http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/myfo...=23&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1 The body count has been rising all day. I saw it at 8 this morning, then 22, now 32 at last count.
Might as well get used to it till the anti gun crowd gets their way there will be a nutcase patsy to go out and do their bidding supplying two years worth of anti-gun propaganda.
Yeah, make guns illegal just like drugs. No one has those, right? This shit makes a case for everyone packing. I'd rather be carrying one if I were a VT student right now. I'd think guns were contraband on campus but Cho Seung-Hui had one anyway. Anti-whatever doesn't make it go away.
This is an article from the Times (UK). My thoughts and condolences go out to the familes that have to suffer from this tragedy, long after the media frenzy is but a distant memory. Only the names change. And the numbers The scale of the Virginia incident is, sadly, all that distinguishes it Gerard Baker By the desensitising standards of routine American gun violence, yesterday’s shootings at Virginia Tech university were shocking only in their scale. Over more than 20 years, Americans have got grimly used to a ritual that plays out on the cable news every few months. The initial news is sketchy, reports of shots fired at a campus or in a schoolyard. Then, the first confused images of students running terrified from classrooms, black-clothed Swat teams gingerly pressing into doorways; the press conference in which some dazed school principal or university president mutters the first incomplete details, with casualty estimates and emergency phone numbers for worried relatives to call. Finally, as the horror gradually dawns in its fullness, someone finds some photograph of the gunman, pulled from a high-school yearbook or holiday. Sometimes he is a fresh-faced, American-as-apple-pie-looking young man who friends say would never harm an insect. Other times, in that first image, the brooding face is already a sad window into a soul that is well on the way to its ultimate destination of murderous and suicidal mayhem. It’s so familiar you could write the script yourself. Only the names change — Jonesboro, Columbine, Lancaster County and now Virginia Tech. And the numbers. Yesterday’s death toll of more than 30 handed Virginia Tech, a proud college with a strong academic record and a famous sporting pedigree, the unwanted title of worst shooting in US history. There is something slightly unsettling about the way news reporters seize on these landmarks with the kind of statistical excitement with which you would announce a new sporting record. You can’t blame them. It is the only thing that really distinguishes one of these events from another in the public’s mind. And the truth is that only an optimist would imagine Virginia Tech will hold the new record for very long. Surely in a year or two the news networks will be replaying the same footage from another college, with only the numbers different. Perhaps of all the elements of American exceptionalism – those factors, positive or negative, that make the US such a different country, politically, socially, culturally, from the rest of the civilised world – it is the gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand. The country’s religiosity, so at odds with the rest of the developed world these days; its economic system which seems to tolerate vast disparities of income; even all those strange sports Americans enjoy – all of these can at least be understood by the rest of us, even if not shared. But why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number? The truth is, not all Americans do oppose such measures. The US of course, is a vast, federal nation, with different laws and cultures in different states. In Virginia, scene of yesterday’s shootings, they passed a law a few years ago that did indeed restrict gun purchases – to a maximum of one per week. In the neighbouring District of Columbia, on the other hand, the law bans the possession of all guns. DC’s draconian measure highlights one reason tighter gun control is difficult in the US. The federal courts recently ruled that the ban violates Americans’ right to bear arms, as protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But the constitutional question is not, in fact, settled. The final legal status of gun control rests at least in part on the composition of the Supreme Court and can, and has, changed, over the years. Those on the Left like to think that the reason guns remain so available lies with the famed power of the National Rifle Association, the body that promotes the interest of gun owners. The NRA is deemed to be so influential that it can force members of congress or state representatives to support permissive gun laws, for fear of losing the association’s useful financial support at election time. But this is overblown. The NRA is certainly a powerful body but cannot on its own outweigh the views of millions of ordinary Americans. The simple truth is that Americans themselves remain unwilling to take drastic measures to restrict gun availability. This is rooted deep in the American belief in individual freedom and a powerful suspicion of government. Americans are deeply leery of efforts by government to restrict the freedom to defend themselves. A sizeable minority, perhaps a majority, believe the risk that criminals will perpetrate events such as yesterday’s is a painful but necessary price to pay to protect that freedom. The sheer scale of the carnage yesterday may after all make the Blacksburg killings truly unique in American history. That will doubtless lead to more self-examination and perhaps calls for new restrictions on firearms. But it won’t change America’s deep-rooted and sometimes lethal commitment to its own freedoms
Officials in Blacksburg said Mr. Cho was registered in his senior year at Virginia Tech, majoring in English and living on campus. According to CNN, Harry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations, described Mr. Cho as a loner. Loner. The common thread. Don't ban guns, just make sure every kids has a World of Warcraft character if he can't make real friends. Actually, I don't own a gun so I don't really don't know how easy or difficult it is to come by one, "Brady Bill" or no.
