Virginia Tech Massacre

[Midnight Flyer]

I'm so shocked and stunned by the senseless killings today at Virginia Tech. How could anyone kill 32 innocent students in school, a place where they should feel secure? My thought and prayers go out to their families.

[Fozzy]

Why would completely helpless and unarmed targets feel secure in anything? If there was ever a case where more people should be trained and armed, this is it. The police are not on the jobs to prevent crimes, they are there to investigate and to arrest people who have committed crimes. The whackos know that there are large blocks of unarmed people at schools and workplaces, why does anyone think that barring trained law abiding people to conceal and carry weapons is the danger? 32 and eventually more people died today for pretending that the law would protect them.

[Midnight Flyer]

I agree. Classes on how to properly handle and shoot a weapon should be more readily available. I remember reading somewhere where concealed weapons classes are becoming more and more popular and in some cities there is a waiting list for students. Now with this tragedy don't you know the anti-gun people will come out of the woodwork, not to mention adding fuel to the 2008 presidential campaign. 8)

[Stimp]

This was a great loss and tragedy, and not surprisingly been non stop on the news channels here too. My thoughts are with all the families who have suffered loss today.

Fozzy, you talk about law abiding people not being a danger. While in the main I agree, there is no evidence that this gunman was anything other than law abiding and obtained his weapons legally. Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us. Thankfully this guys reaction to that breaking point is only seen in one of billions of people who reach their breaking point every day.

I very much respect other peoples cultures and customs and admire the people who stand up for their rights etc. I do feel though that in the area of firearms that something ought to be done to prevent this ever happening again. Your constitution was written over 200 years ago in what at those times were a pretty lawless society. I think that maybe you (America) should think about giving up your right to bear arms. It was reported on the news here tonight that 1 in 3 American adults own a gun of some description. I can see that hunters and sporting shooters would want to own a firearm but why would "John Doe" want to own one.

I myself have a shotgun, which I use for clay pigeon shooting. I'm a crap shot, but I enjoy the passtime. To get a licence for it took around 8 weeks, was visited by a firearms officer who interviewed me, inspected where I was going to keep it, made sure the gun safe was of an approved type and that I was pretty level headed I guess. Then my application went to the chief constable to get his approval (a formality if the report from the firearms officer is OK)

I'm neither for or against gun control, but anything that can be done to prevent this happening again in the future must be done.

[Roadhog]

Don't get me wrong...I wish to never die from the lack of shooting back.
But...is this really what this event is about?....having or not having a gun?

I agree that this will evolve into the lowest common denominator.

Although I am not shocked, nor stunned at how something like this can happen, I am disheartened and angry. I feel so sorrowful for the victims and their families. This effects us all in some way.

I'll try to balance out my feelings. But, things like this harden you...and maybe rightly so.

[silvan]

I'm so shocked and stunned by the senseless killings today at Virginia Tech. How could anyone kill 32 innocent students in school, a place where they should feel secure? My thought and prayers go out to their families.

It has been a total madhouse around here today, I hear. I wasn't here, of course, but I did see every state trooper in Virginia rolling north with the hammer down. I actually had to hear the truth about what was really going on from a friend of mine who lives in Florida. I couldn't get anything off the FM, and nobody on the CB knew anything for sure, and I couldn't get through to anyone at home, because the phones were all jammed up.

My wife's cousin used to live in AJ. I know exactly where that is.

Scary stuff.

Everything in the county is going to be shut down tomorrow, and I won't be surprised if this impacts my getting loaded tomorrow in some way too. It's a madhouse around here.

[Cripplecreek]

This was a great loss and tragedy, and not surprisingly been non stop on the news channels here too. My thoughts are with all the families who have suffered loss today.

Fozzy, you talk about law abiding people not being a danger. While in the main I agree, there is no evidence that this gunman was anything other than law abiding and obtained his weapons legally. Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us. Thankfully this guys reaction to that breaking point is only seen in one of billions of people who reach their breaking point every day.

