[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. :cry:

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.