an intruder in the close quarters of a naval vessel.
Pistols are also used for hunting, especially bigger caliber for bigger game (bear, boar, etc…).
Ahaha I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t see the point in hunting with a pistol, they’re almost certainty a weapon designed for defense and not strategic assault. I mean, I can’t say i’ve ever hunted anything with a pistol or know anyone that has – they’re just fun to shoot.
“Handguns: Handguns, while not always the most accurate and powerful weapons, do present a challenge for hunters. You must be an expert marksman and should realize the limitations of handguns when shooting at deer. The best handguns to use are the long-barreled bolt action or break action single shots that are chambered for rifle cartridges such as the .30-30 and .35 Remington. Becoming an expert pistol shots requires a great deal of practice and patience. To improve the accuracy of your
handgun, you should consider purchasing a 1x to 4x scope if it is legal in your area.”
That’s just what I found for shooting deer. I know you use bigger pistols for hunting bear and boar (I wanna say .44 mag and .357 are two that are used commonly) and if you wanna be all crafty and marksman-y, you can use those for elk and moose.
Granted, the kind of pistols that Cho used are only good for self-defence or megalomaniacal massacres.
Oh, sorry, I took that quote from gamecalls.net, in case anyone wants to check the veractiy of my claims.
I believe it. In some midwestern states there are licenses specifically for hunting antelope with a bow and arrow. Since there are few trees on the prairie hunters typically lay on the ground and act like a clod of dirt until a antelope is stupid enough to get within range. In Nebraska most people consider this license a donation since the chances are small.
having ended the lives a few deer, i’d say anyone saying they want can do it with a pistol is either (i) nuts or (ii) looking for a reason to justify owning said pistol
If you bait the deer all summer long and then pop up a tree stand, it’s no problem bagging them with a pistol. I guess it returns some of the “sport” to the “sport” if you do it with a smaller ordinance. *shrug*
yes, but be able to sit and wait for a trained deer to stumble along does not make you a hunter; i’ve seen the sport argument for smaller cal rifles though (.223 etc), meaning you have to be a better stalker to get closer. not sure it’s still sport if you’re simply are better sitter.
You can hunt diseased ferrets or rats with a pistol. It works.
It also shuts up those damn mockingbirds in the middle of the night for a few minutes if you fire it wildly into the air while screaming.
That’s the best argument I’ve heard so far.
OK, so far all I have read in these comments deal with how guns are good or bad. 2nd amendment good or bad. etc…
Has anyone stopped to consider the fact that this was one fucked up human being? The videos sent to NBC are chilling.
This guy, this completely fucked up guy, was clearly hell bent on killing as many people as he could. A pair of guns is just one of the many options he had.
Only a complete fucked up douche bag would make a video blaming the people he was about to kill for the actions he was about to take.
Sorry, my sadness is turning into pissed-off-ness as I learn more about this piece of shit.
All I have to say is that Kutti, who has no friends who own firearms, is royally screwed in the event of a zombie invasion.
Unfortunately, I am in Canada and can’t get guns very easily. It is really going to suck when the zombies do invade..
You could always trade cheap guns for cheap meds with an American friend…
I nominate this for funniest joke of the thread.
I’d much prefer to get some zombie attack insurance. My buddy in the lab next door has some and he’s never had problems with zombies. Whenever you get the insurance you never need to use it, but as soon as you don’t have it. THEY ATTACK!
ChemGeek is onto it.
Was Cho “crazy”? Did he hear voices? Did he “receive” messages from aliens. The guy was deliberate. He planned the whole thing. He made a video, mailed it, and went back for more. Crazy people aren’t organized enough to do that. Like the 9/11 high jackers he was sane. He wanted fame and he wanted publicity. He got it done. Crazy doesn’t get it done.
He had an imaginary supermodel girlfriend named Jelly. I’m thinking the guy was nuts.
Definitely. When you have an imaginary girlfriend, there is no need to pretend that she’s a supermodel. It needs to be realistic to be believable and to actually do you any good.
Anyways, where were we again?
Oh yes…. I’LL KILL YOU ALL!!!!
Esse: I think we can all agree that Cho was “crazy”. Even crazy people can have an impeccable logic of their own, and they can think very clearly about implementing the results of that logic. To themselves, they are absolutely sane. That doesn’t make their behaviour sane to us.
Who is “us”? The sane? The deciders of sane and insane?
Crazy people cannot “think very clearly”. Not a one.
Cho was no crazier than any Islamist terrorist or than that guy who was shooting people in DC from his car trunk a few years ago.
I’ve read lots of the John Douglas stuff, and he’s conservative (so more liable to place the blame on the people rather than on states of mind) and not infallible, but… The definition of insanity that he used was that the people were unable to stop themselves from committing the acts and were unable to appreciate right from wrong. (I think it’s derived from McNaughten’s Rule? but I’m not certain.) One of his comments was that no one he knew had seen someone so unable to stop themselves from committing a criminal act that they did so in front of police – implying that most criminals can control their actions so as to evade capture.
Lots of people do really bad things, both in the magnitude of the harms and in the perversity of them, but the fact that they commit acts of evil does not make them insane, because in many cases they have the ability to do otherwise, and the understanding that what they do is wrong (else they would not plan to avoid leaving evidence, etc. which only come from knowing that what you do could get you sent to jail or death). Some people have bad desires, and if they are willing to follow them where they lead regardless of the costs to others, then they would not be crazy, but evil. This is closer to the computer jargon definition of evil, where evil refers to the orthogonality of purpose between the users and the writers of software – the writers don’t necessarily mean harm to the users, but they don’t care about them, either, and they are willing to act to their own ends to the detriment of those they nominally serve.
The ability to controls one’s actions, rather than the ends towards which one acts, is what determines one’s sanity or lack thereof.
I would also remind that he made no effort to avoid capture, unless you consider suicide.
Besides, he was legally found mentally unstable by a judge. Case closed.
Case closed? Crazy or not is not a fact like “OJ did it” or “OJ didn’t do it”. A judge saying “I find Cho to be a danger to himself as a matter of fact” is one thing, and that was his finding. Saying, “I find Cho to be crazy as a matter of fact” makes no sense.
As a chemistry grad student at Virginia Tech, I appreciate everyones thoughts and best wishes. I was fortunate enough to not have been directly impacted nor was I personally close to any of the victims. However, I can also tell you that none of are thrilled to have become the next battleground for a gun control debate.
Whatever your opinions are, I hope we can stay focused on the people and families of those impacted and continue to send our prayers or best wishes their way. We in the department were all freshly reminded how lucky we were today when we were told that seven of the victims were enrolled in chemistry classes or labs this semester.
Tonight I was glad to see that a long ago organized relay for life event was able to go on as planned. And despite the tragedy, and despite many thousands of students having left for home to be with their families, there were still thousands in attendance.
The strength of this university is awe inspiring to me. And it is these things I wish we could all focus on.