I very much respect other peoples cultures and customs and admire the people who stand up for their rights etc. I do feel though that in the area of firearms that something ought to be done to prevent this ever happening again. Your constitution was written over 200 years ago in what at those times were a pretty lawless society. I think that maybe you (America) should think about giving up your right to bear arms. It was reported on the news here tonight that 1 in 3 American adults own a gun of some description. I can see that hunters and sporting shooters would want to own a firearm but why would "John Doe" want to own one.

I myself have a shotgun, which I use for clay pigeon shooting. I'm a crap shot, but I enjoy the passtime. To get a licence for it took around 8 weeks, was visited by a firearms officer who interviewed me, inspected where I was going to keep it, made sure the gun safe was of an approved type and that I was pretty level headed I guess. Then my application went to the chief constable to get his approval (a formality if the report from the firearms officer is OK)

I'm neither for or against gun control, but anything that can be done to prevent this happening again in the future must be done.

I agree with you. It's time to throw the second amendment out the window or at least change it to bring it up to date. When it was written a good shooter might get off 3 shots in 1 minute, now in a minute mass loss of life can occur. I believe hunters should be allowed firearms. We've already twisted the Constitution to allow DUI roadblocks and all this Catch a Predator nonsense and went after tobacco and drugs, guns should go as well. Then you have folks who fall back on the militia aspect, in case the government decides to enslave us all. More BS if the govt. wants to overpower you they have at thier disposal other methods to accomplish that and render your firearms useless.

[Fozzy]

This was a great loss and tragedy, and not surprisingly been non stop on the news channels here too. My thoughts are with all the families who have suffered loss today.

Fozzy, you talk about law abiding people not being a danger. While in the main I agree, there is no evidence that this gunman was anything other than law abiding and obtained his weapons legally. Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us. Thankfully this guys reaction to that breaking point is only seen in one of billions of people who reach their breaking point every day.

I very much respect other peoples cultures and customs and admire the people who stand up for their rights etc. I do feel though that in the area of firearms that something ought to be done to prevent this ever happening again. Your constitution was written over 200 years ago in what at those times were a pretty lawless society. I think that maybe you (America) should think about giving up your right to bear arms. It was reported on the news here tonight that 1 in 3 American adults own a gun of some description. I can see that hunters and sporting shooters would want to own a firearm but why would "John Doe" want to own one.

I myself have a shotgun, which I use for clay pigeon shooting. I'm a crap shot, but I enjoy the passtime. To get a licence for it took around 8 weeks, was visited by a firearms officer who interviewed me, inspected where I was going to keep it, made sure the gun safe was of an approved type and that I was pretty level headed I guess. Then my application went to the chief constable to get his approval (a formality if the report from the firearms officer is OK)

I'm neither for or against gun control, but anything that can be done to prevent this happening again in the future must be done.

If there are more legal concealed guns out there, these events would be both less frequent and less deadly. The main reasons that the death tolls are so high is that shooting masses of unarmed people is no different than shooting sheep. If there is a valid and known threat of return fire, these cowards might just go and shoot themselves and cost society less.

The trashing of the second amendment is also foolish.

[Slimland]

This was a great loss and tragedy, and not surprisingly been non stop on the news channels here too. My thoughts are with all the families who have suffered loss today.

Fozzy, you talk about law abiding people not being a danger. While in the main I agree, there is no evidence that this gunman was anything other than law abiding and obtained his weapons legally. Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us. Thankfully this guys reaction to that breaking point is only seen in one of billions of people who reach their breaking point every day.

I very much respect other peoples cultures and customs and admire the people who stand up for their rights etc. I do feel though that in the area of firearms that something ought to be done to prevent this ever happening again. Your constitution was written over 200 years ago in what at those times were a pretty lawless society. I think that maybe you (America) should think about giving up your right to bear arms. It was reported on the news here tonight that 1 in 3 American adults own a gun of some description. I can see that hunters and sporting shooters would want to own a firearm but why would "John Doe" want to own one.