So they say today that the shooter was "depressed". Tomorrow some nut will say "he was on Prozac, thats why he did it. It was the Prozac." It was depression, not Prozac. Depression was there first. I bet he STOPPED taking his Prozac. Please keep that in mind when the lunacy starts.
http://newsbloggers.aol.com/ Check out his writings. Class warfare, anti-religious...this guy bought into everyone of the media socialist propaganda machine points.
I think he may have had a psychotic break. Alot of times schizophrenics are loner weird types with poor social functioning prior to developing fullblow schizoprenia in their late teens and early twenties for males. Kind of reminds me of a guy I was following during my psych rotation who had a psychotic break in basic training on his way to Iraq.
...actually it's early to mid twenties for males and late twenties females. So he fits in that respect.
no no.... joe's theory is much more plausable.... he was brainwashed by the liberal media.... damn you telletubbies DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!!
Instead of turning this into a political finger pointing, liberals vs. conservatives arguement, let's just recognize this for what it was. A fucked up kid snapped and killed a bunch of people. Stop trying to politicize it.
Checkers - I hate to say it but your paper is much more eloquent than the ones we have here in the States, well at least my state anyways. Dwaine sorry for your loss. The only thing that banning guns will change is the fact that honest people wont have guns anymore. Look at DC. How much did their crime rate drop? The sad thing is that he turned in several playwrights (he wrote plays) that were very disturbing according to his professor, and was supposed to go to counseling. The sad thing is that no one tried to stop him. He killed a lot of people over a long period of time.
They sensationalise it because the girl was white. IT gets more new attention because the elites dont want the general population to have guns, so this is another scare tactic. ie 'This is what YOU do with your guns, we have to take them away to save you' its all bollocks.
America does have a gun problem - as evidenced by the fact that not one person that was being shot at by a crazed gunman had a gun with which to return fire. The problem? Gun control. The school is a gun free zone. The perfect place for a criminal to start a shootout. I wonder if he would have started the massacre if he knew that there could be a few professors packing a .357?
When I was in Niagara a couple weeks back I wrote about a guy that killed himself at the blackjack table. One stunned employee of the Seneca Casino was quoted on T.V. as saying, "I cant believe he got a gun inside, there are clearly marked signs that say 'no guns'" It's like that Chris Rock joke about going to clubs with metal detectors, "It aint going in the club that you have to worry about, it's coming out. Cause all those mother fuckers in the parking lot know "You aint got a gun".........
Based on the tapes sent to NBC by the shooter I'm almost sure it was a psychotic break consistent with schizophrenia.
barry.... in the right hands a gun is a powerful tool of protection... but in the wrong, as was proven on monday, it can be a devastating instrument of destruction.... what you;re stating is an extreme, everyone having guns, and of the two extremes, I'd rather choose in which no one has a gun simply because we're all fallible..... quite frankly when drunk i don't trust myself with a gun, not because I would kill someone but because any object (stationary or otherwise) at a reasonable length would become an open invite to prove that even though I can't walk, I can shoot.... same goes for road rage, cheating spouses, etc..... with a gun every moment that weakens us, makes us an instrument of potential disaster....