I myself have a shotgun, which I use for clay pigeon shooting. I'm a crap shot, but I enjoy the passtime. To get a licence for it took around 8 weeks, was visited by a firearms officer who interviewed me, inspected where I was going to keep it, made sure the gun safe was of an approved type and that I was pretty level headed I guess. Then my application went to the chief constable to get his approval (a formality if the report from the firearms officer is OK)

I'm neither for or against gun control, but anything that can be done to prevent this happening again in the future must be done.

I agree with you. It's time to throw the second amendment out the window or at least change it to bring it up to date. When it was written a good shooter might get off 3 shots in 1 minute, now in a minute mass loss of life can occur. I believe hunters should be allowed firearms. We've already twisted the Constitution to allow DUI roadblocks and all this Catch a Predator nonsense and went after tobacco and drugs, guns should go as well. Then you have folks who fall back on the militia aspect, in case the government decides to enslave us all. More BS if the govt. wants to overpower you they have at thier disposal other methods to accomplish that and render your firearms useless.

Y'all are kiddin right?

I believe every good American should own a gun, wether it is for hunting or self defense!! If someone or some more than one had a firearm, this might have still happened, but a-lot less people might have died, than what did.

I will never relenquish my right to bear arms. It is my right, as a law abiding citizen. I cherish this right..

Take away the right to bear arms, but the bad people will still have them.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

[greg3564]

This was a great loss and tragedy, and not surprisingly been non stop on the news channels here too. My thoughts are with all the families who have suffered loss today.

Fozzy, you talk about law abiding people not being a danger. While in the main I agree, there is no evidence that this gunman was anything other than law abiding and obtained his weapons legally. Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us. Thankfully this guys reaction to that breaking point is only seen in one of billions of people who reach their breaking point every day.

I very much respect other peoples cultures and customs and admire the people who stand up for their rights etc. I do feel though that in the area of firearms that something ought to be done to prevent this ever happening again. Your constitution was written over 200 years ago in what at those times were a pretty lawless society. I think that maybe you (America) should think about giving up your right to bear arms.

Our goverment can't stop the flow of drugs across the border. Do you really thing they could stop guns? Guns are already being smuggled into the black market. Bottom line, guns are here to stay. I'll be damned if I fall victim to some crook who's carrying a smuggled of stolen gun and I can't defend myself.

It was reported on the news here tonight that 1 in 3 American adults own a gun of some description. I can see that hunters and sporting shooters would want to own a firearm but why would "John Doe" want to own one. Because the average "John Doe" is more likely to fall victim to a violent crime than a hunter. Again, criminals do not obtain their weapons through legal means, like us law abiding citizens do.

I myself have a shotgun, which I use for clay pigeon shooting. I'm a crap shot, but I enjoy the passtime. To get a licence for it took around 8 weeks, was visited by a firearms officer who interviewed me, inspected where I was going to keep it, made sure the gun safe was of an approved type and that I was pretty level headed I guess. Then my application went to the chief constable to get his approval (a formality if the report from the firearms officer is OK)

I'm neither for or against gun control, but anything that can be done to prevent this happening again in the future must be done.

Gun control will never work. When Clinton signed his Assault Weapons bill, he pledged that violent gun crimes would go down and we would all be safer. Bottom line was that after 10 years there was no proven difference in violent gun crime.

Arm more of the populace and make it easier to do so(unlike Kalifornia). If a good chuck of society was armed, criminals will have to do a second take on whether they want to rob someone. If some of these college students had the ability to be armed, the casualties would have been fewer for sure.

[mf2004champ]

Hitler and Mao loved gun control.

[Twilight Flyer]

This topic isn't about gun control. It's about the senseless killings in Virginia. If you want to talk about gun control (either side) and repealing the 2nd amendment, please start another thread. :? Please don't turn someone else's tragedy into a soapbox. Let the politicians do that so we can ignore them. The dead deserve a helluva lot more respect than that.

To the topic at hand:

Every one of us has a breaking point though, what happens when we reach that point differs in each and every one of us.

I have to respectfully disagree. Despondant to the point of reaching your breaking point, is taking a gun and shooting yourself or drinking yourself into oblivion or some other self-destructive behavior. I would even go so far as to list crimes of passion as the result of hitting your breaking point.

But what this guy did was flat-out evil. This was a terrorist in the truest sense of the word. There was no breaking point to reach. This was something that was planned out, harbored in the disease-ridden filth he called his brain. No one...I mean NO ONE, wakes up one morning and thinks "my girlfriend is cheating on me, I'm going to go kill 30 other people to get her back." No, this ****ed up, hell-bound son of a ***** had this planned for a long time for the simple fact that he is/was an evil coward of the most dispicable kind.

It's bad enough that initial indications are that much of this tragedy could have been avoided and that is coming out more and more every hour. But even worse is that as with Columbine, this guy's successful terrorist attack will spawn more of these cockroaches to come out of the woodwork and try to one-up him.

What another sad day in our country's history.

[bulldog2036]

What is a GOOD American. And people kill people, with guns. There will always be plenty of room for argument over gun control and the like as there will always be nut jobs who lose their "nuts and bolts" and decide it is time to massacre innocent people, so sad.

[Fozzy]

This is a topic within a topic and its VERY relevant to the discussion. Until there are more armed people out there in these area that are just open and free slaughterhouses for those WITH the guns. This isn't going to change in the least.

[Sheepdancer]

No gun control law could have kept this horrible shooting from happening. However the gun control law that keeps guns off campuses could have made this worse. One student or faculty member with a legal carried firearm could have saved the life of 32 people.

[Twilight Flyer]

The point that gun control is inherently part of this discussion is valid enough that I'll withdraw my request to keep it out of the discussions. BUT, don't let it get out of hand. If you want to politely agree or disagree, that's fine. But a whizzin' match won't be tolerated.

No gun control law could have kept this horrible shooting from happening. However the gun control law that keeps guns off campuses could have made this worse. One student or faculty member with a legal carried firearm could have saved the life of 32 people.

So could a University President and a Chief of Police that kept the safety of the student's as the top priority. Mark my words, both of them will be steamrolled when all is said and done and rightfully so. I give it no more than 7 days before the first of the lawsuits are filed alledging gross dereliction of duty and incompetence. And as anti-lawsuit as I am, this is one I will happen to agree with.

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior from South Korea, named as gunman in Virginia Tech massacre

Brings back memories of the University of Iowa massacre when Gang Lui killed 5 on campus in Iowa City. My wife was working at the U of I hospital in the E.R. when they were bringing in victims. So this hits close to home for her.

[Fozzy]

But the nationality is irrelevant to the discussion. The race didn't matter on the Long Island Expressway and it didn't matter at Columbine. The problem with blaming the authorities for this is that unless they installed some sort of lock down police state where there are numerous armed guards challenging almost everyone with a muzzle to the face for the least little reason, the program would be worthless.

The problem is that we have left our personal protection to the law enforcement types and this is like waiting for someone else who is assigned to pull the ripcord on your parachute. the scumbags and nuts have this all figured out, there is little that can be done to them when they are the sole owner of the gun in a VAST area where there are unarmed people "trusting" the police will eventually get there. The entire time that the police are TRYING to figure out what is going on and to whom, the bodies are stacking up like cordwood.

It's also folly to think that this would have gone down with no deaths, there will still be people killed, but if there were one or two trained people with firearms, and this keeps ending up with the thugs having to defend themselves and then getting shot to pieces, the glamour and easy thrill of this for the nuts will subside to a lower level.

[Twilight Flyer]

Nationality is certainly no part of the issue, though I daresay that many will make is an issue. My point was that the killer now has an identity, which in my opinion, adds a face to the monster and makes it even tougher to swallow. My wife said that as victims were brought in 15 years ago, it was actually more difficult to handle when they knew who had perpetrated the massacre.

I still say that not near enough was done to prevent this from exploding into what it did. You've got students, parents, and now some officials asking why the only warning was an e-mail sent 2 hours after the initial attack. So there is a lot of anger and desperation right now and I think the next few days while bear out the fact that it is well-founded.

[wot i life]

Thoughts and prayers from all over here

[silvan]

No gun control law could have kept this horrible shooting from happening. However the gun control law that keeps guns off campuses could have made this worse. One student or faculty member with a legal carried firearm could have saved the life of 32 people.

This is what most of us agreed on the radio today. About all we can do to protect our kids from something like this when they go to college themselves is send them packing with a CCW and a reliable firearm, and hope one of them can shoot the little @#%@#% before he takes out so many people next time. There's no way law enforcement can save anyone from something like this, although in this case, I think they did a spectacularly bad job of even trying; hundreds of police officers on the ground, and so far as I can tell, all they had left to do was work the crime scene and do crowd control, because the shooting was already over.

Of course the hole in this plan is you have to be 21 to own a handgun in Virginia, and most of those kids weren't seniors. OK, that's not the only hole in this plan, but the fundamental fact that the only person who can save you is you still stands, whether you use a gun or not.

This whole thing is profoundly troubling, and it's just one more freaky thing in a freaky week in a freaky year in a string of freaky years. I've never been one to buy into the "the end is nigh" mindset, but it sure does seem like the planet is trying to turn itself upside down.

My delivery got cancelled, and I got laid up here at the house with a load I can't get rid of. I went by to see my old boss, and we had a long talk about this. (Boy, it sucked seeing those thieving @#%@#'s trucks sitting on our yard while my old #21 was still sitting there where I parked it in February, but that's another story.)

I understand the whole teen angst thing. My childhood was a pile of dog feces. I dreamed up the Columbine scenario many years before somebody actually did it, and I'm sure I'm not the first to do it either. Lots of us used to talk about stuff like that back then. Us dorks, dweebs, losers, no account nerds who were going to die virgins, who everybody taunted and teased mercilessly. My childhood sucked, and the best part of my childhood was when I got rid of it forever.

I can understand where the feelings come from, although I by no means wish to imply that I condone the ACTIONS. I never ACTED. They were just daydreams, like rolling in the hay with Darryl Hannah or Margot Kidder or something. Most truck drivers have probably had more than one daydream about just plowing into an obnoxious fourwheeler, and running the little sucker into a ditch too. We don't ACT on these momentary impulses, because we have SELF CONTROL, because we are SANE, NORMAL, people.

But I understand the angst. What puzzles me is why someone has such angst in college. My mandatory schooling was a wretched, horrible experience, but college was completely different. I got rid of all the troglodyte scumbags and got to hang out with other dorks who got good grades. It was cool. I even got to see some wimminz that ain't got no panties on too, yeeeeha!

If I hadn't been enjoying myself, I would have quit. You can just quit. You can get yourself a job and walk away, no problem. Or go home, or whatever. Nothing is forcing you to stay in college, and it's very easy to get out. Just don't go to class tomorrow. Screw it.

So why would someone in college build up that kind of angst? That's what Jerry and I can't figure. It just doesn't make any sense.

The only thing we're left with is that the guy was a crazy insane suicidal sociopath. It's a damned crying shame he didn't just eat a bullet in the privacy of his own dorm room and leave it that that, but no, he had to try to take half the world with him, to punish people for not being crazy or something.

I don't know. It's damn scary though. It's not because people have access to guns. People have had access to semiautomatic firearms in this country for nearly 100 years. You used to be able to buy guns by mail. People didn't go on shooting sprees.

No, people are crazier than they used to be, or they don't keep their crazy impulses in control as well as they used to. It's all about impulse control. I may have had the Columbine daydream, but then I'd shiver, and the sane part of me would push that wicked thought right out of my head, and I'd continue on as a productive member of society. Bad thoughts don't kill people. Guns don't kill people. People with bad thoughts who have no impulse control kill people, and impulse control seems to be going out the window in this society.

It's terrifying.